SAS EuroBonus travelers, Starlink Mini, Centurion Lounge waitlists, and chasing the Northern Lights (Saturday Selection)

We may be the only people crazy enough to intentionally make the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire challenge harder with our own challenge within a challenge – Million Mile Madness – but we’re certainly not the only ones blogging about the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promo. Peak at the way other travel bloggers are handling this challenge, read about how the new Starlink Mini might make van-lifers’ lives easier (though maybe more ironic…), and more.

Around the World in 24 Days: Preparing for Takeoff

Tonei Glavinic of “Travel with Grant” is embarking on their own trip dedicated to achieving the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promo! Tonei has wisely allowed more time to complete this challenge than we have for Million Mile Madness, dedicating 24 days to the task of flying at least 15 qualifying SkyTeam carriers. In this “preparing for takeoff” post, Tonei addresses some of the more practical questions, not unlike those we received in our most recent challenge-themed Ask Us Anything, Live. “What are you packing for a trip like this?” for example. Like Greg, Nick, and Stephen, Tonei’s trip includes lots of tight connections and multi-ticket itineraries. This means avoiding a checked bag and sticking to a lightweight packing strategy, but all while accommodating a wide variety of destinations and temperatures. Packing strategies like that are always interesting and everyone always has their own tricks. I’m eager to hear how Tonei feels about the PangiaPass eSIM as a solution for high-speed connectivity. Make sure to check out the full post for more details about each of Tonei’s hotel bookings, the credit cards they’ll be bringing along, and more.

Starlink Mini review: space internet goes ultraportable

Many of the folks in the Ascend program with me (including myself for a time this summer) rely on Starlink for at-home internet, and I’ve been curious how the new portable version would compare to the standard version we used. Based on this useful and thorough review, much of it sounds similar with upload speeds being much slower than download speeds, and strength of connection corellating heavily to how much sky is visible. It sounds like it also has the same quirk where you may experience periodic lags or outages when the device is switching from one satellite to another. The article describes the outages experienced when propping the device on the dashboard of the vehicle, saying “it suffered just a few seconds of lost connection during any 15-minute sample.”. That is definitely more outage than I experienced with the standard version in our stationary location this summer, but not necessarily more than what i’d heard other folks in more wooded locations experienced with the standard device – so that may not be unique to the Mini so much as the clearance. The article does say that the Mini is slower than the standard device, which is unsurprising I guess. Perhaps my favorite part of the article is the author’s test via watching Netflix during a 40-minute forest walk. That visual is bound to make some eyes roll, but for the sake of the experiment, I appreciate it! Part of me wonders if adding easy/reliable internet access to remote locations is a bit like paving paradise to put up a parking lot, but I have to confess that I have taken at least one or two work meetings from trails before…

No More Waiting In Line? Digital Waitlists Are Finally Here for Amex Centurion Lounges

 

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American Express Centurion Lounges commonly have long waits to get in and can be very crowded. As Gary Leff states in this post, Amex has tried to resolve some of this crowd problem by limiting how much time you can spend in the lounge, but they’ve also started letting you hold a place in line with their mobile App as well. Nick got to experience this tip first hand for our Million Mile Madness challenge yesterday, which let him virtually join the queue then simply walk right in when it was his time to arrive. Nick shared an additional tip about the JFK Centurion Lounge specifically, suggesting that you will find fewer crowds downstairs and around the corner. If you watch the reel above, you can see him demonstrate this.

In Search of Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights

Here in the US, we’ve had several opportunities to see aurora borealis lately without even leaving the country. The stars (or solar flares, as it were) have not aligned just right for me personally this time, though I did get to see an incredible bright red and pink aurora borealis display right over my grandma’s farm when I was in high school, then a faint blue-ish aurora borealis in Alaska a few years later. I feel lucky that I’ve seen this phenomenon without intentionally looking for it because it can be quite an elusive spectacle to pursue. Even so, I’ve always thought an aurora borealis “chase” trip would be thrilling. And that’s exactly what Brian Cohen of The Gate is doing. Wisely, he’s making sure the trip North to the Laplands is full of fun elements that will make the trip worthwhile whether the Northern Lights show up or not. His trip will include time in Finland, which is where Nick had success seeing the Northern Lights for the 3 Cards, 3 Continents challenge several years ago.

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