So, other than waking up late and not having time to verify directions to my friend Brad’s apt. before hitting the road, my trip this morning was uneventful. Â Almost boring. Â I can handle travel like that. Â For the cost of a Chick-fil-A meal I got from JFK to 187th St in Manhattan with everything intact.
Stay tuned….
Hi.
I’m Chad. Â I’m new here.
The All You Can Jet pass dropped into my lap at precisely the right time in my life. Â I’d been divorced for 7 months and laid off for 2 days. Â I had a small pile of cash and no interest in jumping back into the grind. Â I have other personal reasons for wanting to be out of this town that I love so much for a little while.
One of them is jokes. Â I tell them. Â I actually tell them relatively well. Turns out there’s a comedy club in nearly every domestic city that Jet Blue serves and me with all this time on my hands…you see how easy the decision was when it was presented.
So here I sit, 6 hours from my first flight…not technically on the pass…I had to get to NYC earlier than the 6th…but the first leg in my journey nonetheless. Â My room mate is taking me to the airport at 5:30 for a direct flight to NYC, landing around noon.
My goal: Bare minimum, 10 cities, 10 c0medy clubs. Â That may not seem like a lofty goal, but I’m new at this. Â Give me a day or two to get my sea air legs under me.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
-chad
So here are the grand totals:
I spent 23 hours and 52 minutes on 9 flights and covered 8565 miles in that time for an average speed of around 360 miles per hour.
I visited 10 cities (Long Beach, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Washington DC, New York City and Brooklyn) and marked 13 pillows with pomade. I caught up with countless friends and made a number of new ones along the way.
I took 5800 photos for an average of 187 photos a day. 2165 of those come from the 2 burlesque shows I had the pleasure of shooting.
I got a lot more out of my iPhone than the numbers would indicate. I enjoyed shooting little things along the way and the iPhone was always the camera on hand. I didn’t enjoy the G10 as much. It was good for in the plane shots and self portraits, but I didn’t get much out of it otherwise.
Next step is going through all my photos and publishing the best. I’ll also be telling tales from the adventure as I remember them. I had a great time and couldn’t have done it without help from my friends, family and sponsors, both here and around the country. Thanks everyone!
4 hours 3 minutes
1519 miles
Seat 6A
This is it! Headed home! Every time they mention the air time for the flight it gets shorter. We are now down to a 3 hours 40 minute flight and we haven’t even left the ground. Oh, now we are paused at the gate while they do some maintenance. They are going to be speeding, I’m sure of it. It has been a great journey, but I’m looking forward to being home finally.
This is it kids. The last trip tattoo. Unless I decide to get one in Austin when I get home. Which is possible. I’m honestly a bit sad that it is almost over, but at the same time I am very anxious to get back home.
Drawn directly on my arm and then tattooed by Chad Koeplinger at the famous New York Adorned.
1 hour 10 minutes
227 miles
Seat 3D
I got up early and took a cab out to Dulles since I had heard horror stories about long security lines and extra security measures. For me it was not so bad. I got patted down before I got on the plane, but otherwise I guess I got there early enough that the lines were fine. The airport was kind of crazy huge tho.
This was also my first time visiting the famous Terminal 5 (or T5 as the jetBlue folks like to call it) in JFK. It was really nice. Beautiful terminal, great restaurants. Honestly one of the few airport experiences that actually feels at all different from every other big airport. Leave it to jetBlue to create a better experience on the ground as well as in the air.
I decided to loiter in the airport until the #aycj party got kicked off. Met a ton of fellow jetters that I had only known through their twitter tags, including (but not limited to): @redelvis, @mhjohnston, @royaldrama, @girlonferry, @McCallYouCanJet, @aaronpk, @JohnRDowdy (again… are you following me?), and @AllYouCanJetNow. It was a great time and really cool meeting all these different people on this crazy deal and seeing all the adventures they are getting into.
Had a great time and then off to meet up with my friend in NYC and then off to the New York Burlesque Festival to see my friend Sparkly Devil perform!
