Recovering from a travel nightmare


Travel enough and things will eventually go wrong. That’s a given. In most cases that means a missed flight, a cancelation, lost luggage or getting stuck in Casablanca and put in a hotel where the maids try to shake you down for some cash in exchange for linens. Those things happen and, while annoying at the time, they really aren’t such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I won’t go so far as to sat that I enjoy them, but they aren’t what scare me every time I head out to the airport to start another adventure.

What scares me is what actually happened to a good friend this past week. While he was sitting in New York City, 1,600 miles from home, a storm hit. And not just any storm. This one was rather devastating. Here is a partial play-by-play in his own words:

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Yeah, that’s the sort of thing that easily wins as a travel nightmare. And it is clear that Randy could use some good news to bring back that trademark smile of his. Welcome to Smile Saturday.

Clearly, Randy loves points and miles. However, he loves helping others even more. Randy established the MilePoint FlyForward forum in which groups rally around causes including Doctors Without Borders, Susan G. Komen, Livestrong, and Kiva. Through Randy’s sponsorship, Milepoint and its members have been huge contributors to these causes. The Kiva group, in particular, has been incredible. The group recently met its goal of making over $3 million dollars in micro-loans to enterprising individuals across the world. The next goal is to exceed 1000 members (at the time of this writing there are 915 members).

Help Randy by helping others

Follow these simple steps to join the Milepoint lending team on Kiva, and make your first loan for free. Every single person who does this will be a part of a meaningful positive change in the world, and is 100% guaranteed to put a smile on Randy’s face!

Step 1: Join the team

Simply click this link: http://www.kiva.org/invitedto/milepoint/by/wandering9679 and you should see something like the following:

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Make sure to click the “Join Team” button and register!

Step 2: Make a free loan

Once you’ve joined and registered, find someone you’d like to help and give them a free loan. As you browse around, you should see an orange “$25 Free Trial” buttons next to each loan. Pick one and check-out.

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That’s it! Easy to do an guaranteed to raise a smile… or two… or three…

Special thanks to FrequentMiler for the instructions and screen shots.

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Seth Miller

I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

4 Comments

  1. Cool, Thanks for posting to the blog, the kiva team is incredible!
    We’ve even had our own DOs and “conferences” getting to meet and interact with all levels of the Kiva staff.

  2. Thanks for posting this.

    #SmileSaturday brought awareness to Kiva and hopefully a smile to Randy’s face!

  3. It’s not letting me do the trial offer, just goes straight to requesting my cc, and I’m not logged in and have never made any sort of loan or account. odd.

    1. If you don’t yet have an account then using the join link above should get you the $25 free credit as part of your enrollment. If you didn’t then I’d suggest heading to the Kiva forum on MilePoint as there are folks there who are much more knowledgeable about how that’s supposed to work.

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