Miles to Go Before I Sleep

By Pico Iyer

For many years now, I have had a secret addiction. It is an increasingly common problem, though unknown until about a decade ago, and one for which doctors and psychologists have no cure. If religion is the opium of the masses, this might be said to be the lithium.

It all began innocently enough when a travel agent said to me, as if guilelessly, "Since you're taking all these flights, why don't you sign up for a Frequent Flyer program? It's easy, it's free, and you can earn free tickets. Since you're traveling anyway, you've got nothing to lose." That is how it always begins: "Bill, have you heard about this new kind of glue? They say it has the most incredible effect." And then the sudden fall. "I guess it can't hurt. They say everyone is doing it."

Because my miles weren't accumulating fast enough, I began taking trips I didn't need, or routing myself from Los Angeles to New York City by way of Anchorage. If I went all around the world, I figured, I could earn a free ticket to Alpena. Then I acquired a credit card that would give me one mile for every dollar spent. The credit line was tiny, but the sense of possibility was enormous; why, if I just bought a car, a VCR, a computer, a fax machine and a washer-dryer set, I could go to State College, and back, for free (depending on availability, blackout dates and routings)!

But was I satisfied? No. Is any addict ever satisfied? I needed to know that if I bankrupted my entire family, we could all fly free -- or get upgrades at least -- to debtors' prison. So I hooked my telephone up to another carrier's Frequent Flyer program. That didn't help my principal account at all, but it did mean that I got five miles for every phone dollar spent; so if I called Zaire every day for a week -- for 177 straight weeks -- I could get a free ticket to Detroit. Indeed, if I called a friend in Japan for 40 minutes a day every day for 84 weeks -- or made a three-minute call once a week for 101 years -- I could earn enough miles to go visit the friend in person (though then we'd have no incentive to talk, because we wouldn't be earning miles).

For a while that seemed enough: I spent as much money as possible, charged everything to my credit card and made all my reservations by international phone call. Then the airlines got wise to me. If I stayed in an Exorbitant Suites Hotel (on the new Executive Floor), they said, or rented an Expense-o- Car, I could earn one-fortieth of a ticket to Kalamazoo. Then, just as I was booking cars I didn't need, they introduced segments. That meant that if I flew from Seattle to Vancouver via Chico, Oshkosh, Bullhead City and Purgatory (Colorado), I might clock up enough miles to make the same trip for free! Alternatively, if I flew to Casper, stayed in the most expensive hotel around, made some calls to Zaire at prime rates and rented a car to drive back to the airport, I might be able to return home without paying. The shortest distance between two points was the slowest way to get ahead.

If only it had ended there. But now, every day, new permutations come flying in the door. If I go first class to Paris, I can bring a companion along free -- so long as she has the same itinerary. Having the same itinerary will probably mean the end of our friendship, but the offer does ensure that if I spend $6,846 on a ticket that would otherwise cost $768, I can get another ticket (for which I would have had to pay $768) for nothing. If I make five round trips to Taipei, a city I have always tried to avoid, I can go again -- to Taipei -- free of charge.

If I play my miles right, in fact, I need never leave the plane. As soon as I embark, I can buy things -- key chains, duty-free perfumes, souvenirs and razors -- and put them on my credit card. Then I can acquire more goods on the Airfone, charged to my special phone carrier. By the time I land, I might have earned enough miles to get the next leg free. I can even earn tickets while six miles high! (Vertical miles don't count, however, and horizontal ones are not what they seem: the Frequent Flyer is the only bird of prey that flies even more directly than a crow -- thus for a standard 3,000-mile cross-country flight, I'm lucky to get 2,470 miles.)

By now, however, I spend all my free hours -- and cash -- hunting down old boarding passes, ticket receipts and hotel vouchers. If ever I do get a free ticket through the mail, I have no time to use it (because I am always flying) -- and, in any case, don't want to use a ticket that will give me no miles. More and more companies, besides, have got in on the act, so that soon, I suspect, I'll be earning miles from using the same brand of diaper, from walking or talking or not going by air (but charging long-distance bus rides to my credit card). Even the woman who runs the largest mail-order-bride service on the U.S. mainland accepts credit cards: now I can earn miles by choosing a wife!

And then came the killer blow! If only I could persuade my friends to develop the same habit, I could earn one-tenth of a free trip to Menominee. If only, in short, I could turn my friends into addicts as demented as myself, I could empirically prove that there is such a thing as a free lunch. Nowadays I hardly ever think about the credit I could get by attending Frequent Flyer support groups around the globe -- or the five miles I could earn by transmitting this article to the office on my modem. Mostly I'm to be found saying, "Come on. It's easy, it's free, and you can earn free tickets. They say this guy Faust never paid for a ticket in his life."