Regular readers will know that I love to ski. I am no particular expert, but I love being out on a good mountain. Well I spent Day 5 with fellow contestant and avid skier MilesPointsAndMaiTais. It was my first time ever at Heavenly, and with abundant wide open runs of creamy snow overlooking the stunning Lake Tahoe on one side with the odd juxtaposition of desert on the other, it’s easy to understand where the name comes from. I have to say thanks to my fantastic host who took us on a great tour over the mountain. And there was even some Tweeting going on

We managed a good 16k+ vertical feet at a nice leisurely pace. There will definitely have to be more days like this, and we both agreed a miles and points junkie SKI-DO next season would be an awesome idea. Who’s in???

After all the skiing MilesPointsAndMaiTais took me on an MS tour of the outer Sacramento area and all I can say is wow! I thought I lived in a “heavenly” MS area but this place is like some MS Utopia. No wonder @PatMikeL does so much! A super friendly and well stocked (well at least once we opened up the cabinet) OfficeMax, a 7-Eleven, a very friendly CVS and a couple of Wal-Mart led to a good haul. After skiing around 16k+ vertical feet I managed to MS around 23k+ points with a valuation around $244 which actually made Day 5 my most lucrative day to date, beating the prior record set on Day 1.

After that I was dropped off at SMF for my red-eye flight back home via Atlanta. And yes for those of you bitching and moaning about Delta, look at this: I booked this flight less than seven days out for 32,500 miles round trip. Yes that’s pretty close to the daily max you can do on that debit card, if you were curious. As a Platinum (obviously through MS not flying!) I got upgraded on all legs even on an award ticket. And the cheapest coach fare was $600+. Good luck getting that kind of value domestically with your UA or AA miles…

You can subscribe to Miles Abound by email by signing up here. Keep up to date on ideas and experiences around miles and travel!

Manufactured Spend 25 Comments
  • Marathon man

    Im glad you had great skiing and ms!

    Id be into a ski do next year and at a place you can ms too.

    I can tell you that for me, all jan til right before school feb vaca week would work best for me but lets see how it goes!

    • MilesAbound

      Yes bud I thought of you…. you been to the Sacramento area? It is insane for MS. I think the most obvious choice for a ski-do would be Salt Lake City given it’s so easy to get to from everywhere though not sure if it’s as heavenly as Heavenly for MS. And it has some great options to stay with points like the Hyatt at Canyons. But we will do one and yeah I think late Jan is the best when slopes are quiet but chances of good snow are really high.

  • JOhn

    how do you earn plat with MS?

    • MilesAbound

      60k via Personal and Business Reserve ($120k total spend) leaves just 15k to get from actual flying. Opportunity cost is definitely high, but as you can see here, I feel I get good value from my DL miles

  • Marathon man

    Heres a song a came up with while waiting on a two hour delay at the airport:

    If i had a million typ points

    I`ve got a blue and red Adidas bag and a humongous credit line to hammer
    I`m trying my best not to look like a money order scammer
    I went to watch some football teams with non ms friends to prove that I`m a normal man
    I guess I shouldn`t tell them that I like miles, points and cash back shenanigans

    This is me doing nine k baby, this is me doing nine
    This is me doing nine k baby, this is me in line for nine

    If I had a million typ points
    If I had a million typ points
    Well, I’d buy you a downpayment on a house

    And if I had a million typ points
    If I had a million typ points
    I’d buy you furniture for your house
    Maybe with some Macys gcs or Walmart ones

    And if I had a million typ points
    If I had a million typ points
    Well, I’d buy you a gift carde
    That worked at a nice Reliant automatic teller machine
    And if I had a million typ points, I’d buy your love (for my ms addiction)

    If I had a million typ points
    I’d build a gc fort in our yard
    If I had a million typ points you could help
    It wouldn’t be that hard

    If I had a million typ points
    Maybe we could put a little tiny swiper in there somewhere

    If I had a million typ points
    If I had a million typ points
    Id buy you a green dot!
    I know you’ve always wanted a monkey pak!

    If I had a million typ points
    Well I’d buy you a fur coat to put your gcs and MOs in
    But not a real fur coat that’s cruel

    And if I had a million typ points
    If I had a million typ points
    Well I’d buy you an exotic upgrade
    Yep! Like I’do an app o rama or a cc renew

    And if I had a million typ points
    If I had a million typ points
    Well I’d buy you Randy Peterson’s remains
    Oooh all them crazy elephant bones…

    • ABC

      I assume you’re swimming in typ. How do you best use them without raising alarms? Or are there no alarms?

      • MilesAbound

        When the shutdowns were occurring sounded like student loan and mortgage checks were red flags. I’ve used mine for Home Depot gift cards, tons of Hyatt Check certs, I paid for our thanksgiving 2014 trip to Universal Orlando (got to try the new Harry Potter Diagon-Alley and Hogwarts Express which will be open by then!), car rentals, our stay at the Hilton Sunrise Lodge in Park City in January. Right now I have < 20k. I burn everything I earn same month.

        • ABC

          Impressive if you burn ~0.5-1M TYPs per month on travel and home improvement. My mind can’t be that creative when vacation time is limited.

          • MilesAbound

            I’m more like about 200-250k a month on TYP

          • Vito

            250k typ per month? i call bs…

          • marathon man

            me too
            $250k a month is not enough. Should have been over $400k.

          • MilesAbound

            250k TYP per month is very achievable with the 5x card

          • Marathon man

            I know of a bloke who claims to have done 1mil spend in a month on his typ

            I have discerned it is very possible except Im trying to figure out what kind of stores he bought at and also he claims to have been able to buy and burn like 50k a day every day in 5hrs a day. That part i wonder about

    • MilesAbound

      Awesome! You know your blog has made the big time when you get your own Marathon Man song….

  • travis

    I thought you were travelling for business, why did you use miles?

  • ABC

    711? I tried that in VA last month. Thought it was hard coded.
    So you can push ~$9M through the ST card?

    • MilesAbound

      You would get shutdown at least 7m short of that by my guess and possibly much more

    • MilesAbound

      Hey it was California… seems anything works round there! Interestingly it was hard coded on $1.5k in one go, but $500 a time worked fine

  • ABC

    It is actually nice seeing that you use helmets. As a young child nobody used them (skiing or bicycling). Time does change.

    • MilesAbound

      For me it’s easy, I only started skiing properly in the last 4-5 years so now it’s like a seat-belt in a car nobody would ever think twice about not wearing one. Had to work on my wife who grew up skiing and never wore one. After that accident at Tremblant where Natasha Richardson (Liam Neeson’s wife) was killed I was like NFW are you not wearing a helmet!! (I believe she was not wearing a helmet that would have probably saved her… tragic)

      • Marathon man

        Ive had mine for years and like it for warmth as well as safety. Skiing the east can be cold and when you go thru tight tree runs them smaller branches can slap your head and body (the big ones should of course be avoided lol)

        Helmets only really do something up to 12 mph but yeah my fam and I wear them without question. Except for a few runs on 80s weekend haha

        Im still looking for old parachute pants or something

        • MilesAbound

          Yeah the Richardson event was a very low speed fall. If you hit a tree at 50mph it is not going to do anything. But also Schumacher is likely alive because his hat was on. Not sure what the rest of his life will be like now but for sure he would be no more with a fall on a rock with no helmet. And yep Tremblant is the same, when it’s -40c with wind you need whatever you can get especially if you are an old baldy like me

  • some girl

    Staying at Hyatt Escala with a family of 4 and skiing at Canyon next week for the first time. Any words of wisdom on deals for kid ski lessons? places to eat? non ski stuff? thanks

    • MilesAbound

      We just stayed there last weekend. It is a great location for skiing Canyons. There really is not much of anything to do in Canyons. For a weekend we were happy to just stay at the hotel and eat at the restaurant there which was very nice. Ski lessons for kids is not super cheap unfortunately. Frankly my best advice on going with kids is to either go somewhere smaller where lessons are much cheaper (somewhere like Brighton or Powder Mountain) or go to Whistler in low season when the excellent ski school is much cheaper. Obviously that is no help to you now! I would say if they are beginners you might want to look at skiing more at Park City Mountain Resort or Deer Valley which have better green terrain. Canyons is actually a pretty tough set of bumps with some steep places. PCMR and DV have better beginner options (as intermediates Canyons is awesome for us). So I would recommend getting a rental car, and the valet is free at Hyatt (well expect tips) or you just easily self park.

  • marathon man

    DIRE STRAITS

    Money For Nothing Lyrics

    I want my… I want my TYP…..

    Now look at them yo-yos thats the way you do it
    You play the gc game on the TYP
    That aint workin thats the way you do it
    Money orders for nothin and mortgage checks for free
    Now that aint workin thats the way you do it
    Lemme tell ya them Citi guys are dumb
    Maybe get a blister on your little finger from swiping
    Maybe get a blister on your thumb

    At Walmart, we CSRs gotta return microwave ovens
    Custom kitchen deliveries
    We gotta move these refrigerators
    We gotta move these colour tvs

    See the little MSer with the credit cards and miles
    Yeah buddy he’s got some flair
    That little MSer rides on many a jet airplane
    That little MSer hes a points millionaire

    I shoulda learned to play the GC game
    I shoulda learned not to be so dumb
    Look at that mama, she stickin it in the store camera
    Man we could have some fun
    And whats that? He’s staying in Hawaiian hotels?
    Just by bangin on the pin pad like a chimpanzee
    That aint workin thats the way you do it
    Get your money for nothin get your mortgage checks for free