One of my real life altering experiences in the past few years has been combining travel (i.e. you at least have to get on a plane, and maybe go so far as to travel to another country) with rock concerts. I never would have imagined doing this years and years ago, and now that I have done this a few times, I am always looking for the next opportunity to jump on a plane and see someplace new, experience a different culture, and attend a concert from a favorite artist or band. I would have thought this to be both implausible as impractical financially years ago, but one of my missions with the Rock Subculture Journal is to share tips and suggestions about making such a dream a reality.
While I’ve always been accustomed to driving for hours at a time to and from a concert, I’d never considered going out of state, let alone out of the country, with the primary objective of attending a concert. All this changed for me in December 2010 with a trip to England, which I chronicled on the Original Prop Blog and then copied over to the Rock Subculture Journal here in building this website.
As explained in those articles at the time, I had an opportunity to meet a favorite band, Coldplay, in England for a set of special charity concerts, and also to meet up over in England with some friends to have some company in the adventure. At the time, I’d only been out of the United States one time, so I was definitely not an experienced traveler. However, I adopted the “life is short” sentiment, and decided to go. I am so glad I went, as it was such a fantastic adventure, I’d never had so much fun. As soon as I returned to the U.S., I was trying to figure out how to make such a trip again.
And this is where I can share some advice, but there is one requirement for those who might pursue this… you need to have really good credit (which is a challenge for many in this economy). I’ve always charged most things to a credit card that awards frequent flyer miles (in my case, United), and save them up. So for my trip to England in 2010, I was able to fly first class for free (aside from some taxes), which was remarkable, as I priced out my itinerary, and it would have otherwise cost many thousands of dollars.
Last year in 2011, I took a few more international trips – one to Madrid, and another back to England and then France, again as chronicled here (as copied over from the Original Prop Blog). Again, frequent flyer miles played a huge role in making this possible.
Since, I’ve done a lot of research into ways in which to rack up lots of mileage points in order to pay for future trips, flights, and hotels, and have been amazed at what is possible with having strong credit. On the Links page of this site, I’ve shared links to websites which do an amazing job of sharing information and offers to consumers in order to rack up points and miles with a variety of airlines and hotel chains.
In a short time, I’ve accumulated enough points for probably six coach-class round trip flights to anywhere in the world. More, with United (not sure about other airlines), you can leave your home city, stop in say, Japan, stay there for a week, then go to Australia, stay there a week, then come back to your home city, and this counts as only one round trip ticket. Using miles, it is possible to put together remarkable trips at a very low cost.
As those travel sites will show, an easy way to accumulate points and miles with various companies is through their sign up bonuses for certain travel-related credit cards. It is quite amazing what some offer. Some do have a minimum spend requirement over a certain time frame (usually three months), but some only require a one-time use for any amount.
If you do have the ability to accomplish this, I would recommend looking into it further, as I’ve found my travels to other countries, with the bonus of attending some incredible gigs, to be such an incredible experience, and sharing those experiences is obviously a motivating factor for starting this website, with hopes others may go down that path and find similar enjoyment.
Of course, another huge benefit to these experiences are the friendships I’ve forged along the way.
I will make this idea of traveling for concerts a topic to revisit again as I build content for this site, and hope I can bring a few new people along on this journey.
Jason DeBord