You don't have to be outside to know that Houston is hot and humid. Just look out the window. The airport operations crew for our aircraft were propped back on their vehicles as we pulled up: shorts, t-shirts, sunglasses. Yeah, it was Houston.

But we weren't here for long. Just a couple of hours. Soon we'd be flying off to the midwest, then the east coast, then the southeast. This was our first pure "mileage run" since February and we were already "striking gold." Due to a coach oversell, we had been op-up'd to First (that's "mileage runner talk" for "operational upgrade" or "free upgrade") out of our originating airport. For people like Drew and I, there's nothing like hearing that dejected "ding-ding" from the boarding-pass reader as you feed your card through. It means they've moved your seat (or you're trying to board the wrong flight... equally as exciting, really). Why were we the lucky ones? Probably a number of factors: handsome, witty, and our dashing good looks. Either that or two top-tier elites traveling on the same record on an oversold flight who happened to show up three minutes before the doors closed. (We'll stick to the former.)

So, there we were, sitting in 2B and 2C pulling up to Houston. We'd already made plans too: take the "PeopleMover" (yes, that is actually its official name... this is Texas remember) to Terminal D and engorged ourselves on treats at the Lufthansa Star Alliance lounge. It was a good beginning to lots of miles. But I'll let Drew fill you in on the rest.

With 2 1/2 hours to blow in the Senator's Lounge, we settled in and enjoyed sandwiches, chips, German beer and the obligatory Milano cookies. We were just getting comfortable when the receptionist came to inform us we had a 20 minute walk to our terminal...and our flight was leaving in half an hour. How could this have happened??? Time change. Rookie mistake. Not to be defeated, we quickly packed up and made a mad dash to terminal A...the last of 5 stops made by the trudging PeopleMover. We impatiantly waited as the tram made its stop at each terminal, the hotel, and even a closed terminal where we sat with the doors closed waiting to move on. Upon our final stop, we again ran up two escalators, blitzed through security and arrived at the gate just in time to discover there was no plane waiting for us...WHAT?!?! We still had 5 minutes before it was supposed to leave! Oh wait, delayed flight and gate change...a welcome inconvenience as we continued on our journey. After all, who were we kidding? Without the delay we would have had NO chance of making the flight. God bless O'Hare weather.

We eventually boarded the plane (intentionally at the last minute...hoping to no avail for yet another op-up) and realized the bad Chicago weather we'd been thanking God for would soon bring about quite another emotion. We sat on the runway for close to 30 minutes and watched our tight connection schedule grow tighter and tighter. When we touched down about 15 minutes before our next flight was supposed to leave, we had all but lost hope in making the connection. In fact, we had a series of EasyUpdate text messages waiting for us upon landing that detailed the delays and rebooking of us on a direct flight to our sunny destination. So why rush? We just walked to our next connection. And, for whatever reason, we made it. (Although, we did run the last 25 feet or so to make it look like we at least tried) The gate agent hurried us on only to have us sit and wait another 30 minutes at the gate. Once again, our next connection would grow tighter and tighter.

We finished off day 1 of our trip by making our final connection with time to spare (and even a couple minutes to grab the last of McDonald's leftovers before they closed) and there waiting at our gate was Ted. Yes, we both were about to experience our first trip with Ted, United's new low-cost carrier. While this in itself deserves an entry, our first day of travel did, in fact, earn us the miles we expected, produced one free upgrade, no free tickets and an arrival on-time to our sunny destination...where we would remain for only about 5 hours before doing this all over again. All in all, not too shabby.