The Unspent Miles

At RDU the carpet is still that low, municipal blue, and the air conditioning is set a few degrees too cold for September. The boarding chime sounds twice, patiently.

On my phone, a question that had trended overnight. Someone had laid out his year like an accountant of motion: 57,637 Delta SkyMiles, 7,886 Lufthansa miles, 84,041 Chase points. Four trips pinned to the board. RDU to Venice on the tenth of September. Ljubljana back to RDU on the twenty-third. A quick turn to Buffalo in mid-October. Spain in December, with a strange double-ended return at the end of the month. He wants to spend as little cash as possible and to use the locked currencies first.

I liked the precision of it. The way we learn to speak of our lives in balances.

There is a particular kind of traveler who keeps these small treasuries. Not enough for extravagance in any one place, but too much to abandon. The Delta miles that can only be Delta. The Lufthansa balance that will never quite be enough on its own. And then the Chase points, liquid and transferable, the one stack you can pour into another. Right now, the note said, there is a 30 percent bonus if you pour them into Virgin Atlantic.

What he is really asking is how not to waste anything. How to make Venice connect to Ljubljana without a leak, how to justify Buffalo, how to hold Spain until winter.

We all have that drawer at home. The foreign coins from trips past. The half-torn train ticket. The miles.

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The trick, of course, is that these currencies were designed not to be stitched. Airlines issue miles to make you loyal to a single story. The traveler insists on writing his own, with layovers in cities that have nothing to do with one another except that he needs to be in them.

So he invents hops. Could he get to Venice via London on Virgin Atlantic miles, he asks, using that bonus to make Delta's transatlantic rates look almost reasonable? Could he move the Lufthansa miles to cover a short intra-Europe piece, Ljubljana to somewhere, and then come home on something else? Could Air Canada's Aeroplan make the RDU-Venice route less expensive if he finds the right partner flight?

It is ingenious and a little melancholy. We spend hours trying to avoid spending $12.80 in residual taxes.

I think about that itinerary. RDU to VCE in early September, when the light in Venice is still hard and white. Then overland, I imagine, or a small flight east to Ljubljana, where the river runs slow and cafés put chairs right to the water. Then home. Then Buffalo in October, which is a different kind of trip entirely, family or work, leaves turning along I-90. Then Spain in December, when the sun sets early and you want to be somewhere that still knows how to do evening.

They do not belong together except that one life has to contain them all.

The points strategist will tell him what to do. Burn the 7,886 Lufthansa miles first because they are the most perishable. Use Virgin Atlantic with the transfer bonus to book Delta metal to Europe, because 30 percent goes a long way when cash is the enemy. Save Aeroplan for the return from Slovenia, or for Spain later, when availability is thinner around the holidays. Pay cash for Buffalo because domestic short-hauls are where miles go to die quietly.

All of that is true. It is also beside the point.

The point is the attempt to waste nothing. To make the leftovers of previous flights pay for the next ones. To arrive in Venice having paid only in past selves.

I have never succeeded at this. There is always a small remainder. A few hundred miles that expire. A ticket that costs $54 more than you thought. A balance you keep carrying forward, telling yourself you will use it next time.

The plane pushed back. The winglet at my window was gray against a gray sky.

I was still thinking about Buffalo in October.