This bike is an adventure

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This bike is an adventure

My four going on five year-old loves riding bikes. He won’t always admit it or talk about it, but get him on the bike and he has a blast. He loves pump tracks, riding on trails, and just riding in general. Yesterday we had what he called “a long adventure” where we basically spent the entire first half of the day on a mix of my bike, both our bikes, and trying out a potential new bike (more on that later).

One of the great things about Portland is that it affords us the ability to carry out these adventures without needing a car. I pop his bike on my bike, he gets on my bike’s rear seat, and we go. Portland’s greenway system allows me to ride on neighborhood streets with fewer cars thanks to modal filters and slower speeds.

Our first stop is one of our favorite bakeries for cinnamon rolls. We plan out the rest of our trip and I’m informed of an elaborate plan to be park maintenance workers who use bikes to get to their jobs. Apparently the park we are going to has had a bunch of kids throwing bark chips out of the play area and our job is to clean it up. The imaginative play is fun, though sometimes I have to remember all of the details.

We ride across the Tilikum Bridge, find a place to park and I take his bike off of mine, make sure he’s all set. Then he’s off. There is some decent protected biking in this area of town but still some interactions with cars and public transit so I have to keep up with him and give instructions at areas where conflicts may occur. Eventually we make it to a pedestrian only path and he finds his stride, looking for bumps in the sidewalk he ride over and exclaim “I jumped that one!”.

Riding over bumps "to get some air!"

20 minutes later and we make it to the park where a bunch of running and slide usage happens until he remembers the two massive trees that he can climb and then he’s working as a weatherman looking for hurricanes. We talk about warning everyone of an impending storm and then laugh at the geese as they waddle past us and honk.

Then it is time to head to a local bike shop to test ride a front loader. The long tail is great, but the kiddo is getting big, wanting to bring his bike along on more trips, and having a front loader would just make it easier. We say hello to the shop dog, then discuss options with the staff. We end up on a Larry vs Harry eBullitt and have a blast riding it around for a bit. The eBullitt is a sporty bike for how big it is and it might end up being our choice just because of its price and flexibility.

Then it’s back home for a snack and some resting. On the way it is exclaimed, “Dad, that was a long bike adventure!”.

Get the bike, go on the ride, take your kids.

Middle-Sized Wars

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From Foreign Affairs —

A danger sign that a small war or military action might expand into a middle-sized war is when there is too much talk about geopolitics and not enough about local cultural and political conditions. The historian Barbara Tuchman has argued that the United States would have done much better in Vietnam if it had thought less geopolitically and more locally. The biggest U.S. foreign policy fiascos happened because policymakers were obsessed with regional and global consequences they often could not properly manage, and thus ignored critical conditions on the ground. In Vietnam, U.S. leaders overlooked the history and nature of Vietnamese nationalism; in Iraq, it was sectarianism.

During his time as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early post–Cold War era, Colin Powell, who later served as U.S. Secretary of State, argued that the United States should not commit to a war unless it has overwhelming force, an exit strategy, a vital national interest, a clear objective, and broad support. This idea, which became known as the Powell Doctrine, has been sidelined in recent years. Yet it remains relevant. Perhaps the ultimate objective of the Powell Doctrine was not to avoid defeat, per se, but to avoid middle-sized wars. And for great powers such as the United States, avoiding middle-sized wars means being very careful about the small wars it gets involved in.

It’s worth signing up for the newsletter for the full article.

United’s latest MileagePlus changes lose the plot

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United’s latest MileagePlus changes lose the plot

United sent out a notification to MileagePlus members that earning redeemable miles on United will be changing. As of April 2, 2026, MileagePlus members will earn fewer miles per dollar spent, unless they have one of the United MileagePlus credit cards that has an annual fee. If the member has the free United Gateway card, they can also receive the bonus redeemable miles by spending $10,000 annually on that card.

Right now, earnings for MileagePlus members look like this, per dollar spent on a trip:

The announced updates to earning look like this:
United MileagePlus Changes

Calling this a downgrade would be generous. United’s reward prices have become downright atrocious in the last couple of years, so reducing earning is a hard pill to swallow. And I think this is where United has lost the plot, they think people aren’t getting or using their United credit cards because there isn’t an incentive to use them, when in reality, the currency has taken such a hit that people don’t see the value in using the card to earn United miles. Those folks are earning on Chase or CapitalOne or Amex premium cards in a fungible currency that can be used across carriers and doesn’t lock them into a single program.

Just trying to find reward space on partners using United miles is a very difficult task these days. Getting that availability at a reasonable price is a unicorn. United leadership needs to take a step back, look at pricing on rewards, including the “dynamic” aspect and rethink what the value is for the travelers who fly their airline. If a traveler is paying attention, they aren’t going to utilize your cards when your redemption rates are outrageous.

On that note, one more small detail in the announcement is that cardholders will get access to a 10% discount on reward prices (the Gateway card users need to spend $10k/year for this feature). If you are a cardholder and a MileagePlus elite member, the discount is 15%. The caveat is that you must use the card to pay the taxes and fees on the reward to receive the discount.

This comes down to United wanting to grow their credit card base and increase revenue without really offering anything. You get more miles, but only a few, after they reduced the miles earned for everyone. It’s all about profitability and growth and the constant requirement to show those two things. What makes me worried is that United doesn’t seem to understand that if the cards aren’t adopted that isn’t a traveler problem, that’s a United problem.

My airline plan in 2026

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My airline plan in 2026

I find airline status most helpful when it comes to irregular operations (IRROPS) and try to keep status on at least one U.S. based airline. I have lifetime Gold status on United and it’s helpful but only somewhat. I qualified for Alaska Titanium status in 2025 and will have that status through 2026.

I’ve been trying to decide if I should pursue status in 2026 and if so, on which carrier. Part of me likes the idea of the long game, getting lifetime 1K status on United at 3 million miles. My current lifetime mileage is a bit over 1.7 million miles, so I need to fly another 1.3 million. That is a lot of miles but if I dedicate my flying to United I could probably get it done in 5-6 years.

On the flip side, I love having quite a few non-stop options on Alaska out of Portland and the flexibility that allows. Alaska’s IT and app aren’t great and some of the partner integration isn’t thought out, but I do like OneWorld’s reach around the globe. I booked a ticket on British Airways for January and the whole process for upgrading and getting my frequent flyer number was extremely cumbersome. This is where United excels in my opinion, their integrations with partners is so much simpler. United also has a lot more reach on their metal and much more straightforward pricing on partners. Alaska’s lack of participation in the British Airways/American Airlines joint-venture across the Atlantic and the Japan Airlines/American Airlines joint-venture across the Pacific, which allows revenue sharing between the airlines, makes pricing a number of itineraries on Alaska very unattractive. Alaska only has access to some of the highest fares on British Airways and some itineraries aren’t even bookable on their website.

It’s a tough call, non-stop domestic flights and a less than stellar partner experience or more domestic connections but really amazing partner integrations plus the ability to get a really high lifetime status. What would you do?

United appears to end Dakar-Dulles service early

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United appears to end Dakar-Dulles service early

There was an announcement in November that United will end Dakar, Senegal service on March 5, 2026. I wanted to try and get on the flight before it went away and started searching in February for a potential trip but was unable to find availability. I even looked on the flight’s originally scheduled final date, and found no availability. It turns out, the furthest out date I could find was January 31, 2026.

United seems to be quietly ending this flight earlier than they originally announced. This is a disappointing development and I’m sure a bit of a shock to folks who were looking to book the flight into early March.

United flying Dakar-Dulles on January 31, 2026
No United availability on Dakar-Dulles on March 5, 2026.

Update: I have spoken to a few people who had reservations to Dakar on United in February and those reservations have been updated to remove the non-stop and show partner connecting flights instead.

The user experience is awful

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The user experience is awful

I can sum up this post in a sentence: The overall experience for customers has degraded over time and is, in my opinion, the worst it has ever been.

Need to talk to an airline representative during a delay or cancellation? Good luck. They will direct you to use their app’s chat feature that uses “AI” and 45-minutes later your issue still won’t be solved and you will be asking to speak to an actual person.

Have a question about your healthcare bill? Go through ten different phone trees to finally get a human who tells you you’re talking to the wrong department. After you are finally talking to the correct person they realize that you were billed incorrectly and it will take months for a new bill to be generated and in the meantime your current bill won’t be properly voided and instead sent to collections. You will be sorting this out for months.

Visiting the grocery store and have a full basket? The store will attempt to force you to use self-checkout where inevitably some of the items refuse to scan and require an employee to come over anyway, making the entire checkout process take longer. It also seems like this isn’t always a hiring problem but a cost issue; Grocery store margins aren’t amazing, so anything a store can do to lower costs, they’ll do. You the customer pay the price with your time (and sanity).

I could list more examples and I’m sure you could share your own, the point is the same, the overall customer and user experience for the interactions we need to have on a daily basis continue to be awful. And it isn’t that the interactions are necessarily bad, it’s that there are so many friction points. Some of it feels intentional, put you in what feels like an endless queue, hoping you drop, while other parts feel like no one has actually thought about it being a problem.

The sad part is, I don’t know that the experience gets better in my lifetime. It feels like we’ve just been so conditioned to put up with these annoyances that they aren’t going to be clawed back, we will just put up with them, complain about them, and move on (see this post).

Port of Portland’s fixation on a flight to South Korea

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Port of Portland’s fixation on a flight to South Korea

There has not been a lot of reporting on this that I can find but I think it is worth a discussion. Last year there were whispers of the Port of Portland, who runs Portland International Airport, looking to get service to Seoul-Incheon and Tokyo. Then in March of this year during a presentation for PDX2045, David Zielke, General Manager Air Service Development at Port of Portland, shared a map of desired routes and answered questions about potential Asian destinations. You can read about it starting on page two of this PDF.

Around two months ago the Port gave an update and it sounded like service to Seoul was promising but not firm:

Seems like Seoul is the front runner now, but in the medium term im sure the Port would love to service to both Seoul and Tokyo bsky.app/profile/macc…

[image or embed]

— iain (@maccoinnich.bsky.social) August 14, 2025 at 3:18 PM

For me, this was a red flag. Korean Airlines, the carrier that would run the service, must have some reservations about the demand between Portland and Seoul, including onward connections. The Port of Portland has openly said that demand to Tokyo is stronger than Seoul and that they were looking for service there as well. If I was Korean Airlines that would give me pause. The other thing that may make Korean think twice is the lack of onward connections from PDX. Delta, Korean’s partner, serves a limited number of destinations.

The latest news is that the Governor of Oregon and Port of Portland leadership are headed to South Korea to build up trade and promote Oregon and lastly, meet with Korean Airlines and Delta Air Lines to bring back service to Asia.

Air Service Development: Governor Kotek will meet with Korean Air and Delta Air Lines to advocate for the return of nonstop passenger service between Portland and Asia, a top priority for both the business community and tourism opportunities.

I am confused about the Port’s fixation on Korean and Delta. Maybe concerned is a better word than confused. If you don’t remember, Delta basically tried to leverage their PDX to Tokyo-Narita flight to get more service into Haneda and then ended PDX-Tokyo service altogether. Delta also gave up their daily Portland-Amsterdam flight for a 4x/week KLM flight. Their track record of investing in PDX isn’t great, even with their long history here.

It seems that there is a bit of a nostalgic reminiscing coming from the Port of Portland. A desire to return to the old days when Delta ran a large international hub out of PDX. There is a possibility that they want to leverage Alaska Airlines’ partnership with Korean but that partnership seems weak, especially with the two airlines being in separate alliances and recent announcements of other Alaska partnerships ending.

[Update] As of January 1, 2026, the Korean/Alaska partnership will be significantly degraded. I think this signals that the partnership will completely end sometime later in 2026.

But not everything is bad news, there is an opportunity here. The Port of Portland could pursue the direct Oneworld Alliance partner of Alaska, Japan Airlines. Japan Airlines has smaller planes, Boeing 787-8s, that would be perfect to run service to Tokyo-Narita daily or 5-6x/week. The downside there is the lack of a joint-venture and revenue sharing between Alaska and Japan Airlines. The Port could approach Japan Airlines’ low-cost carrier, Zipair, for 5-6x/week service. Their low cost model would make the service more attractive to Portlanders headed to Japan and to Japanese headed to Portland. Or, the Port could go for something completely different, Starlux Airlines to Taipei. Starlux has a partnership with Alaska and is looking to join Oneworld, is expanding rapidly, and could carry a lot of cargo and onward connections to points in Southeast Asia.

The Port of Portland should really be considering the options that are best for Portlanders. Fixating on Korean Airlines or hoping that Delta is going to bring back a bunch of service feels irresponsible. Maybe I’m overthinking the Port’s actions but it definitely does not appear to be in Portland’s best interest to only focus on two carriers, especially in light of Delta’s recent actions around Portland and flights to Asia.

The lounge fallacy

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The lounge fallacy

After a recent trip, I am more convinced than ever that the necessity of airport lounge access, especially domestically, is a fallacy.

I have been an airport lounge user for years; For a time I was flying weekly to New York and would utilize the lounge on my return to get a bit more work done, maybe have a glass of wine with coworkers, and charge my different devices. Then around 2018 I noticed it becoming busier and busier in the lounges I frequented and some of this could be attributed to credit cards giving access to different lounges. The airlines had figured out a formula to get more people to sign up for their credit cards and different bloggers, travel content producers, and others were pushing those cards. New lounges even opened specifically for credit card customers (AMEX Centurion, Chase Sapphire Reserve lounges, and CapitalOne lounges).

A person complaining about the wait times for the AMEX Centurion Lounge
A person complaining about the wait times for the AMEX Centurion Lounge

Then Covid hit and lounge numbers fell along with the overall travel numbers. But that is definitely no longer the case. On my last trip, the United Club at PDX, which is usually fairly quiet, was completely full, not a seat to be found. Delta implemented rules to limit access to their lounges and other airlines have followed suit. They are responding to a problem that they created, giving more people access to the lounge via credit card products.

For me, it has become an airport feature that isn’t really worth it anymore. The lounges are too loud to get work done, there is food but it isn’t always the highest quality, and the overcrowding has made it difficult to find a seat or even get in. The lounges have become less of a place of quiet or somewhere to get work done and more of a bar/socializing area.

A lot of business class tickets come with lounge access and I still find value in that access because some of the lounges have dedicated restaurants, so I can grab a meal and skip it on the plane, and they have shower facilities so on arrival or connection I can take a shower. There is definitely some value in those items, I just struggle with the cost/benefit proposition domestically. In most airports I can get something to eat or drink and find a quiet gate for less than the per visit cost to the lounge and I would bet the same is true for most people.

What do you think, are U.S. domestic lounges still worth the cost?

Tuesday texts to read – 10

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Apologies for missing last week.

Tuesday texts to read – 9

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