Travel Like A Pro: Getting The Best Deals In Airfare And Making The Most Of Your Trip – Part 2

Hacks to maximize your budget and playing time at the course

March 3, 2020 by Bogi Bjarnason in Travel with 0 comments

If you missed part one, our Icelandic travel expert Bogi Bjarnason broke down what it takes to choose a disc golf destination of your dreams. In part two, he’ll tell you how to make that trip happen using years of wayfaring knowhow.

Since moving abroad to Sweden at a young age, constant travel and adventure has been a big part of my life. As a slightly better than average snowboarder I was able to do a season on the FIS World Cup Tour at the turn of the century, and work as a chef and a waiter at resorts in Austria, Norway, Sweden, Banff, and Vermont, and later, during a very brief stint as a semi-professional poker player, I qualified for the EPT Barcelona. As a band manager, I have toured Europe and North America repeatedly, once hitting 27 states and three provinces while traveling with three bands and crew in an old, delipidated, Econoline for 28 days. Furthermore, in the five years since discovering disc golf, I have been on six domestic and 27 international trips in my various functions within extreme metal, disc golf, and journalism.

While having been a regular contributor to the WoW Air in-flight magazine certainly helped with “free” flights, I have not spent a single cent out of my regular, day job income on travel since 2015, but have relied on diverse perks, government and private grants, different sponsorships, all sorts of fundraising events and other efforts, and the income from multiple different revenue streams generated by various businesses and side hustles to travel the world in discomfort.

In 2019 alone I traveled to Spain, Morocco, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Scotland, England, and to the USA twice, pushing my total tally of countries visited past 30 and the continents up to five.
Next on my itinerary is a trip with five Icelandic friends and one American to Oviedo, Spain, where my disc golf protégé, Blær Örn Ásgeirsson, will try to defend his Open de España title against Eagle McMahon. Following that I’ll be traveling onwards from Madrid through Miami and to Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Belize on an Innova sponsored “missionary” trip to grow the sport in Central America in cooperation with Fendivo, the Federación Nicaraguense de Disco Volado.

Now that we’ve established my “jet setting” credentials, let me show you the ropes of Star Team travel on a DX budget.

The following is a collection of pro tips and travel hacks that will benefit anyone, no matter if they live out of a suitcase, or need to stretch their travel dollar to the extreme during their two weeks of annual, American vacation, or for the five weeks of paid vacation we enjoy in the civilized world.¹

1. Europe ↩