There are so many ways to accumulate frequent flyer miles that I often joke we should begin using them as everyday currency.  Want a latte at Starbucks?  Just hand the person behind the counter 500 miles. 

Involved in a fender bender that’s your fault?  Give the aggrieved party 25,000 miles. 

Your wife spots you have a romantic dinner with your old girlfriend?  Grovel, hand over 100,000 miles, and hope for the best.

The moral of this Travel Minute is: If you’re looking for a free flight someday, put everything you buy on a credit card.  Apply for cards that give you at least 40,000 bonus miles for signing up.  If you can pay for your kids’ school tuition with a credit card, do it.  When you’ve accumulated enough miles for a ticket, you may graduate to the next step: Trying to find a fee seat in increasingly crowded skies.

Asia and Europe have had high-speed trains for years, whooshing passengers between cities—the photo here is of Japan’s “bullet” train.  Will our first one be in the middle of nowhere?

I mean no disrespect to Victorville, CA, or Las Vegas, NV.  But conventional thinking has it that high-speed, or bullet, trains will only be cost-effective if they link big-population centers that have light rail connections that feed the fast train.

Like between New York and Boston or DC.  Or LA and San Francisco.  But Victorville and Vegas?

If a group of investors who have already spent tens of millions of dollars and Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada get their way, those two American towns will be the first to be linked by high-speed rail.  Now, Victorville is 90 miles north of Los Angeles.  Will people be willing to drive to that distance to catch a train?

The mayor of Victorville thinks so.  He says people will want to save a couple of hours driving and avoid weekend backups on the interstate.  He’s also counting on the train linking with an LA-San Francisco high-speed train.  But that project remains in doubt.  And I have to say, I think taxpayers will wind up heavily subsidizing the Victorville-Vegas train if it happens.

I hope I’m wrong.

We’ve all seen warning signs in national parks asking us not to feed the animals.  But that’s just the beginning. 

Yesterday I talked about the dangers of the Grand Canyon.  But let’s talk generally about our wonderful national parks and the wild animals that live there.

And I want to emphasize the world “wild.”  Tim Harrison is a retired public safety officer from Ohio who is one of the country’s foremost expert on the safe handling of exotic animals.  And he says Americans are much too blasé about animals they encounter in the wild.  Blame it on cartoons that depict wild animals as soft and cuddly.  Blame it on expert animal handlers who appear on TV shows with pliant animals who have been slightly sedated, though viewers aren’t told that.

Harrison says a bison is not a large cow; it’s a wild animal, and approach one in Yellowstone, and you won’t like what happens next.  Bears are not teddy bears.  The Everglades have become a dumping ground for people wishing to get rid of their pet snakes, many of them poisonous.

Harrison says pay attention to the warnings about animals that are posted in the visitor centers are national parks.  And I second that emotion.

The Grand Canyon is one of America’s most iconic national parks, and it’s a terrific family destination.  But danger lurks there, as well.  Here’s what you need to know to enjoy a safe visit.

Michael Ghiglieri just updated his book titled Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon. He’s an Arizona river guide, a Vietnam vet, and an emergency medical technician.  He joined me on my weekend radio show and said one of the dark secrets of the Grand Canyon is how many people die there.

There are folks who are so intent on taking pictures they accidentally step over the edge of the canyon to their deaths.  There are hikers who may find it easy to hike to the bottom of the canyon but overestimate their ability to hike back out.  They die of dehydration or simply because they’re not physically able to complete the climb.

Hundreds of visitors have died in crashes of flightseeing planes due to the unpredictable winds and turbulence caused by the gash in the earth—especially on hot days in the summer.

If you’re visiting this summer, make sure you don’t try to tackle a hike you can’t handle.  Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.  And watch that edge.

We all know we can trade frequent flyer miles for airline tickets. But there are some other, more unusual options out there.

A Wisconsin-based airline consulting group called Idea Works Company surveyed 150 airlines to take a look at some of the creative awards airlines offer members of their frequent flyer programs.

Lufthansa, for example, offers German members a “sockscription,” the right to have a company send you two pairs of new socks each month.

Delta offered passengers the right to bid on tickets, accommodations and meals for two to join Delta employees in Thailand at their Habitat for Humanity project.  The winning bid was 400,001 miles.

For 25 million points, Virgin Atlantic will provide a ticket to ride on a future Virgin Galactic Sub-Orbital space flight.  That ticket would normally cost you $200,000.

Southwest will put you in a fighter jet for about 214,000 points for a one-hour ride of your life.

Bangkok Airways offered a physical at a Bangkok hospital for 400 points.

Etihad, the airline of the United Arab Emirates, had the most expensive offer: a 68-foot, $3.5 million yacht—yours for nearly 386 million frequent flyer miles.

Dream on, my friends, dream on! 

In the ‘60s, a flight attendant wrote tell-all bestseller called Coffee, Tea or Me?  Now, there’s Cruising Attitude by a 16-year veteran of the skies, Heather Moore.

So what don’t you know about flight attendants?

First, it’s not part of their job to lift luggage into overhead bins.  They can assist, but if you can’t get it up there, you ought to check that bag.

Second, they want to get off the ground and to your destination as much as you do.  Why?  Because they don’t start getting paid until the plane pushes away from the gate. 

Third, a “thank you” or smile means a lot these days to a flight attendant.  With full planes, tensions can run high.  And with fewer perks offered by airlines to both passengers and their employees, a good attitude on the part of everyone can make for a more pleasant flight.

From a crew member’s point of view, morning flights are the best because most passengers want to grab a little more sleep.  Afternoons see passengers bringing aboard the tensions of the day.  And evenings, passengers tend to drink more and clog up the aisles, trying to squeeze by drink and food carts to get to lavatories. 

Check it out: Cruising Attitude  by Heather Moore.

The last two days I’ve described a number of scams you’re likely to encounter while traveling abroad.  But here’s the biggest one: the ATM scam.

Nothing can net crooks more cold, hard cash than getting access to your bank account through ATMs.  It happened to my television crew when we were shooting in South Africa.  More than $20,000 was looted from several bank accounts before we discovered the thefts. 

Never enter your PIN if anyone is standing near you.  Cover your hand when you punch in your PIN in case a small camera is mounted somewhere to record your code.  If there is any kind of unusual protrusion on the ATM, walk away.  The bad guys can attach a card reader to a machine that captures your card number and your keystrokes.

Never accept an offer of help from anyone when using an ATM.  If you can’t figure out how to use it, go to a bank and ask.  Give no one your PIN. 

Obviously you should notify your bank immediately if your account is compromised.  You should get your money back, but life is a lot easier if you can avoid the problem.  Trust me—I’ve been there.

Here are a couple more cons.  If you’re in Bangkok, and your cab driver offers to take you to a jewelry store where he’s sure you can score a big is discount on gold and precious stones, give a firm, “No, thanks!”  It’s a favorite scam in Thailand, and the victim usually winds up with a fake product

There are cons who will ask you to take their picture with their camera.  When you hand the camera back, they’ll fumble and drop it, letting it shatter on the ground.  Then they’ll try to get you to pay for a new one.

Avoid changing money with strangers promising you a better exchange rate than a bank.  Trust me—converting the currency will get quite complicated, and you’ll wind up severely shortchanged.  And don’t open your hotel door to “room inspectors” who will filch valuables as they pretend to check your room.  Hint: They work in pairs.

You’re driving along a highway in Italy and a car pulls up beside side you beeping and pointing to your rear tire.  The concerned-looking driver’s gestures suggest you pull over to the side of the road.

Don’t do it.

With the approach of summer, Americans begin planning trips overseas.  For the next couple of days I want to talk about the most common scams tourists are likely to encounter.

You’re walking across a lovely bridge in Paris and a stranger comes up to you holding a gold ring and asking if you’ve just dropped it.  No, you say, and the stranger looks puzzled and asks what you think the two of you should do with such a potentially valuable ring.

Walk away.

That driver motioning you to the side of the road may very well be planning to rob you.  Never stop your car except in populated areas such as by a tollbooth, a gas station, or—ideally—a police station.

And that guy who “found” that gold ring?  He’ll discover some obscure marking on it indicated it’s worth lots of money.  But he’ll be willing to sell it to you at a deep discount.  Don’t fall for the phony jewelry con.

Congressman Paul Ryan is every Republican’s favorite budget cutter, but his proposal to scrap America’s first tourism advertising and marketing campaign may miss the forest or the trees.

It’s called Brand USA, and it’s a joint private industry-government effort to encourage visitors from other countries to put the US on their bucket list.  America’s share of international tourism slipped from 17.4% in 2000 to about 11% in 2010.  And make no mistake about it—tourism is big business.

Uncle Sam has matched $100 million raised by companies such as Marriott to launch a vigorous advertising campaign this month targeted at crucial countries touting the glories of visiting the U S of A.  But a House budget committee resolution—not a bill yet, please note—calls for including Brand USA in projects it thinks should be defunded.  The Senate, controlled by Democrats, is most unlikely to take that advice this session.   

But what worries travel professionals is that down the road, should the majority party switch in the Senate, sentiment might change, as well.  A Grassroots Congressional Travel Summit meeting in DC in two weeks is sure to focus on this worry.  Participants would do well to point out to lawmakers that foreign visitors bolster our economy. 

We’ve seen underwater hotels.  Hotels built entirely of ice.  And hotels in jungle treetops.  Now comes a hotel posing as a prison and a luxury cruise ship that was supposed to be delivered to the Gaddafi family.

London’s Hotel Alcatraz was a four-day promotion for the British premier of the TV series “Alcatraz.”  But the pop-up prison was also a hotel where guests were treated as prisoners.  Guests—make that inmates—addressed the hotel staff, dressed as guards, as “Sir.”  Meals were served in small cells.  Upon checking in, guests surrendered all their personal belongings, and every move was timed by the minute.

Sorry, it closed a few weeks ago, but you wouldn’t want to have checked in.

But here’s something you may be able to check into. Or onto.  It’s a luxury ship ordered by Muammar Gaddafi’s fourth son Hannibal, and its construction was just completed.  But the buyers have fallen on hard times.  So the 1,700-foot ship with four swimming pools, 26 elevators, and 21 bars was purchased by a wealthy Italian shipping mogul who will put it into commercial service. 

You should soon be able to buy ticket and live like a famous dictator and his family once hoped to live.

I find it a bit hard to believe, and you might, too, but beginning in 2013, at least one commercial service will begin taking passengers into suborbital rides in a spacecraft.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is even now in the final stages of its flight test program.  If all goes well, commercial service will begin next year when passengers will be able to take two-and-a-half-hour flights in six-seat space crafts with two pilots at the controls.  Passengers will enjoy a perspective of the earth that only astronauts have seen.  And everyone will have a window seat.

And they’ll experience about five minutes of weightlessness.

A ticket to ride costs about $200,000, and you can make reservations , as actor Ashton Kutcher did just a couple of weeks ago.  He’llbe passenger number 500.  A deposit of $20,000 will hold your place in line. 

Flights will take off from Spaceport America, a $200 million terminal on 27 acres of land in southern New Mexico. 

Richard Branson, of course, owns Virgin Atlantic Airways—no word on whether space voyagers collect frequent flyer miles.