As soon as we got back from lunch, I called everyone into our now cramped conference room to talk about having a real-live Santa break a world-record (maybe) by touching down in all 50-states and DC. Our goal was to have Santa do this in the shortest amount of time, and for cheapest possible price.

I pitched the idea to everyone and sat back — and–it was absolutely amazing! People laughed at first, then started spewing ideas everywhere. At this point, I knew I had to drop the bomb on Mike: would he do it?

Graeme (our CTO), Jesse (Media Relations) and yours truly (Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com) were sitting around our table at a curry restaurant for a late lunch last Friday (Nov. 30) when we got to chatting about holiday travel. We were sort of thinking out loud, wondering what clever angle we could take to create a story that would highlight holiday air travel and also let us look back at all the crazy things that happened to travelers this past year.

So we’re tossing things back and forth, when suddenly Graeme blurts out that we should have a “virtual” Santa travel from the east coast to the west coast, and use him to highlight some of our best tips for getting the cheapest airfare. We both stared at each other for a moment, then we both yelled out,”Let’s get a real Santa do the trip!”