$400 charitable donation winner and finalist for Win a Seat with Randy Petersen!

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Time to pick a finalist for the Win a Seat with Randy Petersen contest for Star MegaDO 4. That finalist is also the winner of a $400 charitable donation from Rapid Travel Chai to a charity of their choice.

Reading through 150+ entries, it is heart-warming to hear so many acts of kindness in travel. Even when travel is for pleasure it can be stressful and crises can occur in unfamiliar surroundings. A helping hand can work wonders, and I extend a cyber hand of thanks to all the travelers who shared their stories, the good deeds done, and the inspiration to fellow travelers.

The purpose was not to encourage story one-upmanship, so the finalist is selected at random from eligible entries by comment number on the official entry post. There were 176 comments on the post, the following ruled ineligible by not answering the required question, my moderation comments or link ‘pingbacks’ from other posts: 4, 53, 57, 64, 65, 75, 79, 81, 88, 90, 93, 108, 110, 112, 115, 117, 123, 141, 147, 151, 161, in the case of random draw of any of these entries, there will be re-draws until a valid winner is selected.

I specified in the rules that the comment ‘name’ field needed to be your legal given name and first letter of your surname. The vast majority of commenters did not do so. I debated on this for some time. Due to my travel I was unable to dedicate the time necessary to contact the entrants to make a correction. I also noted that the comment platform defaults to prior usernames for previous commenters. The intent was to prevent gaming the system. I did not detect any gaming and each valid entry took the time to respond to the required question, so I have decided to be inclusive and not exclude entries that did not conform to the name format. Hopefully readers feel this is reasonable.

The winner is…