This Is It!

I was asked recently if I were going to keep adding to this blog and the answer is, "No."

This will be my last post.

It has served it's purpose and I have had it printed in book form, so there is a copy of it along with all the other travel remembrances we are now keeping downstairs. I will, however, leave it online for as long as the fine folks who provide this service for free continue to do so. I had a great time putting this all together and, unlike the first time, I can also now say that I went around the world and actually completed a journal of the trip.

I decided, though, that I would like to continue to have the opportunity to keep a diary of my travels (as well as a few random rants and an occasional brilliant thought) so I have started another blog. Since we don't really have any major trips in the works, I decided to call it the "Stay at Home Traveler" and it can be found here.

Thanks again to all who have read this one... thanks for traveling with us!

Bob

Down Under at Home

Australia was the impetus for last year's trip, but that isn't the "down under" I'm referring to. We have been back home for nearly a year now and, for the past several months, we have been having our unfinished basement... finished.

We let enough of it remain unfinished so as to still have lots of storage space as well as a workshop, but the bulk of it was transformed into a theater, game and exercise rooms and, my personal favorite, a bar. My vision for the bar area was to have a place to stash and display the many, many knick-knacks, reference books, pamphlets, maps and other odds and ends that we have collected from along the way from all of our travels. Since these things come from all over the globe, I suppose I could also call our basement the Underworld.

I think it turned out pretty well... here's a look:

The display case

A closer look at the "stuff"

A well-traveled rugby football

Pub table with a couple of collages

The bar

The "tip jar"...
it contains the coins and currency
that we never converted back to USD

The sink was inspired by some of
the places we stayed in Asia

The shower was patterned

after one in South Africa

I had hoped to put in a potty with a distinctively European style and a hard-to-figure-out flushing mechanism, but the cost and availability of such turned out to be prohibitive. Sooo.. we have a regular ol' potty.

The basement has instantly become my favorite part of the house and gives us a place to re-live our travels. 

Taking a flight of fancy is as simple as going down a flight of stairs.

Sixty-one and a Hundred

Yesterday marked the passage of the 61st day since we returned from the trip... exactly the same amount of time that we were gone. Since our return, as with the trip, we have had hardly a day go by that there wasn't something on the schedule. Although it is beginning to seem like such a long time ago that we were making our way around the planet, it also seems like the past two months have virtually flown by. 

It must have something to do with always having something to do.

Back in June, we put together some of the things we had bought along the way and mailed a package to ourselves from Bangkok. At the time, and based primarily on the cost, we opted for surface mail and were told to expect it to take about six weeks to arrive. Fine by us... we weren't going to get home for about that much time anyway. Well... after twice that time had passed and it still hadn't arrived, I sent an inquiry to Thailand Post. After some more time passed, we got a letter from the US Postal Service inquiring about our inquiry. Our travel agent was kind enough to also make a separate inquiry on our behalf. It all must have been effective because today... 100 days to the day after it was mailed... the package arrived.

Now that seemed to take forever.

An Update

In a very early post, I made a list of some things I have never done...

Here's an updated version of that list:

I have crossed the Pacific three times… never by air. 

Four times now... once by air.

I have crossed the Atlantic 27 times, but never by sea. 

28 times... still never by sea, though.

I have never crossed the Equator. 

Four times.

I have never driven an automobile in Europe.

I've never been to South America (Aruba was close... but no cigar).

I've never been to Spain (but I kinda like the music).

Five Thousand Word Essay

Some More Numbers

61 - total days traveling

36 - individual flight segments

31 - different airports

14 - different airlines

12 - different types of aircraft

140 - (equivalent number of) pieces of checked baggage

0 - pieces of lost/misdirected/delayed luggage

1 - complete lap around the planet

A Conclusion... and Another Beginning

The Conclusion

Well... it's over. It's hard to believe it in a way and in another way, it's a welcome relief. Don't get me wrong... as I have mentioned before, and as many before me have said... it's always good to be home.

It was a wonderful trip in so many ways. It was an adventure and an education. It had its ups and its downs, but it was very, very well worth all that was invested in it. It was sooooo worth it. One of the first questions asked of me after our return was, "Would you do it again?" My answer was a definite, "Yes...

but not right away."

It IS good to be home.

This post pretty much brings the essence of this blog to a conclusion. I have enjoyed writing it and I have particularly enjoyed sharing it. Thank you again to the many, many folks who have read it and have shared their thoughts about it with me.

I have no timetable in mind for ending this blog and will probably leave it up at least until I can figure out the best way to make a permanent copy of it. That could take a while. I will very likely keep adding to it as some post-trip thoughts come to mind or as the conversations we will inevitably have with those we know spur me to make another addition. I will, however, discontinue the email updates I have been sending out. If you are so inclined, please feel free to check back now and then for a look...

The Beginning

Now that the trip has come to an end, it's time for the memories to begin.

And they will last a lifetime.


Maybe longer...