They have a point. According to my rough calculations, the trip I have in mind involves 85 hours of flight time, including layovers. There are only 448 waking hours in a month. Therefore, 19% of my time would be spent on planes or in airports. Add in bus and cab rides, trying to find my hotel, and packing and unpacking, and one can see that easily 25% or more of my severely jet-lagged time would be spent on actual transport. This means that I would be much less likely to have all of the adventurous, hallmark experiences I'm hoping to have, such as:
- Eating brains
- Making new friends
- Learning about other religions
- Getting food poisoning
- Going to church
- Getting robbed
- Having an appendectomy with a rusty scalpel in a tin lean-to
So I'm forced to reconsider my priorities. In the words of Jeff Alley,
Are you trying to see the world? Or just accomplish this? I feel like you're reading the Book of Mormon to get it done. Instead of reading to understand it.I'm not proud of it, but part of me just wants to mark off a checklist, so that on my future résumés and online dating profiles I can emblazon the words "I've circumnavigated the globe and visited every continent."
However, when I daydream about this adventure, I don't envision myself bleary-eyed at 4 AM, watching in-flight movies, eating Planters peanuts, and grasping with quivering fingers for my rapidly evaporating sanity. Though that sounds cool in a kind of desperate, modern, David Foster Wallace way, too.Rather, I see myself giving away food to Indian beggar children. Or sitting on an Australian beach watching the waves come in. Or standing atop a mountain in Patagonia. All of which I may not have time to do if I limit my time to one month.
What would you do? I have a solution I'm playing around with, but I think I'll just talk about it in my next post.
Ha ha ha! I love your writing Cameron, hilarious. I completely sympathize with your quest. My greatest wish is to one day look back and say with confidence "I have lived a blessed and unique life," traveling will indeed be integral part to that. A few ideas (assuming that your issue stems from financing?): Save up for a while longer so that you can experience the world longer. Find a way to earn money along route in your travels, or take one month out of every year to visit each different continent.
ReplyDeleteYou may not find this helpful after all, but at least I got to tell you how much I like reading your blog. Good luck!!!
My advice....one trip at a time. You have your whole life to travel to many places. This doesn't have to be your only trip. Choose the top three places you want to visit and spend an entire week at each one. That leaves a solid week for transit time. That way you can relax and enjoy the traveling on planes and trains. By the way, I have a way you can earn money en route, let me know if you want to meet up sometime to hear about it :)
ReplyDeleteI want to hear about it.
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