29,094 Miles (The Epilogue of an Around-the-World trip)

---

The Swan Lake Attack

The good news- I'm back (at least that's good news to me) and in one piece

The bad news- Www.travelblog.org had a major failure occur. As you may or may not know, the site was down for 5 days. I was getting a bad feeling after the second day. I only had one more entry to add before I finished and copied my web diary to a CD. Because of this failure, and they don't know why it happened, possibly a virus or attack, my blogs were deleted or severely corrupted along with all the others that were posted during the last 3 months. You can imagine all the moans heard and tears shed all over the world. They are trying to repair the damage, but it seems that the failure has made most of the data unrecoverable. Apparently they forgot the number one rule of computing... back it up. Oops! The only regret I have is that the text is gone. The pictures have been safely (and securely) loaded on my computer now, but the words I wrote I can never duplicate. I guess I learned a lesson, too.











Back to the good news:
I've been back in the U.S. for about a week, readjusting to normal life, and looking forward to getting back to work... psych! The 42 days I spent traveling around the world have been some of the best of my life. It was great to visit family and friends and report my travels to my family, friends, and colleagues. I enjoyed almost every minute working on my travel blog. It was fun to capture those special moments and have them to look back on later (I guess that's not true now. Is there an emoticon for crying?). Regardless of the "end" the cyber world has written for me, I have no regrets and would highly recommend the experience of blogging to everyone.







I want to give a big thanks to the following people who made my trip special:

*Jennifer and Will (Taiwan)
*Gene and his family (Australia)
*Bruce (Greece)
*Wim and Berry (The Netherlands)
*Jack and Pug (D.C.)
*ALL those who wrote emails and comments responding to my entries (a BIG thanks for the support; it meant more than you know)
*and my mom, who gave me the wanderlust gene










Stats of my trip:
29,094- total miles flown
I think more than the above- miles walked
8- countries visited
5- different currencies used
17- cities visited or connected through
11- cities visited for more than a day
1,695- photos taken (and saved)
1- items that "jumped ship" (one black sock; lost in Perth, AU)
9- airlines used
0- days sick
28- blog entries
2- average number of hours to create one blog entry
27- blog entries lost due to website failure
1- dreams realized








Circumnavigating the Globe, A Comparison

In 1522 the Magellan expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the world. Why do I say Magellan expedition? Well, Magellan himself didn't make it back to Spain. He died. Actually he was murdered in the Philippines by the natives. Don't blame the natives. He started the fight... idiot!
The expedition took 3 years to complete its 43,400 mile voyage. It suffered an unsuccessful mutiny; the loss of 232 crew (it began with 270) due to sickness, starvation, execution, battles, and the like; the death of its captain (reported above); and a number of other setbacks. It did manage to safely bring its more-valuable-than-gold cargo of cloves and cinnamon to Spain (something you can buy in Safeway today for a few bucks a jar). Unfortunately, for the investors, the "loot" barely covered the expenses of the trip. Except for the bragging rights of the first expedition (Who remembers the name of any of the crew that returned?) to travel completely around the world, it wasn't, to say the least, a big success.


In 2007 I also completed a successful circumnavigation of the world. My trip wasn't for fame and fortune, but simply to mooch off a few friends and family. I didn't travel as many miles and I lost money in the venture (don't ask). On the other hand, I didn't die either. Nor execute anybody (not to say I wasn't tempted), get sick, or have a mutiny to put down. With the help of family, friends, a little plastic card (VISA), the internet, and a vast number of businesses around the world wanting my money, I was able to make my trip in 6 weeks with little or no pain. Isn't the modern world grand? Unlike the Magellan expedition, my "voyage" was a raving success. Thanks again to all my "crew" members who supported me along my journey, either in word or deed.

To life and living it!
Signing off, Paul Holland





Update (8/13/07)- Www.travelblog.org has managed to retrieve most of the blogs that were lost earlier on their database server. Most were found in Google's archive of web pages. So that's a relief. But the question I have is, so what is Google doing saving every web page that is put on the internet? And who else is doing it? Hmmm!

---