The last week of December usually puts one in an introspective mood. Annual lists are composed, citing the best and worst that the preceding year had to offer. Some travelers, especially those predisposed towards achieving frequent flier status, pause to tally up their mileage over the last year. I’m not normally inclined to keep score in this manner, but this morning curiosity got the best of me. It didn’t take long to figure out that my family had journeyed once around the world in 2015.
This journey was not a circumnavigation in the traditional sense of the word. Such an achievement usually requires one to travel around the world in one direction. A further requirement often stipulates that one cross at least one set of antipodes, thus ensuring the travel both crosses the equator and is a sufficient distance. Some might even take issue with labelling such a journey as an achievement. In ages past it certainly was, when traveling beyond one’s city or province was itself an adventure. A circumnavigation was an arduous undertaking that would consume months or even years. By contrast, in the modern era such a trip could be completed in the span of a weekend given sufficient monetary resources.
Our family traveled the equivalent of a circumnavigation and then some. The circumference of the Earth at the equator is a mere 24,902 miles. Our major trips this year totaled over 27,100 miles. This year saw us flying, as a family, over 23,500 miles. We endured a further 3,160 miles by car. Endure is the appropriate verb, I assure you, for road trips involving two children and innumerable stops to visit friends and family. To add variety to our itineraries, we traveled an additional 440 miles by train. Other modes of travel, too short to bother tallying, included ferries, tuk tuks, canoes, buses, and on foot.
Though family travel was the focus of our leisure time, my personal tally included the equivalent of another two trips around the earth on business related travel.
Looking at the calendar for 2016, we plan to go even further. Where will your travels take you in 2016?