No Airplanes

About

Who are you?
My name is Tony Alexander. I co-founded Traveler’s Joy and SimpleRegistry. I like to travel and do it often and for extended periods. I also like bacon.

What’s the deal with this trip?
I’ve had the idea in the back of mind for years now.  What would it be like to circumnavigate the Earth without using airplanes?  I fly so often and for such extended distances I often feel like I’m cheating in some sense.  I want to feel the passage of the distance and time as I go, and, when I make it all the way around, feel like like I really earned it.

Are you afraid of flying?
Not at all.  I fly all the time and all over the planet.  I just wanted to see what it would be like to not travel that way.

Which direction are you going?
I’m a young man.  I do as I’m told.

What’s the plan?
I don’t like to plan too much in advance but some things require it.  I know I’ll be taking a container ship across the Pacific from Oakland to Shanghai, taking the Trans-Mongolian Express from Beijing to St. Petersburg, and coming back from Europe on the Queen Mary 2.  All the rest is up in the air and I’ve given myself plenty of time at several spots to be free to see what happens.

What are the “rules?”
I’m glad you/me asked that!  I actually will be flying a bit on this trip but the “rule” is that no flight can make any westward progress.  So I’ll have a “home base” at several points and will travel from there to visit sites and friends but I’ll always come back to the base and, when I pick the main trip back up, there’s no travel by air in the mix.

More to come as I think of it…