Last Updated on August 20, 2019 by Michael
October, 2012: We’re back in the USA. After 400+ days, 6 continents, 31 countries and 100,000 miles we’re home . . . sort of.
Our goal was to get away from a destructive family situation, using time and miles to help us heal. Our plan: travel for a year around the world. As our mascot Little Rocky would say, “to go the distance.” We’re happy to report that we have indeed been there and done that.
Now what? In the short time since our return we’ve begun to reconnect with friends and family. After more than a year of totally new and different people, places, sights and sounds we’re enjoying the comfort of familiarity, the ability to put our senses on auto-pilot and just hang out for a bit.
Little Rocky is finally reunited with the Rocky statue.
It’s great to be back, but we’re not really home. Technically we don’t have a home, since we sold our house and gave away most of our stuff before we left. Renting a house or apartment and resuming our lives as before could remedy that easily enough.
But that’s not going to happen. The place we once called home may be more or less the same, and very comfortable, but we’ve changed. As the world became our home our need for personal space shrunk, and we no longer have a need for all the stuff we used to have. We learned to adapt to new environments and situations quickly and to revel in soaking up new experiences.
We’re not going back to our former careers. Instead we’ll keep traveling, keep learning, keep writing, and keep providing tools for others to “Just Go Already.” There are still many stories and travel tips to share and we’ll be writing here, for the Philadelphia Inquirer and other media outlets. We’re also writing a book about our experience. (Anyone know a book agent or publisher?)
So stay along for the ride. The trip may be over, but the journey has just begun.
And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape.—A Sort of Homecoming by U2
PS. Long-time readers may recall that we started our journey 14 months ago from the base of the Rocky Steps in Philadelphia and would run up the steps when we returned. Well we did:
Many thanks to our friend Paula for taking the photos and video. She had a remarkably steady hand!
