Alex Johnson

Round-the-World Traveler

1. When do you leave?
   June 2005

2. How long do you plan to be away?
   6-12 Months

3. How much have you saved?
   $4.12

4. How old are you?
   16

5. Nationality
   USA

6. Where do you live now?
   Corvallis, OR, USA

7. Occupation
   Student

8. Is this job one that you actually like, or
   are you only doing it to pay for the trip?
   One more paycheck and I’m gone

9. Have you traveled around the world
   before?
   No

10. What is the route you plan to take/places
    you plan to visit?
    Portland, USA
    LA, USA
    Nadi, Fiji
    Auckland, NZ
    Sydney, Oz
    Hong Kong, China
    Overland to Bombay, India
    Tel Aviv, Israel
    Overland to Cairo, Egypt
    Harare, Zimbabwe
    Overland to Cape Town, S. Africa
    Over Sea to Buenos Aires, Argentina
    North via buses home (except for short flight over the Darien Gap)

11. Why did you decide to take this trip? What
    got you into this type of travel, and/or influenced you to go?
    A friend of mine has been traveling for the last year and a half, and
    gave the bug to me. Although my wanderlust is routed deep inside, it took
    an outside force to make me look at vagabonding around the world.

12. What is your biggest fear about this
    trip?
    That I will become extremely homesick. Surprisingly enough money does not
    rank highly for me, should it?

13. Are your family, friends, co-workers, etc.,
    supportive of you? What is their opinion of your going around the
    world?
    I’ve told my Mother, but I don’t think I’ll tell my Dad and step mom. I
    figure it’d be easier for them to take if I just ran away. Maybe I’ll
    tell them, at the gate in Portland.

14. How much planning and preparing have you
    done?
    Planning is for tourists

15. What are you packing? What do you consider
    your most indispensable item(s)?
    My contacts will be very important for me. My footbag. My CAMERA.
    Otherwise, I can’t think of all that much. I guess I’ll probably bring
    clothes….maybe.

16. How do you think your round-the-world trip
    will change your life? How do you think it will affect and change you as
    a person?
    I’m not exactly sure. I read a quote once, by some author. He told me
    that it is a wonderful thing to travel, and return home to find that
    everything is the same, it is you who have changed.

17. Why do you think people should go on
    round-the-world trips? Why not just take a regular old one- or two-week
    vacation instead?
    “I don’t want to hurry it. That itself is a poisonous twentieth-century
    attitude. When you want to hurry something, that means that you no longer
    care about it and want to get on to better things.”
    – Robert M Pirsig

18. What is the biggest myth that people have
    about round-the-world traveling?
    I’ll tell you when I get back.

19. Why do you like to travel?
    What a strange question. That is akin to asking the dying man, why do you
    want to live?

20. What is your advice for people planning
    their own RTW trip?
    Talk to people who have travelled, they’re smarter than you.

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