YOUR NEXT GLOBAL ADVENTURE: Some Incredible Past Achievements

From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9    1093     4732        1185        246        82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120       572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242       835       130

Sept     9     1208      6222       1136      1168        82

Oct     21     1225      6849         571       703        85

Nov    25     2304    12025        620       518      118

Dec    30     3880    14748      1224       299      465

Jan     14       4142    15512       1151         189      712          

          19       2804    14760      1183        161     839    

          20      4385    17350      1382        152     566

          21       4363    16578      1335        161     647

          26       4045   15879      1206        127     680

          27       3916    16873      1319        134     753 

          28       3908   16388      1439       162     555

Summary:  The USA COVID-19 new deaths/day is slowly declining.  Not necessarily so for many other regions of the world.

First a bit of politics.  From this morning's New York Times:

The big picture: “The Affordable Care Act is a highly flawed, distressingly compromised, woefully incomplete attempt to establish a basic right that already exists … in every other developed nation,” Jonathan Cohn, another longtime health care journalist, writes in “The Ten Year War,” a forthcoming book. “It is also the most ambitious and significant piece of domestic legislation to pass in half a century.” Also: By the end of Trump’s presidency, the uninsured rate probably rose close to 10 percent, from 8.6 percent in the Obama administration’s final year. Through executive action, Biden may be able to reduce it to about 8 percent over the next four years, according to my reporting. The bigger question is whether Biden can persuade Congress to pass a new law that would go further than Obamacare did, by making coverage less expensive for more people. Otherwise, at least 25 million Americans are likely to remain uninsured.

A global journey is a once-in-a-lifetime dream for most.  Over 80% of world citizens have never even boarded a plane.  Two-thirds of Americans have never been on a cruise.  The thought of taking an actual global trip, typically lasting two months, or 80 days if you're a romantic, is only for the most adventurous with sufficient funds.  It's a passion for me, as I have done this perhaps a dozen times.  But why not you?

As you need to begin somewhere, first, hope that the pandemic will largely be over by January of 2022, for that's my target date to begin my next, and probably final world tour.  Fortunately, most around the world cruises begin then.  I've never done this by ship, but can actually be cheaper than the standard way, flying.  Of course, you can combine ocean and air, as I'm contemplating for my next.

On flying, the easiest way is to use something like Star Alliance (although other major airlines have their own package) around the world:

• Over 1300 destinations in more than 195 countries
• Take a full year to complete your journey.
• Use 16 flight coupons or legs.
• The cost depends on class of service and miles traveled:
• Economy:  $5000 plus or minus $1000.
• Business:  $11,000 p or m $$1500.
• First:  $20,000 p or m $4000.  However, most airlines have severely curtailed first class travel, so I can't recommend this alternative today.
• The last time I checked, the following airlines could be used:

Adria Airways (JP), Aegean Airlines (A3), Air Canada (AC), Air China (CA), Air India (AI), Air New Zealand (NZ), ANA (NH), Asiana Airlines (OZ), Austrian Airlines (OS), Avianca (AV), Brussels Airlines (SN), Copa Airlines (CM), Croatia Airlines (OU), Egyptair (MS), Ethiopian Airlines (ET), EVA Air (BR), LOT Polish Airlines (LO), Lufthansa (LH), Scandinavian Airlines (SK), Shenzhen Airlines (ZH), Singapore Airlines (SQ), South African Airways (SA), SWISS (LX), TAP Portugal (TP), Thai (TG), Turkish Airlines (TK) and United Airlines (UA).

Of course, some of you fly Delta or American or whatever else, but there are two other alliances:  SkyTeam and Oneworld.  

The problem with going global using ship and plane is that there is no partnership between the two.  Thus, for example, say you start in Los Angeles.  If your take a 56-day cruise to Dubai, then use an airline global fare to get you back to Los Angeles.  You will have left over a trip from Los Angeles to Dubai, which you need to use by a year of the date you first left LA.  But that could be the beginning of your second adventure.

If you're wealthy with not so much time available, there are other options.  TCS World Travel offers a $128,000 package that will take 20 days to 7 destinations for 48 guests on a Boeing 757.  Departure on 19February2022 from Seattle, flying West.  Frankly, the stops are rather mundane.

Dubai should be the highlight of your next world trip because their World Expo begins in October of 2021 and extends to the end of March 2022.  What other important events will occur in 2022?  I'll report on them in a future series posting.  To further inspire you, I will start with some incredible past global achievements.

You can go around the world like Magellan's men, where 200 embarked, and three years later, 18 returned.  No, I guess you wouldn't want to do this that way.  The more traditional ones include:

• George Francis Train (left) went in 1870, taking 80 days, if you don't count the two months he spent in Paris assisting in the French Revolution.  Jules Verne saw this accomplishment in a city newspaper, and wrote the book.  Train was not pleased, but did okay, for while on this crazy journey he was also kind of running for president of the USA.  He did later form the Union Pacific Railroad.    Went to jail 15 times, but mostly for the cause of peace in France and the U.S. 

• Phileas Fogg, from Verne's story, succeeded, but almost lost $12 million (about the worth today), for he forgot that when you go East, you gain a day.  It's okay if you do it by boat, but if you fly, you want go West, where you will lose a day.  Why?  Your body better adjusts.

• King David Kalakaua of Hawaii in 1881 became the first reigning monarch to complete such a journey.

• Nellie Bly, a New York World reporter succeeded in 1889 and wrote, Around the World in 72 Days, mostly to beat the 80 days of Verne.  Amazon has her paperback on sale for $10.

• 
  Train went around the world two more times, partly to break Bly's record, accomplishing his second in 67 days (1890) when he was 61 years old, and the third the following year in 64 days.  He is said to have the 26th most important brain, among 107 other famous people.  Where?  I'll get into this later.
• 
  A few weeks before the stock market crashed, the Graf Zeppelin in 1929 flew around the world in 21 and a half days.  William Randolph Hearst (remember him from my postings about Citizen Kane?) backed this venture, placing on board a correspondent, Lady Grace Drummond-Hay (here she is waving from the dirigible), who became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air.

• 
  In 1961 Yuri Gargarin took one hour and 48 minutes to make one orbit our Planet Earth.  The Soviet Union had already sent Sputnik into space in 1957, which inspired me to become an engineer, and Gargarin's success is one reason I also once worked for NASA.

• 
  Pastor Arthur Blessitt has been carrying a 45 pound wooden cross across 324 entities, walking so far 42,279 miles since 1968.  This mission continues, but he did find time to run for president of the USA in 1976.

• From 1979-82 Britishers Ranulph Fiennes and his team followed the Greenwich meridian, first going south from Greenwich, arriving at the South Pole on 15December1980, then continuing on to reach the North Pole on 11April1982, finishing in Greenwich on 29August1982.  The whole thing was planned by wife Ginny Fiennes.  The group mostly ate bread, cereal and coffee.
• In 1992 an Air France Concorde went around the world in just under 33 hours.

• From the UK Robert Garside,(right), from 1997 to 2003 took 2,062 days to run around the world.
• From 1997 to 2012 Russian PhD physicist Vladimir Lysenko circled the globe several times using car, motor boat, yacht, ship, kayak, bicycle and foot.  He has visited all 195 countries of the UN.

• 
  Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg had planned to take Solar Impulse 2, a solar-powered aircraft, around the world in five months, but it took from 9 March 2015 until 16 July 2016, mostly because they were stuck in Hawaii due to battery damage.

If you click on this Wikipedia page, you will find a lot more.  Another site for how these global journeys have gotten shorter and shorter, beginning with Magellan's crew feat of 1082 days from 1519-22, and including George Train's 80 days in 1870.  

To commemorate the 500th anniversary of the first global circumnavigation and the 50th of Man on the Moon, in July of 2019, a nine-person crew used a Qatar Executive Gulfstream G650ER ultra long-range business jet to complete a global flight in 46 hours, 39 minutes and 38 seconds over the South and North Poles, an average of only 535 MPH.

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