Find your own Fockink Gin

by connal on September 20, 2010

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Fockink Gin

This post could also be titled “International Treasure Hunt” – but that wasn’t nearly as catchy.

Back in October of ’09 we were trekking through Spain when we took a rest day to explore Pamplona. While wandering around the old part of town we came across a small, unattended antique shop where, buried on a back shelf, we found a bottle of Fockink Gin. We were thrilled at our discovery (so thrilled that we wrote a blog post about it, I mean, c’mon, that a joke good enough to build an entire movie around) but the glass bottle weighed a ton, and we were trekking and couldn’t afford to carry it around with us for the next week, so we left it where it was

8 months later we found ourselves in France, working out the details of a chance meeting with our friend Hannah who happened to be traveling with a friend through Spain and France. As soon as they mentioned that they’d be spending a day in Pamplona we knew what had to be done. I sent her the following email.

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Flying the Friendly Skies

by connal on September 14, 2010

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We didn’t set any kind of rule about not traveling by plane, but we did try to avoid them whenever possible. Busses, trains, motorcycles and ferries were our preferred method of travel; we even looked into traveling by cargo ship for some of the longer hauls (as it turns out, it would probably be a very interesting way to travel, similar to crossing Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express, but cargo ships are slow and not actually a money saving option; plan on at least $100/day. For a two week trip from California to New Zealand that works out to around $1400. A flight would cost you closer to $650)

In anycase, despite our best efforts, we still traveled over 40,000 miles by plane. We did manage to spread those around quite a bit, taking 27 flights on 21 different airlines.

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1973 Mongolian Space Stamps

by connal on September 10, 2010

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Mongol Stamps

They’re Mongolian, they’re from 1973, they feature fantastic illustrations of Russian and US space missions and we found them in a tiny stamp shop in Istanbul. There’s not one thing about these stamps that isn’t awesome!

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70,000 miles!

by connal on August 8, 2010

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In what will be the last 10K mile milestone we cross, on August 6th we reached 70,000 total miles for our trip.

The current breakdown is:

40,057 : Plane
13,865 : Motorcycle
7,031 : Train
6,071 : Car
1,333 : Boat
1,317 : Bus
397 : Foot
10 : Horse

For a total of 70,075 total miles, averaging 191 miles per day.

As a point of reference the circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles at the equator; so we’re just under 3 times around.

It’s also 238,857 miles from the Earth to the Moon, so we’re not quite a third of the distance to that.

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America the Beautiful

by connal on August 6, 2010

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Yesterday was our 365th day on the road.

We arrived back on American soil 22 days ago and despite having all the internet we could want and the ability to easily place domestic calls, we have been almost completely incommunicado.

Part of the reason may be trying to deny the fact that we’ve left the International portion of our trip behind us. The other part may have to do with filing every waking moment trying to cram in as much exploration as humanly possible as we finally see the trip coming to its inevitable conclusion.

Whatever the reason, we’ve explored the US with the same enthusiasm we’ve had for every other country: In the last 18 days we’ve ridden 4226 miles through Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington.
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Please, walk your horse…

by connal on July 2, 2010

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Here’s a series of signs we came across during our time trekking through the Annapurnas. After the first few days of walking the road stops and you start reaching villages where the only way to get anything in or out is on foot or by horse.

Mule trains are common, as are some small horses for getting around. Signs like these are usually posted just outside a village, asking riders to please dismount when passing through.

No Horse Riding

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Papers Please

Considering all the countries we’ve traveled to where “safe driving” means constantly honking your horn while driving like a madman (I’m looking at you here Vietnam) it’s amazing that we’ve gone as long as we have without any sort of traffic incident.

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*Part one of the story is here

Day 5: Brighton to Colac Bay
We started day 5 at our ocean-side camping spot in Brighton, a small beach town on the Southeastern coast of New Zealand. We knew we weren’t riding far today, so we spent the better part of the morning leisurely making a few sightseeing visits; first stopping to check out the Nugget Point Lighthouse.

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This is one of the creepiest places we’ve ever visited. It’s the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg and it’s weird.

Really weird.

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Porsche Museum

by connal on June 10, 2010

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We had two big takeaways from our time in Stuttgart. One was learning the German expression “der Gluckspilz” which translates to “lucky mushroom.” As in, “You’ve arrived here in Stuttgart on the first nice day we’ve had all summer. That’s quite the lucky mushroom.”

But the second big takeaway from Stuttgart was our visit to the Porsche museum. A combination of dozens of stunning cars and a fantastic exhibit design which makes the museum quite the drool-inducing experience.

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