The Trip by the Numbers

It is hard to summarize a year's worth of amazing experiences into one "favorite place" or "most important thing I learned" or "best story." For my last post, I hope this list provides a bit of flavor for the depth and breadth of my travels:

- Total countries: 30 (8 I had visited previously, 22 were new to me)
- Flights: 39
- Missed flights: 1
- Times I checked my bag for a flight: All but once
- Times my bag got lost: 0
- Free flights using frequent flier miles: 8 (including 6 with my round-the-world ticket)
- Overnight trips: 20 (10 by train, 6 by bus, and 4 by ferry)
- Nights spent in airports: 1
- Bus breakdowns: 2
- Boat breakdowns: 2
- CDs burned with pictures: 20 (18 CD-ROMs plus 2 DVD-ROMs)
- Number of pictures: 4,250
- Unreadable CDs: 2
- Total pictures lost due to data issues: 10 (backups come in handy)
- Blog posts: 49
- Yahoo! group members: 43
- Friends and family I met up with while traveling: 10
- Friends I made on the trip who I met again in another place: 13
- Books read: At least 20
- Guidebooks used: 10 (7 were Lonely Planet)
- Places visited that are on the UNESCO World Heritage List: 52
- Places that Lonely Planet says are famous for being in a James Bond movie: 3
- Scuba dives: 39 (in 9 places)
- 4,000+ meter peaks climbed: 2
- African game parks visited: 6
- Hollywood movies seen in a theater: 6
- Weddings attended: 2
- Synagogues where I attended services: 7
- Packages mailed to the US: 36
- Packages lost: 0 (though an envelope from Cairo arrived with a hole in the corner and a missing Swiss Army knife)
- Visits to a police station: 4
- Visits to a US embassy: 2
- Visits to a health clinic/ER: 2 (both accompanying fellow travelers)
- Times I had food poisoning: 2
- Times I was seasick: 2
- ATM withdrawals: 159
- Problems with ATM machines: 1
- Foreign currencies: 26
- Credit card transactions: 52
- Cash advances on my credit card: Once by accident