The long and winding road in the mad pursuit of happiness
Do you like to travel? If so, why? People like to travel for many reasons, ranging from escaping boredom to having adventures to relaxing on a cruise from stress at work to getting pissed on the beach at Cancun on spring break as a variation of getting pissed on weekends at college. Myself, I like to use the word “exploration.” Not only does it have more syllables, it makes it sound like you are actually doing something useful with your time when you could be back at home working for the man. In my line of labour I have met many people who have travelled far more than I have and they all seem to have good excuses for doing so; I will make a similar list myself whenever I get around to it.
Living for several years in San Francisco I stumbled across a group called the Wild Writing Women. I say “stumbled” because they hosted monthly parties (sorry: “Meetings”) at a downtown hotel where the hotel manager was foolish enough to hand out free wine with the vague hope that the assembled writers would possibly utilize word of mouth and perhaps even employ the written word to promote his hotel. As we all know, humorist PJ O’Rourke claims the first rule of journalism is “never pay for your own drinks” so the soirees were rather well attended. This is where I first heard about the TCC, an organization better known as the Travelers Century Club.
When I first heard of the TCC I was of the impression that you had to be at least a century old to join because all of the members I saw listed on their website seemed old enough to have died and returned from the dead. But no; the only requirement for joining the club was that you must have visited at least a hundred countries and could prove it with passports stamps, photos and a damned good story. I obtained this information from Gypsy Jean, also known to her betters as Jean Feilmoser, a San Francisco based group tour leader, taxi driver and jack of all trades who I met at a Wild Writing Women soiree and who was about to be indicted into the TCC after some 50 years of wandering the planet with no good alibi other than that she just liked to explore and didn’t give a damn what people thought. She was also probably the only person ever allowed in TCC without being old and rich.
Gypsy, born and raised in San Francisco, had been taken to Mexico on a family outing when she was a little girl and was instantly smitten by the experience so you can blame her curiosity on her parents. Upon being invited to the Old Boys Club at the TCC she had already been to something like 125 countries, including over 50 trips to Australia, I think. I’m not good with numbers. I started failing math as soon as we got to algebra, although — unlike many — at least I can spell the world properly. I spent a considerable amount of time asking Gypsy about her trips, journeys that she accomplished by taking any every job she could find and saving all her money. I was invited to attend the TCC on the day she got her gold star at the event or whatever goodies it was they handed out in recognition of her achievements. That’s when I first heard about a mad man named Charles Veley.
By this time I had been in the Bay Area for a year and wormed myself into a position as a freelance writer for the prestigious Pacific Sun newsmagazine in Marin County just north of San Francisco. Aside from writing cover stories about civic issues and a cycling column I was able to sneak in the occasional feature about travel. Charles Veley was completely unknown at the time but I knew a news story when I heard one and when I heard about his exploits I knew I had a winning angle that no editor could resist. Veley was already chasing the title of “the world’s most travelled man,” which indicated he was either rich or had robbed the bank because you have to be rich in order to travel the planet, never mind visit a hundred countries. As it happened, the answer turned out to be a bit of both.
At the turn of the 21st century anyone who could type with two fingers and understood cyberspace well enough to own and operate a computer — plus do business at the same time without fainting, an elite group of which I was not one — was getting filthy rich in the Bay Area during what became known as the “Dot.com revolution.” Investors everywhere were pouring money into any website that promised that its customers would no longer use such archaic tools such as pen and paper, telephones and cars. All business in future would heretofore be done online.
My favourite dodge was the company that offered online grocery shopping. Never mind trudging down to the store anymore to sort through radishes and pomegranates while being jostled by old ladies wearing gloves. You would simply press a button on your computer and some poor shmuck with poor typing skills would deliver the goodies to your front door in a car. They offered a free $50 bag of groceries to any potential customer so I immediately ordered a lot of smoked salmon before they could go out of business, which the gridlock that is Bay Area traffic soon guaranteed they did. Charles Veley got rich on dot.com commerce and immediately did the same. That is, he quit his job, cashed in his shares, became a multimillionaire and got outta town before anyone noticed.
We met at a park not far from his house in a tony San Francisco neighbourhood. He explained that his wife was pregnant and he didn’t want our meeting to disturb her. Over time I learned the friction between Charles and his wife had more to do with his never coming home rather than waking up the baby. He seemed suspicious of journalists but very keen on publicity. He hadn’t done any interviews yet, likely because he was never in town long enough to sit down and talk. So we sat down and I recorded our talk.
Starting at age 34, Veley immediately threw himself into the challenge of nailing 100 countries with the same determination to ‘complete the task’ that he claimed made him a high-tech millionaire. After all, he said, global travel is just like designing software; it’s just a matter of solving complicated logistics. Switzerland, Swaziland, Sarawak, St. Helena … poof! In no time Charles had bagged his 100 countries. That’s when he finally heard about ultimate goal hidden within the TCC’s rarified upper echelons, the Holy Grail for “extreme travelers.” That is, to become “the World’s Most Traveled Person.”
“The first step is to complete the TCC list of 317 entities,” said Charles. Why 317, pray tell, when the United Nations lists only 192 countries in the world? Ah, you’re forgetting all those territories and protectorates and far-flung atolls, aren’t you? The British may have pulled the plug on their empire, what with the costs of administration and all and not enough cocoanuts coming back to pay the freight, but what about all the other bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam still hanging about, all trying to act as a real nation without enough tourism to rate a page on Expedia?
“French Polynesia, for example, is a huge territory ruled by France. Greenland is administered by Denmark, and Antarctica doesn’t really belong to anybody but several countries have claimed sovereign right to certain sections,” Veley explained. “There are some people — not many, just a few — who have visited all 317 entities on the TCC list, but they are all over 60 years old. I completed the list after nearly four years of constant travel, at age 37,” Charles matter-of-factly stated.
He didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. But wait, the fabulous journey had only just begun. “My second step is to complete the ‘Guinness 14,’ which happens to be on the Guinness Book of Records secret internal list. Of course, I didn’t even find out about this secret list until recently, which is making for all kinds of consternation and inefficiencies in trying to pursue it.”
Lists within lists. Who knew? But everyone joining a club loves to find out there is a secret handshake, an inner sanctum that only the select few can join. Nobody, of course, had ever completed the Guinness Secret 14 List. One reason is that only a handful of extreme travelers had even heard of it. The world record holder at that was the intrepid Mr. John Clouse, a retired dentist who nailed twelve of the secret 14 after vigorous effort, conclusive proof that dental fees are too high. But by this time Veley had given it a fierce run and already knocked off his own dirty dozen, including such impossible-to-get-to places such as the Coral Sea Island Territory; Heard and McDonald Islands; and Kingman Reef in the South Seas. The Kingman Reef escapade actually took the wind out of Veley’s sails for a while.
“Have you ever dreamed that you were falling? Most people have,” said Veley. “Perhaps you are pushed, against your will, out of a perfectly good airplane. As the ground approaches, you say to yourself: Wow. There’s no way out of this. I’m really going to die. I wonder what it’s going to feel like? I have recently had that very sensation. Thousands of times, in fact, and continuously.”
“Imagine, if you will, a 37-foot boat, capable of making only 7 knots, crossing vast stretches of choppy ocean, directly into the current and wind over 1,000 miles in a 10-day period,” he continued. “I was able to enjoy it all face first. As I attempted to cling to my bed, the boat would repeatedly drop away a good 5 to 10 feet, leaving me to free-fall. The negative G’s at the crest of each wave left me temporarily suspended, before falling to meet the mattress. And that went on for over 1,000 miles.”
If you look it up, Kingman Reef is nothing more than a tiny piece of sand-covered coral about 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. It rises a few feet out of the water in two spots about a quarter-mile long, varying in width from zero to about 50 feet. The reef is covered with plastic ocean detritus and not much else, but nevertheless it’s on the Secret List and therefore Veley had to set foot on it. But, as it turns out, Kingman Reef was just an intermission for an adventure that, apparently, will never end.
“I have discovered and decided to pursue yet a third list, which I have determined to be an even more difficult list to accomplish,” explained Veley with nonchalance. “In fact, none of the world’s top extreme travelers has even attempted to complete this list. It is virgin territory. This list is compiled by the leading ham radio operator organization in the world, the ARRL. It contains 53 items that are so obscure as to be outside of both the TCC and Guinness lists. So, in my spare time, I have been pursuing these additional items in case of a Guinness tie. It serves as an excellent tiebreaker, and if someone else is crazy enough to pursue the Guinness secret list they’ll have to chase me down this extra list too. So far, of the Obscure 53, I have managed to visit 19.”
There appears to be a name associated with this extreme form of travel bug. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders explains it as follows: “An extreme form of psychological problem associated with traveling is dromomania, also known as vagabond neurosis. In the accepted listing of psychiatric problems, the vagabond neurosis is classified with the impulse control disorders. Sufferers have an abnormal impulse to travel; they are prepared to spend beyond their means, sacrifice jobs, lovers and security in their lust for new experiences.”
In other words, you have to be nuts to do this kind of stuff. Shortly after our conversation Veley left the Bay Area for yet another trip. He soon dispatched an email update, apparently from the captain’s cabin aboard the SA Agulhas cargo ship sailing out of Cape Town, South Africa.
“At the 11th hour the South African National Antarctic Program, as well as the Norwegian Polar Institute, have agreed to let me land on Bouvet Island with a small group of technicians. Such permission is not normally given. In fact, it is nearly unheard of. The sailing will last for 72 days, with no possibility of earlier transfer.”
Bouvet Island, as all good geographers know, is located in the sub-Atlantic, a mere 1,500 miles southwest of the Cape of Good Hope and some 1,000 miles north of Queen Maud Land in Antarctica. It is the “most remote place on earth,” according to the Guinness Book of Records, and weather-wise is a very nasty place indeed, nothing more 23 square miles of black lava surrounded by several miles of frozen sea. Thick clouds usually obscure the island, snowfalls are frequent and the temperature rarely rises above freezing. Although Veley was supposed to be stuck sailing the Antarctic seas for months, he dispatched another email to me not much longer thereafter.
“I am pleased to announce that, at roughly 0515 Greenwich Mean Time, a group of nine people landed on Bouvet Island. Bouvet was incredibly stark and foreboding, but the seas were relatively calm and visibility was good,” he wrote. “Even so, I was very cold and windblown after two hours on the island. The entire beach and rocky upslope were covered with penguins and seals. As a result of landing on Bouvet, I will be claiming the title of Most Traveled Man from Guinness.”
The publication of my article about Charles Veley did not win me the Pulitzer Prize. While it was brilliantly written with no typos and only a few smudge marks on the edges where readers rested their beer bottles while reading it and snorting in contempt, it was immediately apparent in the Letters to the Editor in the following weeks that Sun readers were not impressed.
“Setting foot for 30 seconds in a country in order to get a stamp in a passport is not travel,” was the overall response. But the readers missed the point. The Travelers Century Club wasn’t about travel at all. It was a race for egotistical rich people who had nothing better to with their time. It made them happy.
Evidently there is a show on television, or probably more than one, where people race around the world trying to be first to arrive somewhere in order to win some sort of prize. I recall watching a few episodes. In so doing they touch down in multiple countries, find a clue hidden somewhere and then dash off to another country while managing to see next to nothing and experience little of the culture of that country, all of which seems to miss the point of traveling in the first place.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice,” wrote Mark Twain, meaning that the more you travel the more you learn that the world is an amazing place with vastly different cultures, races, traditions, taboos and tastes. Not stopping to smell the roses seems to defeat the purpose. Racing is all about winning, and making money, which teaches you nothing but is clearly very All American.
I stayed in touch with Charles for a while, occasionally receiving emails from strange destinations and airports that possessed Internet connections. One day I made a remark to the effect that what he was doing seemed stupid and pointless, or words to that effect, and all communications stopped. It didn’t seem like much of a loss to me. Then word came that he was back in town and had started a website called –wait for it — Most Traveled People. He had issued a challenge to all the other dromomaniacs around the world to “catch me if you can.” Apparently, if you scan the website, thousands of people responded, so many people that Charles has invented categories ranging from Couch Potato (one country), to tourist (25 countries), backpacker (50), ambassador (75), senior ambassador (100), silver (200), gold (300), platinum (400) and Hall of Fame (500).
At present the list of his destinations has been extended yet again. Not only are there protectorates, possessions and partly submerged entities but I suspect there may be lighthouses and submarines on the list. Charles, the last time I looked, had just added 19 more destinations, most of which seem to be lumps of coral or sandbars in the middle of various oceans. There are several “trips” offered to rubes with wild itineraries involved, like to Western Tuva in Siberia, wherever that is. No guides are mentioned but it could be that Charles is leading these expeditions himself, perhaps as a way to earn more money so he can travel to yet more obscure places no one has ever heard of.
A close perusal of the website a few years ago revealed the shocking news that Charles is no longer at the top of the list. Somebody named Robert Bonifas led the pack at that time with 864 destinations visited, although thankfully they are not all listed or it would take a lifetime to read them all. Robert lists 27 more places he desperately needs to visit including the sub-Antarctic, a few islets in the Indian Ocean and presumably Mars. Donald M. Parrish Junior is tight on his heels at 859, with 32 left on his bucket list. Sadly, Charles trails badly at 846 with 46 places yet to come, but the day is young. Bill Altaffer drags his butt in at 829, but it is interesting to note all four leading dromos are American, which might say something about the futility of the endless pursuit of happiness, a special human right available only to Yanks and included in the American constitution between the right to bare your arms and shoot the bears.
It is not until you get to Roman Bruehwiler way down in 5th place, from Switzerland, that you find a dromo-nut who is not from the United States. On his bio, Roman states with a straight face that he recently went to Iran where “it was quite a challenge to visit 31 provinces, 22 UNESCO sites and 43 UNESCO tentative sites within one month.” Boy, that’s what I call burning rubber. Sorry, it all seems like a blur to me.
For myself, I have complied a sorry record with a mere couch potato 41 countries, but I remind myself that Vancouver is a long way from anywhere else and there’s still plenty of time to visit the other 900 places, wherever they are. Besides, I like to take my time and I remind myself as I go that it’s the journey and not the destination that counts. As a math challenged writer I need to take my socks off just to count to ten, and I usually find that after I’ve been on the road a long time nobody wants me to take my socks off at all.
Update December 13, 2024
The list of whackadoos who have nothing better to do with their time and possess far more money than they deserve is constantly changing. As of Christmas 2024 I see that Charles has slid down to 9th place on his own list, although he is up to 1,285 destinations these days. Atta boy! There are over 700 Indigenous communities in Canada alone and some choose to be identified as sovereign states and I am tempted to inform Charles of that new challenge, although it may be that like many Americans he doesn’t know where Canada is actually located. Haida Gwaii, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands just south of Alaska, certainly acts like a country of its own as visitors will find, although they don’t stamp your passport.
Checking the latest MTP list, I was amused to find Tromelin Island included in the mix, as reported by Donald M. Parrish, who was pushing hard for top place but has lately dropped out of the top ten. “Tromelin Island,” he writes, “is a tiny, isolated island in the Indian Ocean, known for its remarkable history and wildlife. This French overseas territory, with no permanent inhabitants, is mainly visited by scientists and meteorologists. Covering just about one square kilometer, the island is flat and low, surrounded by coral reefs which are rich in marine biodiversity.”
Wow, sounds like a fun place to visit, although just like remote Indigenous communities in Canada, Tromelin seems rather short of tourist accommodations. At least the Indian Ocean is a bit warmer than all of the Indigenous communities in Canada I have visited, where the real challenge lies in finding any accommodations at all. You need to know a guy who knows a guy, or else sleep in your car or perhaps on the snowmobile required to reach such remote communities.
“Travel broadens the mind,” goes the quote, again referring to Mark Twain. Of course, that all depends on your definition of travel. Does touching your toe on the ground in a new destination for a minute somehow translate to an exploration? Is exploring the world nothing more than a mad race from here to there? Or is a Bucket List nothing more than a ticket to nowhere?