Back in early 1977 my life had sort of fallen apart. My Nicaraguan wife ran off with my best friend (with whom she'd been having an affair since before we were married). My attempt to buy a cabin in the Mendocino redwood forest fell through and I was stuck in a boring job with the government in Ukiah, California.
Inspired by a travel article in Stewart Brand's
Whole Earth Catalog, I quit my job and took the cabin purchase down payment and started off on a trip around the world. My goal was to do the entire thing overland where ever possible and to only fly over the ocean or over borders that were closed to travelers.
I started out taking the train from Los Angeles to New York and then flying to Europe via a cheap flight on
Icelandic Air, which was very popular in the years before airline deregulation.
In this thread I'll use few words and lots of pictures, starting out with the big route map:
