As I was getting all my documents together in advance of my departure (in 2 days!), I found my passport that expired just before COVID. I had about 20 pages worth of stamps and visas. Some of the visas are pretty cool – standouts included Cambodia, Brazil, Vietnam and China. Going back through the stamps was like a parade of my travel greatest hits over the period of my passport’s validity. I had rectangular stamps from places like the Maldives, Spain, France, the Bahamas, Mexico and the UK, and odd-shaped stamps from Singapore, French Polynesia and the Netherlands Antilles. I had used up all of the available pages, so I had to send my passport off to Washington, D.C. to get pages added to accommodate more travel evidence.
There was always something satisfying about that “ka-chunk” when the immigration officer stamped my passport. Perhaps I was overly anal about it – I liked the stamps that lined up within the boxes evenly and were easily legible. The blurred stamps from some of the immigration officers seemed lazy to me. I mean, if you’re going to stamp passports all day, you might as well do it properly.
I’m going to over 40 countries over the next 12 months, so when I got my new passport, I got the “extra thick” version with dozens of pages available for stamps and visas. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that, thanks to modern technology, most required visas are simply electronic tags that are associated with the chip in your passport. China still required an actual visa sticker, but the remainder of my visas are all of the “e” variety.*
I could no longer rely on stamps (blurry or otherwise) to document my travel experiences. A silly thing perhaps but, in addition to the refrigerator magnets I collect, the customary colorful stamps on my passport pages were the only tokens that provided evidence of my trips all over the world.
The conversion of traditional passport stamps to invisible electronic markers got me to consider other ways to offer proof of my voyages. Sailors used to get a commemorative certificate awarding the Order of Magellan if they circumnavigated the globe. If you crossed the Equator at the International Date Line, you were awarded the Golden Shellback. One of the most prestigious certificates was for the Emerald or Royal Diamond Shellback, awarded if you crossed the Equator at the Prime Meridian. The Order of the Golden Dragon showed that you had crossed the International Date Line. If you crossed the Equator, the International Date Line, the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle, you became a Four Knot Sailor.
I made it around the world in 1984, after graduating from college, so I’m currently entitled to the Order of Magellan. I have also crossed the International Date Line a few times, so I’m also a member of the Order of the Golden Dragon. What sucks is that these are “unofficial” maritime honors, so there’s no place I can go (online or otherwise) to pay $5.99 to get a commemorative certificate. In addition to these Orders, there’s the Order of the Blue Nose (crossing the Arctic Circle), the Order of the Red Nose (for crossing the Antarctic Circle – that one seems like it should be for reaching the North Pole, but maybe that’s just because I associate a red nose with Rudolph), the Order of the Ditch (for transiting the Panama Canal) and the Safari to Suez (for transiting the Suez Canal). To get a sense of the pomp and circumstance associated with achieving these milestones, you can check out a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEpsuJthFZI
Since passport stamps are gone, and there’s no official certificates available to prove my travel exploits, I had to consider other ways of proving the extent of my travels. For example, take earrings. A sailor wearing a single gold earring in his (or her) left ear traditionally signaled that the sailor had crossed the Equator. Two earrings might mean they had sailed around Cape Horn. On the more morbid front, sailors wore earrings so that they could pay for a proper burial if their bodies washed ashore in a foreign land. One of the funnier facts about sailors’ earrings is that, during naval battles, some sailors would hang wads of wax from their earrings to quickly plug their ears when the cannons began firing. I had a piercing in my left ear during my first mid-life crisis, but that hole has since closed up. I’d have to go back and get repierced for my first global circuit, then pierced again at the end of my gap year. I’m not sure how a (relatively) preppy 63 year old man would look with 2 thick gold hoops in his left ear, but I sense I’d be cringing when I look in the mirror.
So no stamps, no earrings, then what was left? Tattoos. If you circumnavigated the Earth, you were entitled to a globe tattoo. A golden dragon tattoo (like the Order of Merit) evidences a crossing of the International Date Line. An anchor on one arm and a star on the other is another traditional way to signal a trip around the world. You get a swallow tattoo for every 5,000 nautical miles sailed. The Earth’s circumference is about 25,000 miles, so you’d be entitled to 5 swallows if you made it around the globe. Ok, as noted, I traveled all the way around the globe in 1984 (my first 25,000 miles) and will have traveled another 25,000 miles by the end of my gap year (probably more since I’m transversing hemispheres and backtracking), so I’d be entitled to at least 10 swallow tattoos. That gives me 1 globe, probably 5 or 6 golden dragons, an anchor and a star, and my 10 swallows.**
But let’s get real. I’m not getting all tatted up at this point in my life, even though there is a certain bad-ass quality to the image. Then again, my skin is consistently sloughing southward and I’m not sure a saggy anchor and flaccid swallow really provides much in the way of bolstering my sense of my own machismo. Another mirror-cringe moment.
In comes the internet and this blog – the only feasible way I have to document my travels. I think we’d all like to believe that our lives are interesting to others, regardless of the validity of that assumption. It’s one thing if you’re hearing about Jane Goodall’s life, but quite another when you’re hearing the story of your Aunt Sylvia’s root canal. I have assumed a responsibility as the author of this blog to make it interesting (although I do have a crazy root canal story…) and prove that I’ve been where I say I’ve been. Hopefully, I’ll live up to the challenge. If not, maybe you could give me the name of a good tattoo parlor in Los Angeles.
* If you’re looking for a helping hand in getting your visas, I suggest you check out iVisa.com. It was pretty simple to fill out the forms, and they take care of submitting everything to the relevant embassy on your behalf at the appropriate time.
** Here’s some more info on swallow tattoos https://www.oneoceanexpedition.com/life-on-board/what-is-it-with-sailors-and-swallows
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