184: Eighty Days Around the World

It had just started to drizzle again. My family and I were headed to Richmond, Virginia, via Interstate 64, confronting a bit of rain along the way. We had just taken a timed family selfie at the Virginia is For Lovers sign outside the state welcome center, when a man on what I thought was a motorcycle pulled up—camouflage jacket drenched with rain. He asked if I would take a photo of him. I obliged, taking his cellphone, thinking that if he’d arrived a minute earlier we wouldn’t have had to use the timer on mine. Given the amount of gear he was carrying, it was clear this was a man on a mission. Detecting an accent, I asked where he was from. He said he was coming from San Francisco, a city we had also recently departed, but by air. Pressing further, I discovered this sopping, sociable sojourner came all the way from Germany and was on the tail end of a remarkable journey. Sixteen thousand eight hundred and forty-seven miles. Eighty days. Eighteen countries. Three Vespa scooters. One man. A few weeks later, Markus Mayer would become the first person to complete a solo scooter trip around the world in just 80 days.