My retirement from an academic career, spanning 28 years, allowed me to uncork and liberate an adventure travel genie that had been bottled up, for far too long.

I'd been traveling all my life, starting when---as an unborn fetus---I was carried through 11 countries as my pregnant mother journeyed to Africa, by land and sea, from the town of Zlin, Czechoslovakia to Nairobi, Kenya. But it wasn’t until after retirement that I began to travel in earnest, with a definite goal in mind.

In 2004, at age 64, I decided to focus my travels with a supreme adventure travel ambition: to experience the physical and natural, or cultural, aspects of every 10-degree-wide slice of longitude and every 10-degree-wide band of latitude. I would need to visit Earth’s remotest and most difficult destinations in order to complete this 54-slice challenge.

This website presents a formula for experiencing the full diversity of what Planet Earth has to offer the adventure traveler. The website will grow as I capture my impressions of the destinations visited in striving to achieve my travel aim, which I have named "The Planetary Prize."

I hope that other adventure travelers will find this system of covering the world useful in their travels. And I hope some will be inspired to adopt this idea as one of their personal travel ambitions. I invite website visitors to write me about their own efforts to achieve a travel goal, based on geographic coverage, and to offer their ideas and suggestions.

Sir Francis Chichester once said, "To a man with imagination, a map is a window to adventure." I would add, a map is a door to adventure. And Mark Twain put it this way: Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do, than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I offer some thoughts for website visitors:

People often read, just to pass the time away. Don’t pass the time away. Read to be inspired, then let that inspiration send you on life's journey of fulfillment.

One of my greatest sensory pleasures is standing outdoors, arms outstretched, with a lively wind blowing in my face, its fluctuating roar thundering past my ears. It reminds me of distant horizons visited and new ones beckoning to be investigated.

Now that I am in the twilight of life, there is still so much to envision, attempt and accomplish; life's far too short for the mind's myriad imagined possibilities; and for every possibility, there is a treasure chest of challenges.

To a younger audience, I would say this. Take the time and trouble to get to know yourself in the fullest sense---psychologically and physically. Discover your strengths---you will be inspired by what you find---and mold your aims and life goals around these. Then, you can rise above detractors who ask you, “Who do you think you are?” by answering, “I don’t think who I am; I know who I am.”

As for myself, I was given good genes and they’ve been put to work for me. In return, I pay them handsome dividends: they get to see a lot of the world, and they will reach the future, long after I am gone.