Oh, the places we went in 2012

Nobody who knows me will be surprised to learn that I enjoy reading travel blogs. Recently, many of my favorite travel bloggers have been posting end-of-year summaries, which got me thinking about such an update for our blog. It also helps that we've just returned from a trip to Thailand, and I've been getting lined up to write some posts on that subject as well.

Without further introduction, I give you the 2.5 Geeks 2012 travel summary; tag this one "navel-gazing":

• Jan: no trips
• Feb: no trips
• Mar: Arizona and Colorado (business)
• Apr: Oregon (business)
• May: New Mexico (business)
• Jun: California and Idaho (business), Ohio and Pennsylvania (family)
• Jul: Virginia Beach (family)
• Aug: Shenandoah National Park (family)
• Sep: California and Germany (business)
• Oct: Ohio (family)
• Nov: no trips
• Dec: California (business with a side dish of family) and Thailand (family)

In all, I had nine business trips, 25 flights, 44,000 miles, and too many redeyes. Oddly enough, Mama Geek and Geek Girl had no flights at all until December, when we flew 20,000 miles for our trip to Thailand. That trip included our longest single segment ever - 13 hours, 41 minutes from IAD to NRT.

Travel Geek that I am, I can't resist keeping some lists, including one of all the airports I've flown into or out of over the years. I got to add four new ones this year - Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and Chiang Mai, Thailand (BKK and CNX); Bremen, Germany (BRE); and Narita, Tokyo, Japan (NRT), so the full list now looks like:

ABQ ACA AEY AMS ANI ANC AUS BET BKK* BOI BOS BRE BRU BSL BUR BWI CAN CBR CDG CLT CKG CMH COS CPH CNX* CTA DCA DEN DFW EDI FCO FLL FRA GDL HKG HNL IAD IAH ITO KOA JAX JFK KEF KWL LAS LAX LGW LHR LIN MAA MEX MUC MSP MXP MYU NRT* OAK ORD ONT PDX PEK PHL PHX PMO REY RNO SAN SAT SEA SFO SHA SIN SJC SLC SMF SNA SYD TPE TXL WUH XIY YYJ YUL ZIH ZRH (*most recent additions)

We also have lists of all the countries we have each visited, where our definition of "visited" requires that we at least leave the airport/train station/bus station/whatever and walk around a while. Depending on how you count Puerto Rico, Thailand was my 19th or 20th country:

• Daddy Geek: 19 or 20 (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vatican City, plus the US territory of Puerto Rico). If you count airport transfers, add in Denmark, Japan, and Taiwan.


• Mama Geek: 12 or 13 (Austria, Canada, China, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vatican City, plus Puerto Rico). If you count airport transfers, add in Germany and Japan.


• Geek Girl: 6 or 7 (France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and Vatican City, plus Puerto Rico).  If you count airport transfers, add in Germany and Japan.

We also have a list of our geographic extremes - the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost spots we have been on the ground:

• Daddy Geek:
• N: NE of Húsavik, Iceland (66.20N, 17.05W)
• S: Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, ACT, Australia (35.47S, 148.90E)
• E: Sydney, Australia (33.86S, 151.22E)
• W: 10 km W of Mekoryuk, Alaska (60.34N, 166.39W)


• Mama Geek:
• N: Inverness, Scotland (57.48N, 4.22W)
• S: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• E: Shanghai, China (31.24N, 121.49E)
• W: Hale'iwa, Hawaii (21.59N, 158.12W)


• Geek Girl:
• N: Frankfurt Airport, Germany (50.05N, 8.57E)
• S: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• E: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• W: Kona Airport, Hawaii (19.74N, 156.04W)

I'm still the only Geek who has traveled south of the Equator, and none of us has yet visited Africa, Antarctica, or South America. Clearly we need to fix all these deficiencies soon. Should I tell Mama Geek that Geek Girl and I have already been discussing our next destination?

[Note: edited by Daddy Geek on 3 Jan 2013, 0711 EST, because Mama Geek reminded me she has also visited Taiwan.]