Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 29, 1993 TAG: 9305290145
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Jules Verne would have been proud of Richard Miller.
A latter-day Phineas Fogg, Miller left Blacksburg Wednesday on a trip that will take him around the world in 80 days.
When Miller, who just finished a doctorate in industrial engineering and a master's in business administration at Virginia Tech, was planning his journey, he didn't intend for it to last for such a literary number of days. It just turned out that way.
"I was adding up the number of days that I would be gone, and when I got down to the bottom I just laughed," said Miller, who hasn't read Verne's famous novel since he was a kid.
Still, Miller resembles Fogg.
"He was so exact that he was never in a hurry, was always ready, and was economical alike of his steps and his motions," Verne wrote about his character in 1873.
Miller, 27, is much the same, though he denies it.
"I'm not a meticulous person like Phineas Fogg. I tend to be running onto the train as it's moving out of the station," he said.
But he was so ready to go the day before he left that he had time to talk about his trip in his Blacksburg apartment, which was strewn with his supplies and equipment, with a map on the wall that uses string and tacks to show his route and destinations.
Inside his 55-pound backpack was evidence of his planning and travel experience. He has several travel books, but he will take with him only those sections he needs and he'll throw them away when he's through with them.
In Verne's novel, Fogg embarked on his trip on the spur of the moment, with little preparation. Miller obviously has invested hours of thought.
He's taking plenty of safety pins, "because safety pins can be used for anything," he said. And he has a detailed medicine and toiletry kit, including a toothbrush with its handle cut off to save room.
A friend sewed tabs onto his boots and towel so he can easily hang them on his pack. He attached Velcro in his pants pockets to ward off thieves. Velcro turns up in other places, too: on his flashlight so he won't lose it and on his electric razor so it won't be accidentally turned on.
He has traveler's checks, emergency credit and preprinted address stickers for the post cards he'll send his friends.
Miller spent $5,300 for plane tickets, $1,500 for startup equipment and has budgeted $81 a day for expenses.
He flew Wednesday from Roanoke to Lisbon, Portugal. From there it's Tunis, Istanbul, Cairo, Tel Aviv, Dubai, Bombay, New Delhi, Katmandu, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and, finally, on the 80th day on Aug. 8, San Francisco.
In several of those places he'll spend a week or more. "I'm trying to give myself enough freedom to take a few days off here and there."
He has to be back in the United States in mid-August to attend a friend's wedding, and he'll return not long after that to Blacksburg, where he is a computer consultant.
Miller, an Atlanta native who has traveled throughout Europe and the United States, doesn't know how he came up with the idea to go around the world.
Phineas Fogg went on his trip because his friends bet that he could not complete such an arduous and complicated undertaking in 80 days. Along the way, the peripatetic Englishman was pushed around by pachyderms, tossed by tempests and surprised by Sioux.
Miller's reasons for his trip, befitting the ease with which people travel today, may be more prosaic.
"It just came to me one day. To go around the world. That sounds like fun. I don't really know what kicked it off," he said. "My itinerary just happened to be right at 80 days. Since I first added it up, I've stuck to that 80-day thing."
Still, he knows his trip may be arduous and complicated, though he may not be confronted with jostling elephants, ocean storms or marauding Indians.
He'll have flights to meet and visas to obtain. He'll have to worry about where to sleep and what to eat, and how to maximize his scarce free time.
But other concerns, namely his airline reservations, are completed, thanks, he says, to the tireless efforts of his travel agent, Laura Spafford at Blacksburg's Travelmasters.
She worked with him for at least an hour a day, and she had to try to make his travel arrangements with little formal warning. Though Miller has been considering the trip for several months, he didn't begin making reservations until May 6, late in the game, Spafford said.
Miller will travel alone, though he will stay with friends in several of the places he will visit. The aloneness gave him trepidations the day before he left.
"That's the scary part. I'm a people person. I like being with lots of people," he said.
Although Miller doesn't know how he first got the idea for his trip, he does know what he wants to do.
"I want to see people I normally wouldn't see, and I want to understand cultures I normally wouldn't understand."
Traveling alone means he will have to keep an eye on his belongings, so that even taking a shower becomes a project that requires forethought. Traveling alone, too, is more expensive, and that means he will have to keep an eye on his money.
by CNB