Four laps around the planet, or one long-haul relationship with your own luggage: the 100,000 miles project is my ongoing “what the hell am I doing with my life?” benchmark: a mix of flights, trains, cabs, and long urban walks where Google Maps insists you’re already inside your destination while you’re clearly still dodging delivery scooters. It’s my ongoing experiment in staying mentally awake in a world that keeps trying to sedate us with push notifications, Teams meeting in lobbies, beige PowerPoints, and corporate platitudes. It’s my road -or rail, or air – to wisdom. A continuous lap around the globe, powered by the slightly desperate energy of a midlife brain that stubbornly refuses to slow down.
Why 100,000 miles? Because that’s enough to meet fascinating strangers, argue with brilliant friends, see the future being sketched ion obscure podia or in hotel conference rooms… and still have time to get lost looking for the station exit.
Why 42 lessons? Because Douglas Adams was right: the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42. And because after 100,000 miles, you realise most advice is arbitrary anyway, so you might as well choose a number with some cosmic comedy.
I’ve been doing this dance for years, collecting stories like boarding passes. Some are shiny. Some smell faintly of diesel. All are true:
1. Planes are overrated. All they do is feed you reheated pasta or suspicious chicken and keep you hostage in a throbbing metal tube full of recycled farts.
2. Parisian waiters are not rude. They’re just tragically overqualified actors forced into dinner theatre, playing “arrogant” because it’s in the script. They still think Napoleon won the war.
3. The real French hospitality test isn’t the restaurant: it’s the parking garage. You’ll pay €37 for the privilege of losing your car in a concrete labyrinth designed by someone who hated joy. And Cars. And You.
4. Trains in Europe arrive exactly on time. Always. Unless you have a meeting.
5. Hotel showers are an IQ test. One tap does temperature, the other does pressure, and one of them will ruin your morning. They are never truly compatible with the shampoo aka shoe shine cream.
6. Luggage wheels have a lifespan measured in seconds after the warranty expires.
7. French people don’t queue. They form social clouds that somehow deliver everyone to the front at the same time.
8. Wi-Fi on public transport is an expensive marketing hallucination.
9. Your carry-on bag is your entire personality. Treat it well.
10. Hotel breakfast buffets are anthropology in action. Come early, leave late.
11. Always eat where the staff eats. Even if it’s down a suspicious alley. Especially if it’s down a suspicious alley.
12. People who say “I love to travel” have never sprinted through Frankfurt airport with a backpack, laptop, and 11 minutes to connect.
13. Train station coffee is proof that civilisation is fragile.
14. The fastest way to make friends in a foreign city is to get lost and ask a local. The fastest way to make enemies is to ask a Parisian taxi driver for “the scenic route.”
15. Airports are all the same. Except for the toilets. Those are wildly different.
16. The later flight will be cancelled. Take the early one.
17. In Paris, a “short walk” means 4km. Uphill.
18. Business class is wasted if you can’t sleep.
19. The only universal language is complaining about traffic.
20. Google Translate is amazing. Until you accidentally order a plate of hot rubber ducks.
21. Car rental insurance is where joy goes to die.
22. The most important skill on the road? The fake “I totally understand what you just said” nod.
23. Jetlagged speeches are either genius or career-ending. No middle ground.
24. No matter where you go, there’s always one guy in a suit and great corporate hair yelling into his phone about “deliverables.”
25. Street food is always worth the risk if you carry Imodium in industrial quantities
26. Never schedule a call for “when I land.”
27. Parking in Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, New York or Austin is less about space and more about imagination.
28. Local beer tastes better. Even if it’s awful.
29. Train strikes are the weather of the transport world: inevitable, unpredictable, and always “starting tomorrow.” (except in France, where it is “right now”)
30. Never trust the phrase “short security line.”
31. Some of the best travel memories are the ones you didn’t post.
32. Always carry cash. Especially if you’re buying gelato from a guy who doesn’t own a till.
33. People are mostly kind. Except the one guy in 14B.
34. Shoes are the difference between “charming stroll” and “blood sport.”
35. The taxi driver’s view of the economy is often more accurate than the keynote speaker’s.
36. The best view in any city is from a rooftop bar you can’t afford.
37. Nobody remembers the PowerPoint. They remember the joke you told in slide 7.
38. You don’t really know a city until you’ve taken its public transport at rush hour.
39. Travel is 30% movement, 70% waiting.
40. Your phone will always run out of battery at the exact moment you need the boarding pass.
41. Platinum frequent flyer status only impresses people who also have it. The people you meet matter more than the miles you log.
42. In the end, 100,000 miles is just numbers. The real value is in the moments between destinations: the weird, chaotic, human stuff you can’t put in a loyalty program.
#100000miles #42lessons #dannythingsyoumightunderstand
