On the morning of May 24, 2007, the Queen Mary 2 chugged along at the stately pace of about five miles per hour over calm, groggy waters. Shortly after 5 a.m., it sailed under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and into New York Harbor. At that early hour, the water was already alive with barges, ferries, and tugs, and helicopters buzzed in from New Jersey, past the Statue of Liberty, and into Manhattan. Compared with the tumult that is Hong Kong Harbor, it all seemed quaint.

The late-spring smog smelled sweet and familiar. I walked down to the Britannia Dining Room, and as I gulped down a plate of bacon and eggs, I watched through a window as the ship backed into its berth in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I went up to my room, collected my bags, and walked over the gangway and onto North American ground once again.

After crossing three continents, two oceans, four seas, seven mountain ranges, and two deserts, I had drawn my line around the earth. The voyage had taken me through 11 countries, and I had, by my own rudimentary calculations, witnessed more than a thousand hours of unfolding geography, not one moment of which seemed slow. And so, after 28,041 miles of travel, I did something I had not done in 80 days.

I stopped.