MEANDER - Maphead - page 112

al. They are voyagers of the suburban strip mall, pathfinders of the parking lot. But they
take their obsession no less seriously. Holden once ate at forty-five Detroit-area McDon-
ald's in a single day (his standard order is two Big Macs, but on marathon days, he'll settle
foradietsodaorapacketofMcDonaldlandcookiestosaveforlater.) Adocumentary about
Winter's lonely crusade shows him living out of his car and even sucking spilled coffee
out of his grimy cup holder at one point, because he'll check off a Starbucks only once he
finishes the drink he buys.
Dr. Alan Hogenauer, a former airline executive and tourism marketing consultant, has
coined the name “systematic travel” for this kind of geographic completism and teaches
the concept to his travel and tourism students at Loyola Marymount. There's no question
that he practices what he preaches. His website lists no less than 396 different checklists
he's either working on or has completed. He's most famous for being the first person ever
to visit every site in the national park system, * but he's also visited all eleven parishes of
Barbados, all thirty “Historic Houses of Worship” in the city of Philadelphia, all fifty-one
weather stations in Thailand, and every U.S. presidential birthplace. At this point he's re-
sorted to inventing new things he can count, as I learn when I track him down days after
a weekend jaunt to Casablanca. “That gave me Africa in January,” he explains proudly.
“Now I have all seventy-two 'continent-months': visiting some point in every continent in
every calendar month.”
TwomapshanginHogenauer'sofficeatLoyola,neatlydisplayinghistravelhistorywith
pushpins and intricate webs of string. The tangle is so dense over much of the world, like
North America, that he can't add new routes anymore. He insists that checklists are just a
means to an end, an excuse to explore. “Look, if I'd helicoptered into every national park,
I wouldn't have enjoyed it. But by going to each one, and finding out how to get there, and
linking it to everything else, and seeing things along the way, they seem much more real.”
But I'm accustomed by now to place collectors protesting, methinks, a little too much.
They all downplay the appeal of the checklist itself, but having a system is clearly a very
real source of pleasure for these people. Otherwise, why wouldn't you chuck the list at
some point and just go wherever the hell you felt like? Part of it is simply the universal
smug thrill of crossing something off a to-do list, of course. And Hogenauer says that fin-
ishing a checklist is even better. “You recognize things in their entirety. If you can say
you'vegotonehundredpercentofsomethinginyourbackground,youdon'thavetoworry
that you missed out on something.”
The checklist ensures novelty and breadth of experience as well. The specter of mor-
tality, the awareness of limited time, seems always to be with these systematic travelers,
especially the older ones. Hogenauer tells the story of working at his first job, for Ma Bell,
withanoldercoworkerwhohadelaborate planstofinally seetheworldwithhiswifeupon
retiring. She died the very day he retired. “The look on that guy's face!” he remembers