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I found this daily program from my QE2 voyage at the end of MariesWorldTour.com. The ship brought me home, but in exchange, I had to buy new clothes and give a lecture on my year-long round-the-world trip. Okay, they didn't say that I HAD to buy new clothes, but the person I was dealing with thought it was probably a good idea given that I'd worn the same few things for for about six months. (I had a different same few things for the first half of the year and had refitted in Berlin in June.)

I had walking pneumonia with added phlegm benefits, but somehow delivered a lecture successful enough to be repeated on a loop on the ship's video system for the next 24 hours. Total strangers kept walking up to me and giving me their opinion of my escapades.

"Bet they don't have laundromats like this in Uzbekistan," said a man in the laundry room.

"That was the most extemporaneous lecture I've ever seen," said a man in the hallway. I had to look up extemporaneous later.

"What a great step for women's lib," said two women at a cocktail party.

But the oddest was this (bear in mind that I was 35 years old at the time):

"That was a very impressive trip. I mean, in some ways, I think you're a naive little girl who took a lot of risks. Your parents must have been worried sick. But what an impressive trip."