Here's a NY Times on a Club that sounds much like the highpointers in its mission and passion:
The Circumnavigators Club, a group of globe-trotters that calls its meetings to order with a whale-tooth gavel brought back by William Jennings Bryan in the days when John Philip Sousa and Herbert Hoover were on its membership roster, turned 100 over the weekend.
The club was founded when people still marveled at Nellie Bly for shaving eight days off Jules Verne's notion of going around the world in 80. When the club was nine years old, one Circumnavigator beat Bly's time by nearly five weeks, finishing in 39 days. Two years later, another Circumnavigator, John Henry Mears, returned home in a straw hat and a bow tie after a mere 35 days, 21 minutes.
Fourteen years later, Lindbergh did it in 33 1/2 hours — the New York-to-Paris part. But he never joined the club. His famous solo flight did not qualify him. The club's main membership requirement is to cross every meridian while going in the same direction on a single trip. Or two trips, under what one club official called "the Magellan exception." After all, Magellan did not make it to the Pacific on the first try.
"If you travel with true travelers," said another Circumnavigator, Lee Barthel, of Farmington Hills, Mich., "you never have disasters. Their philosophy is, it could be worse, and other than major illness or death, everything else is interesting. My wife and I have agreed that there is a likelihood that one of us will expire while traveling, so whichever one it is, the survivor will get the body cremated and hopefully finish the trip."
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/09/nyregion/09CLUB.html
Club Page
http://www.circumnavigatorsclub.org/
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