One of the important lessons I learned from our around the world experience was to remain calm and act confident, even while fighting the urge to panic. Nowhere was this lesson more applicable than when I got caught drying my underwear with the hair dryer in the ladies' room at the Taipei International Airport. How I devolved from a cubicle-dwelling rocket scientist living the good life in Silicon Valley into the person drying his underwear in a ladies' restroom 16 time zones away is only one of many anecdotes from our experience.

In June, 2005 my wife and I packed up our home, bid our high-tech jobs adieu and set out with our two children, ages 8 and 11, to travel around the world. In the course of the next 52 weeks we crossed 24 time zones, visited 28 countries and experienced a lifetime of adventures.

Circumnavigating the globe, we cycled through Europe, felt the cold stare of a pride of lions in Africa and sailed the Yangtze River in China. Along the way we endured the emotional lows of broken bones and conquered the physical challenge of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in the Andes. We braved dangers from crossing the street in Phnom Penh to the relatively innocuous swimming with piranhas in the Amazon. When crossing the Bolivian salt flats we got stranded with no more than a bag of peanut M&Ms; how they saved us became a metaphor for how we needed to live when we re-entered suburban life.