OH, THE PLACES HE’S GONE!

Brad Bergman isn’t traveling, finally.

He sits statue still on a February morning at a restaurant’s table in his native Wilmette. The 58-year old, who had visited the United States’ other 49 states before graduating from New Trier Township High School in 1984, retired from a career in finance at the age of 39—39!— and has essentially been lapping the annual miles logged by the Harlem Globetrotters every year since.

Last year Bergman traveled to his 100th country (Turkmenistan) in the month Americans consume more turkey on a certain day than in the other 364 days combined.

“I’m off to Yemen tomorrow,” he says.

Or country No. 101.

There’s at least one country in the world that begins with every letter of the alphabet except for “X.” Before his trip to Yemen, Bergman needed only a “Y” to complete the 25-pack. He’d first heard of the traveler’s Alphabet while conversing with a Canadian Mountie on a “chicken bus” trip from Guatemala to Belize in April 2019. Bergman’s “D” was Djibouti and he spent a night in a yurt in his “K,” Kyrgyzstan.

“Find me a country (that starts with “X”) and I’ll go,” he writes in one of his snappy, entertaining Trip Notes to friends and family. “Until then, I guess, it’s Xi’an, China.”

Bergman, you’re thinking, must have been an adventurous, curiouser-than-George lad. He wasn’t. He mowed grass, shoveled snow, participated in track and field at New Trier, and “taped up half of the school’s varsity football team” as a volunteer assistant athletic trainer.

“I was a pretty normal kid,” says Bergman, who’s single and owns a place in Wilmette and an abode in Lincoln Park. “Our family, we’d go on vacations just like everybody else did. My senior year in high school we visited Europe. My dad (the late Richard, an accountant) once took me to Indiana to visit a U.S. Steel plant.

“I retired in 2005 because I wanted to do stuff, and I didn’t want having to work to be my excuse for not doing stuff, for not traveling.”

Bergman didn’t start small as a rookie retiree, sailing from Bermuda to Palma, Mallorca, via the Azores. To date he has traveled 33,076 nautical miles. His longest duration at sea: 21 days, 12 hours, 9 minutes, 18 seconds. And no, a buddy holding a stopwatch didn’t accompany Bergman at sea.

It’s likely nobody along the North Shore knows the value of travel better than Bergman does. It’s why, several years ago, he presented his sister’s son, Richard, with an opportunity to escape the U.S. for two months of education and enlightenment. Uncle Brad would pay for the flights as long as Richard— then a recent high school graduate, bound for Indiana University—would plan the entire trip, from jet bridge to jet bridge, with some stipulations: choose non- English-speaking countries and/ or non-Christian countries and absorb the cost of his share of food, lodging, and activities.

Richard was in. All in.

The pair started in Costa Rica for two weeks and visited Dubai for four days. Then it was off to Sri Lanka for a few weeks, followed by stops in China and Japan.

“Teens become self-sufficient through travel experiences,” Bergman says. “Putting them in unfamiliar situations, or out of their comfort zones, helps them grow. Richard hadn’t selected Sri Lanka in his original proposed itinerary. His annoying uncle—that would be me—called for revisions to the draft.

“You know what Richard told me after we left Sri Lanka? He said, ‘That was awesome!’”

Niece Rebecca was next, in the summer of 2022. The future Michigan State University freshman joined her uncle for journeys to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, India, and Uganda, among other destinations, from June 7 to August 6. They took a gorilla trekking tour somewhere on the planet and none of the apes resembled Roddy McDowall.

“Being immersed in this travel experience allowed us to concentrate and focus on the situation, learning, developing skills, and understanding cultures and customs,” Bergman writes in a Trip Note. “We did not dip a toe into the foreign travel experience; we stood at the edge of the proverbial pool and dove into the deep end, and she quickly and easily learned the backstroke.

“In fact,” he continues, “she is already planning her next adventure, visiting the Seven Wonders of the World (she has already seen three of them).”

Another niece, Elise, is firming up the details of her proposed itinerary for Uncle Brad as you read this. Countries in the Balkans are high on her Where I Want To Go Before I Become a College Freshman list.

Bergman went to the University of Iowa and earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1988. Eight years later he got his MBA—with concentrations in Finance, Accounting, Economics, International Business, and Policy Studies—at the University of Chicago.

“The most impactful class I took at New Trier was a business one, freshman year,” Bergman recalls. “I learned all about stocks and bonds. My father, in addition to urging me to be a good person, stressed the importance of being financially prudent.”

During his college summers, Bergman served as a camp counselor and a maintenance worker for the Wilmette Park District. He also umpired when a scheduled umpire didn’t show up. Shifts from 8 a.m.-9 p.m.? Bergman didn’t mind them. Didn’t mind walking to Wilmette Federal Bank to deposit his paychecks, either. In 1987, in the summer before his senior year at Iowa, he landed a primo internship with the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago.

First National Bank of Chicago hired Bergman as a planning analyst in June 1998. His final post at JP Morgan Chase was VP, in 2005.

Goodbye, business suits. Hello, safari helmets and rain pants.

“I was in Thailand once, just outside an open-air temple, when I saw the King of Thailand get out of a gold Rolls Royce,” Bergman says. “He then entered the temple for what I later found out was a graduation ceremony for monks.

“I tried to get in but was told by a guard that I couldn’t because I was wearing shorts. I’d packed a pair of rain pants. I put them on. I was then allowed to enter.”

Minutes after sharing that anecdote, the Traveling Man vacates his chair at the restaurant. It’s time to move again. It’s time to pack again.

Yemen is on his mind.