Right: it's not specifically travel which brings out this response: it's whatever people don't know how to relate to. It's natural, it's normal, and most of us do it too--but not so much in response to someone saying they spent the last year on a motorbike.

I look at it this way: I'm nothing special. What I spent the last year doing is no more or less adventurous than what everyone else does from time to time: raise kids; suffer through deaths of parents or partners; get seriously diseased or injured; return to university to re-train at mid-life; get married or divorced.... Sometimes I can relate, but sometimes I can't, don't want to, or am afraid of getting sucked in by someone who can only talk about their own wondrous life (or terrible frustrations) without any give and take.

And along those lines and for whatever it's worth: I've met overland riders whom I've got no interest in discussing this with, despite their own apparent sense of overwhelming importance. Others I could spend weeks with, just comparing notes and trading stories. Basically, I'm not that interesting and neither are you...to a lot of people. Become more interesting and you'll get fewer thousand mile stares in response to whatever you say. Better yet, become more interested in whatever THEY have to tell, and most will become in response more interested in you.

Having said that, I'll retire into my boring, stuffy, sedate and predictable corner of the world now.

Mark