Bethany’s younger brother just had his retreat, and she’d asked me if I could think of any man-to-man stuff that might not occur to a big sister. I marinated on it for a few days, and thought the results valuable enough to pass on to my younger brothers and to you.

1. Everything will be fine in the end, no matter what.

   You’re unbelievably lucky to have a family that will always be there for you. You have the ultimate freedom — no matter what you do, where you end up, or who you impregnate, you know your family will help support you. That’s one less set of worries attached to each risk you take. You owe it to yourself and to them to use it to your advantage.

2. Good stuff happens when you say yes.

   When confronted with an unexpected opportunity, I’m usually hesitant, even if only for a split second. Sometimes the decision is harder, and I think about it longer. When in doubt, do it. I’ve NEVER in all my life regretted taking the chance and doing something instead of nothing. Keep in mind that good stuff happens not only outside your place, but outside your comfort zone.

   On another note, if making a decision is taking a long time, it’s because the options are roughly equally good, meaning you’re likely to be satisfied with either option. Go for the more exciting one.

   Also, think about how you’ll look back on it 5 years from now. Will you regret not doing it and wish you had?

3. Don’t settle (in love or anything else).

   Many people end up entering or staying in relationships because they’re comfortable. Date as many people as you can so you have a good sense of what’s out there and what you want out of a partner. Do the same for situations, activities, anything.

4. Life is a value exchange.

   Value may seem like a hazy concept, but it flows all around us as we interact with others. Next time you’re talking to someone, ask yourself, “What value is each of us getting out of this?” People hang out with you because you provide value, like an awesome attitude, a great sense of humor, or knowledge of the coolest events. You derive value from them too. Jobs pay you because you create value by working, and they provide value in the money and perks they provide to facilitate your lifestyle .

   Being conscious of this and trying to maximize the value you provide will help you be a better friend, teammate, partner, employee, and person in general.

5. Don’t be afraid to start small.

   I spend a lot of time online, and there’s always something I want that doesn’t exist. Being a developer, I can usually just make it myself. All the mp3 players for blogs sucked, so I made a better one in a weekend. Now it’s been downloaded 60,000 times and people pay me (more than I make at my job) to customize it for them. I never imagined that would come from something so small.

   Jeff was working at a bulk coffee roaster where he received coffee shipments on pallets. The pallets would pile up, then he’d have to go out of his way to dispose of them, and he saw other companies in his industrial park had the same problem. He asked around and figured out he could charge a few dollars per pallet to remove them, then he could sell them to someone else for a few dollars more. The few businesses around his office would make him around $400 a month. If that situation existed everywhere, he could service a few areas and have a solid business. If it only existed there, he’d be one step closer to supporting himself independently with multiple little businesses.

   Maybe you’re looking for a club at school and it doesn’t exist. Start it! Shayen loves acrobatic yoga and juggling, so he started a “circus arts” get-together on Sundays behind Barton Springs in Austin. Now hundreds of people come, DJs spin, and it’s a huge party with all the things he loves.

   Starting small is satisfying in and of itself and can lead to big things. Also, not everything you’re going to do will be successful, so (like dating) it’s best to start getting a feel for what works and what doesn’t as soon as possible.

6. Set goals, no matter how loose.

   Anderson was sleeping on the futon for a couple months while he saved up for a van in which he’d live and travel the country. Without concentrating on the timeline, he’d save a little here and make something happen there. He bought a van on the exact day he’d originally intended without realizing it.

   When I visited Rachel last year, San Francisco just felt right. Ready for a change after ten years in Austin, I half-decided to come out for a few months and give it a try. Though there was little conviction and no conscious effort, I eventually found myself speeding toward California exactly when I’d said I would.

   Your goals won’t magically manifest Secret-style, but you’ll subconsciously move toward the plans you keep in the back of your mind. Keep something good back there.

Just down the alley from Vegan Healing Cafe, there’s a huge MontBell filled with all sorts of outdoor gear. You don’t hear much about them stateside unless you read Mark Verber’s excellent rundown on outdoor clothing and footwear, but in Japan they’re the most popular outfitter.

One evening the skies opened up during dinner, so I stopped in to pick up some pants. Preferring to keep weight and space to a minimum, I asked if they had any pants made of Gore-Tex Paclite.

Gore-Tex is available in a few different weights, Paclite being at the minimal end of the spectrum. The salesman told me all they had was XCR, designed for extreme and prolonged water exposure. That’s all well and good, but it’s much heavier and much less breathable than Paclite.

The price of the XCR pants was very good, so I asked if it’d be possible to order Paclite. It wasn’t, and the salesman explained that XCR was much more durable. That wasn’t news to me, and everyone loves Paclite, so why not offer it?

“Japanese will not buy it if it won’t last forever.”

That’s why I have ridiculous neon blue XCR rain pants.

It was my shoes. At each stage the police glance over the runners to make sure they’re properly equipped, trying to prevent idiots from increasing the fatality count. My Five Fingers hadn’t failed me over five months and eleven countries, but I wasn’t running on this lady’s watch.

All this for nothing? I feverishly tried to explain in my rough Spanish that these were running shoes… people run marathons in these! I’ve run marathons in these! They’re specially made for running?

She grabbed another policeman and together they forced me out through the double fences bordering the path the bulls would take.

I sprinted to another entry point and tried to get in, but another cop pushed me out violently and told me I was too late. I ran to find another but couldn’t. How could I tell people I’d been to Pamplona but hadn’t run?

Then it occurred to me — I could just run the next day.

That morning I picked up some $30 running shoes and met two Lithuanian running partners at the internet cafe. Only one was going to run, but it didn’t take us long to convince the other to sack up.

Ty gave me some invaluable tips. He’d stuck to the right and was pushed up against the wall as the bulls passed, safely insulated by a few layers of people but disappointingly out of reach.

We arrived a little earlier in case something went wrong so we’d have plenty of time to move to another stage. Running on a Saturday meant tons more people — it was starting to get packed, and when the rockets signaling the bulls’ release were fired the crowd started to sway back and forth.

The police set us free to start running. The crowd was thick and moving slowly, but we still reached the next stage before the bulls and became part of an even larger crowd as we waited.

At this rate I’d never get close to a bull. I looked behind me and saw some Spanish guys stretching. They looked like they knew what they were doing.

I walked back to them and watched them warm up, expecting the bulls to round the corner any second. After a minute or so, the cheering started. People packing the balconies above us were looking back expectantly.

Then everyone started to run.

You’re much more likely to trip over a person than a bull is to trip over you, but by then most of the people were way ahead of us.

The bulls largely stick to the left side, so if you stay right you’re less likely to get stuck or trampled. Though touching the bulls is officially discouraged, it’s what everyone’s trying to do, me included, so I stayed just right of center.

It wasn’t scary when the first group appeared behind me to my left. Everyone had told me how huge they were (almost as tall as me — six feet) and I’d seen them fly by the day before. The field was open enough that I could have dodged out of the way if necessary, and the bulls seemed to be pretty set on their path.

As the second one passed me I leaned left and touched his flank. We’d come up on a slight turn that would put the next group on the right side, so I veered left and put out my hands to keep from tripping over the people in front of me.

The next group passed and I reached out again to touch another along his back. They were running twice as fast as I was.

Probably because I wasn’t on the receiving end of any horns, they didn’t seem particularly violent or malicious. Just your average group of bulls trying to get from point A to point B, though they did trample a dude or two while I followed them.

Only 30 seconds after we’d started running, we ran through the gates and into the arena, another group of bulls seconds behind us. If we’d entered before any of the bulls, the crowd would have booed us as cowards.

We waited along the sides as the rest of the bulls and steers ran through the arena and into the holding cell. Usually you wait a few minutes for a young bull with blunted horns to be released to play with the runners.

As they went to close the gates, I slipped out at the last second and stepped into the streets. I had an 8:45 bus to catch to Barcelona.

I ran with the bulls. I even touched two of the 1600-pound monsters, just a slip away from injury by horn or hoof. No falls, no cuts, no bruises.

Too bad, really… I’d love to be able to show off a scar on my forearm and tell how I got it running with the bulls in Pamplona on a trip around the world.

Because it’s the last running train in Cambodia. Because it’s packed with locals transporting fruit to the capital. Because you can ride on the roof!

The train from Battambang to Phnom Penh used to run three times a week, but these days goes just once on Sunday. We took a taxi 150 km for the privilege.

When the lady changing money outside the station (who gave me an unbelievably fair rate) needed more Rial, she picked up her cell phone, and within one minute three dudes swooped in on motorbikes from separate directions and handed her huge wads of cash.

$1 is worth roughly 4000 Rial, and the biggest bill is the 10,000 note, so your pockets fill up quickly. In exchange for a guaranteed seat, foreigners are charged roughly 5x the normal rate. Even so, it was only $6.

We loaded up into the last car and spaced out the seats, which had been detached from the floor and stacked in a pile.

Wandering through the other cars, most of the seats were occupied by durians, lychees, bags of charcoal, and the women transporting them. The only men on the train were the railway police.

As the train left the station, the overgrown tree limbs on either side of the train started scraping along the train and snapping into the open windows. They say the last maintenance on the track was 8 years ago.

Having read about the roof, I headed up the ladder between cars. Rice paddies and fields stretched as far as I could see, mountains on the horizon. Some kids had clambered up after me. Ty saw my shadow and came up a few minutes later.

Soon everyone was up and enjoying the morning sun. We jumped from car to car, thinking of Indiana Jones.

The train bounced and rocked from side to side, but at the 17 km/hr top speed (Ty measured with GPS) we kept our footing even on the roof. Then the train stopped.

We looked around — no station in sight.

All the men congregated in front of our car, which had somehow gotten enough air to jump the next one’s bumper.

One of the guys tried in vain to separate them and they radioed the locomotive to try starting quickly and jerking them apart. No sweat. The train rolled on, past paddies, villages, and some of the cutest kids we’d ever hope to see.

It moved so slowly that we couldn’t resist jumping out and running next to the train. Outrunning it wasn’t hard and the kids joined in.

As we left Pursat, one of the policemen asked us to move to the next car “for our safety,” though seats among the durians and dragonfruits were scarce.

After we’d moved up, I glanced back toward our previous seats and saw logs filling up the now-empty car. Safety, huh?

Nori, aka bamboo trains, are little cars rigged up using spare tank parts, train axles, bamboo, and go-kart engines. Since the tracks are essentially unused, villagers travel and carry cargo with nori. And now one was behind our train, offloading logs into our former digs WHILE WE WERE MOVING!

Didn’t get a photo, but here’s what they look like.

One after the other, four of these things stacked high with wood pulled up to the back of the train to make a contribution. That was just the beginning.

When we pulled into the next village, there were huge stacks of logs everywhere and a lot of eager-looking people . The second we stopped, they started loading into the boxcar, on the flat car, into our old car, and on the roof! The women seemed to be doing most of the work as usual.

Though we were already hours behind schedule at this point, the train started before the wood loaders had finished. They hustled to get the last few logs stacked up. I’m proud to say moving trains have never kept me from my wood loading either.

We also had to watch out for the fruit. Bags full of it would appear in the windows, passed up by old ladies that could break Ty in half.

This repeated itself for every stop in the next few hours until the train was packed to the gills.

The sun started to set, so we went back up top and found the wood guys perched on their stacks. The paddies reflected everything.

Back in the cars, everyone was getting into sleeping position. The kid next to me curled up on a bag of charcoal. The woman on the other side climbed into her hammock.

Ty strung his up and made a hilarious contraption with cot poles. If he’d fallen, it would have been into a load of durian. I put mine safely out of range and locked myself in with a carabiner.

When we stopped around 5 am, the sun was coming up and the wood and fruit were being unloaded. Another hour and change and we were rolling into Phnom Penh.

Houses (using the term loosely) line the railway, and people were out bright and early eating and walking around.

A full 24 hours after we’d left Battambang, we rolled into the station for an average speed just over 12 km/hr.

It felt like we saw a lot of the Cambodian spectrum, going between its two biggest cities and seeing the towns, villages, and people in between. Traveling overland here may be a little short on comfort, but you’ll see things you wouldn’t have by air, bus, or car.

The train and track have been deteriorating steadily for years, so if you’re in the area and on the fence, go for it. If the holes in the roof, walls, and floor are any indicator, one of these days it’s going to fall apart. Hope you catch it before that.

Heather lived on our floor. She was pretty attractive, but there was something a little off about her… maybe “skeezy” is the right word. Enough that when she’d bounce into my room and plant herself in my 17 year-old virgin lap, I’d complain loudly instead of rejoicing in my good luck.

There was the time she ran in asking if I had a credit card. Yeah, why?

“There are some pictures of me on the Internet!”

“I’m not paying for it, but maybe we can find them anyway. What site?”

“Playboy!”

Sure enough, we found ‘em… The Girls of Spring Break.

(click for the full picture – opens in new window)

After a handful of similar instances, we were pretty sure she was pretty promiscuous. As adolescent males, sorting this out was high on the priority list.

This was about the time Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboards were super popular, so to prove our theory we came up with the ultimate test. Call her as “Tyrone,” a guy purporting to have met her at a party and try to cajole her into committing to sex.

Dan had the the best voice for Tyrone. He was my first college roommate, and undoubtedly the most hilarious guy I’ve ever met. He was crazy, uninhibited, genius, impulsive, manic… he was the kind of person you aspire to be.

We all crowded into my room and I rigged up a contraption and taped it to my cellphone. Luckily only Dan Tyrone could hear Heather’s responses through the headphones, otherwise there’s no way we would have been able to stay quiet.

Notice how many times the conversation could have derailed. What a badass!

Heather & Tyrone 1
fontwhorecom-heathertyrone1.mp3

Heather & Tyrone 2
fontwhorecom-heathertyrone2.mp3

“Says who?” pretty much settles it.

Here’s a little bonus. Dan called another time as Travis, a guy down the hall we were pretty sure was hitting it on a regular basis. Poor Travis was forced to whisper because his roommate was asleep. Heather told him coming over wasn’t a good idea at the moment. One of her friends was coming over.

Not to worry — Travis has a solution.

Heather & Travis
fontwhorecom-heathertravis.mp3

Maybe we should make a Dan/Tyrone soundboard.