Why Ostia Antica is Epic

About a thirty minute train ride from the main train depot in Rome, lies an almost unused station.  This station is a stop or two before a much nicer and well policed station for Ostia, which is an awesome little tourist/beach area that allows for people to take a quick dip to escape some of the summer heat.  If the beach is the playground for any sane person during a hot Roman summer, Ostia Antica is where the history nerds conglomerate.  While most of the train system in and around Rome leaves a lot to be desired, Ostia Antica station takes the cake.  Nothing says public transit like crumbling bricks, random dogs, and an abundance of plants growing where they probably were not intended on the architectural proposal.  

Besides the absolutely crappy greeting, you are met with one of about two people you will see on your day trip to this location.  The first will be an overly surly ticket taker.  This person only exists to charge you a small amount of money and get mad if you do not have the exact amount needed.  They have realized that they have reached their pinnacle in life and have decided to take it out on the dozen or so tourists that venture into their realm daily.  The second is the depressing graduate student who hovers near the entrance offering tid-bits of knowledge to try and get you to buy a tour.  I am sure the tour is very enlightening, but when you have to start a conversation with some sort of teaser and then leave a person hanging for the answer unless they pay you, you are just an asshole.  It felt like those infomercials out of Starship Troopers that always ended with "would you like to know more?" 

After you meet these two people, paying off the first and ditching the other like a chump, you are free to do anything you want.  There are no rules.  It is basically free access to an open archaeological pit, where everything is still exposed, the ruins date back 2,000 years, and no one is there to yell at you for running.  If you have ever been scolded in a museum or display for wanting to touch an object, this place is your chance to get even.  Touch everything!  Climb shit!  Sit on everything!  Why not?

Totally Touched Everything!

Sure, you should probably not touch everything, but no one is going to yell at you!  It is your chance.  This is your moment, live!

Just do your best to not go too nuts on touching things.  There are a multitude of reasons to keep your hands a bit in check.  The first is that you totally can wander into an old Roman communal bathroom.  I do not care if it has not been used for 2,000 years, no way in hell I am going to be touching that!  I highly doubt they had bleach back then.  The second is that most countries really lack in a few safety codes.  Now of course, you are walking around old ruins, so parts of them might be a bit dangerous or just on the slightly unstable side normal.  Much like the author of this blog.  Slightly on the unstable side or normal.  Sorry, I digress...

  Seems Safe...

Also, take note of the fact that open archaeological pits do exist.  Yes, they are calling for you to play with them.  Enjoy.  

Also Seems Safe

Besides all of the amazing things you can see explore, you can also get some feel of how people lived a few thousand years ago.  Explore an amphitheater, walk through a few houses, explore some alleyways, and realize that people back then were not much different than we are today.  Smellier, yes, but other than that, just the same.  Also, just like today, people loved leaving major appliance that they were no longer using in the front yard...

First Century Slobs

So, the moral of the story is this, clean up your damn yard.  Two thousand years from now, do you want your house to be remembered by some asshole college grad students for being the place that has two rusted cars, and an old washing machine in the front yard?  If you are reading this blog, that answer is obviously yes.  Welcome to the club.

Roman Colosseum - Paying is for Chumps

No trip to Rome is complete without paying homage to that great iconic landmark.  I am sure that everyone, when they think about Rome, can only think about one thing - Russell Crowe in armor fighting and (spoiler alert) saving the Republic.  Also there is a pretty big stone oval thingy that happens to be right in the middle of the city.  It has a train stop named after it, so you cannot miss it.  

Save the Republic Maximus!

Photo Credit 1

You exit the station (Colosseo, if memory serves me correctly), walk across the street, and you are there.  There is a massive stone structure in front of you that must have looked amazing before various armies and the Catholic Church ripped a lot of the statues and facade off of it to decorate bathrooms or gardens or some shit.  

Walk from the "M" to the "pin"

Upon walking across the street, you are immediately faced with a line.  Yes, it is like Disneyland, but the characters are a whole lot cooler!  This is your chance to make a choice - wait in this line:

Well, let's see what choice two is...

Photo Credit 2

You could also pay a ticket scalper to cut the line and go with his "tour group".  This is as sketchy as it sounds.  There will be people walking up and down the line, in very heavily accented English, informing you that the line is multiple hours long and you can go with them... for a fee.  Now, if you are pressed for time and have more money than sense, sure.  Enjoy the tour, but know you got taken for a ride. 

We waited for "hours" which was much closer to about 15 minutes.  Pretty sure those scalpers exaggerated just a little bit for dramatic flair.  Basically that line exists only to take your money at the entrance and allow you in.  I am very doubtful that there is some sort of fire code for this building which would limit the amount of people who can enter.  I mean it is made of stone, right?

The best part is the entertainment while you are in line waiting to fork over your cold hard Euros. 

Romans Pretending to be Romans...

Photo Credit 3

Throughout the wait, you are plagued with offers to take pictures with "authentic" Roman soldiers.  You will see soldiers with beer bellies, soldiers who are very clearly not roman, soldiers in plastic helmets, soldiers smoking Marlboro's, soldiers making cell phone calls, and soldiers who are hopefully off-duty and drinking.  If you have seen that episode of Friends where Joey is heading to Las Vegas to make a movie but ends up working at a casino, it is much more accurate to this situation.

Authentic

Photo Credit 4

Of course, after such a wait, you can only hope that you will walk out of a darkened tunnel, right when some gladiator is finishing off some poor sap and Tarantino-esque blood spray is going everywhere.  It is more likely that they will be setting up for a benefit concert or something on the far end of the stadium while some misinformed Christian group is bemoaning the loss of "Christian lives" in this location.  Sadly, they don't quite ever realize that Christians were killed over at the Circus Maximus, but hey, everyone needs a forum to rant.  Get it? Forum?  Roman Forum?  Ok, this post is done.

Feeling Like Gladiator had a bit of C.G.I.

Photo Credit 1: http://photos.wikimapia.org/p/00/02/08/72/04_big.jpg

Photo Credit 2: http://www.adagiotours.net/images/colosseum.line.jpg

Photo Credit 3:  http://regiondo.net/media/catalog/product/cache/3/image/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/t/i/ticket-image-11392729078-cropped500-290/colosseum-forum--palatine-tour-of-rome-397ba.jpg
Photo Credit 4: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a4/50/b8/a450b880d1e3c8ba6a84f7f805d2407b.jpg

Red Light District in Rome

Jet lag encourages stupid behavior.  After traveling from California to New York, not sleeping for a night, then on to Heathrow, and finally to Rome, we were tired.  Damn tired.  We also had no clue what we were doing, spoke no Italian, and in retrospect were completely unprepared for our two week trip to Rome and the surrounding countryside.

We had had almost no sleep for at least two days, and made the mistake of landing sometime in the mid-morning.  What a bad decision.  Now, when faced with situations like this you can make one of two choices:

Choice number one: Pass out for 24 hours of dreamless coma-like sleep

Pros: 

Rest

Wake up at 2am and talk to vagrants outside the hotel until sunrise.

Less chance of hallucinations

Cons:

You paid for this trip

Dammit, each day costs money!

Less chance of hallucinations

Choice number two: Suck it up and get caffeinated

Pros: 

More cost-effective than methamphetamine

Explore a new city

Teach your mind/body who is in charge

Cons:

Less rational

Poor decision making skills

Less effective in ordering caffeine due to language barrier.

Of course we decided to explore.  We made the fateful decision to jump on a bus and just end up wherever we got off of the bus.  

When someone who looks like this is making decisions, you can be sure that you are in for an adventure.

  Classy

So, here we are on a bus, barreling through the streets of Rome, without enough combined brain-cells to figure out where we are headed.  Seems like a fantastic idea, right?  Of course it was!  We end up at the end of the line, the station that no tourists should end up at.  I am sure anyone who has gotten off public transportation in the wrong neighborhood can understand... you need to find a new bus, and fast. 

That being said, we also discovered Rome has a rather large transient population, and in our beleaguered state, we are sure that we looked like mobile A.T.M.s.  The best part of the whole situation is that we would have had no clue how to even yell for the police.  I am pretty sure that if I were to just start yelling something in Spanish, but with a Marlon Brando sort of accent.

 Please-o, No Stab-o!

Photo Credit 1

Granted, most of Rome appears to be a very safe and well policed city.  This might have been more due to the fact that we were there when a President of the United States of America was going to be meeting with the Pope, but who knows?  

Needless to say, as you are surely able to guess, we managed to extricate ourselves from certain missing kidneys and wallet lightening, and somehow find a way in our sleep deprived state back to our hotel area.  I sure would like to say that we can attribute our escape to some knowledge of ninjitsu or other amazingly effective martial art.  It is probably more likely that no one wanted any of our organs.  I am glad that this has become a noticeable theme while traveling, hopefully one that I am able to retain for many years to come. 

There must be some form of black market for ginger kidneys?

Photo Credit 1: http://winecurmudgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Godfather-Marlon-Brando.jpg

Number Two Pigs (Warning: Not for Vegetarians)

This will be an explicit post.  I did have pictures of this process, but we lost that memory card somewhere between the packing of our bags and our adventure in the station wagon to the airport.

Again, if you are against the idea of killing and consuming animals or descriptions of how it is done in other countries, I would just skip this post.  

You have been warned.

You will see text in red telling you where to stop reading if you wish to skip the graphic material, and then in green when it is over.  The explicit text is also smaller so that you can skip through it faster if you so choose.

As I learned while I was in Samoa, pigs are purchased based on a certain number system.  The larger the number, the larger the size of the pig.  Of course, this could be totally incorrect information as I am sure there was also a degree of joking around that might have gotten lost in the language barrier, but for the sake of this blog post, we will assume that everything can be taken at face value.  

We had ventured down to Samoa for a ceremony that was to feature my wife and her sister.  This ceremony was to prove to be an adventure by itself.  We spent about three days preparing for the arrival of some very important people and just about everyone in the surrounding village.  This of course meant lots and lots of food. 

For most Americans, this would mean that a morning trip to Costco followed by an afternoon trip to Wal Mart to buy all of the needed items.  Samoa of course operates under a bit of a different idea.  We first had to venture to some sort of warehouse in downtown Apia to buy things in bulk.  We needed to buy noodles.  If I have ever seen what I would picture a black-market stock room would look like, it would be this place.  We entered through a side door and went up to a counter.  Behind the counter were cubby-holes that went all the way to the top of what must have been a 15-20 foot ceiling, each labeled with a number and holding an example of the product one could purchase in the cubby.  We found what we needed, ordered a quantity, and waited.  While we waited, goods came and went, pallets were brought in and large quantities of unknown goods were loaded in the back of trucks, all under the watchful eye of a man who was both very interested in his clip-board and his cigarettes.  Soon thereafter we were beckoned around the side where someone brought us what we had ordered.  It was like someone had taken an old Sears catalog, filed it via picture, and then had some very sketchy looking person running the operation who might take your kidneys.  Needless to say, it was amazing.  Also I was terrified to take a picture.  Sorry, but some pictures are just not worth the risk.  God only knows where my organs would be right now if I had tried...

Next was the fish market.  Fish, on tables, with only the slightest hint of ice.  Each person had about four or five fish in front of them, on a sloped and tiled surface with long troughs that led to drains.  Each fish was just slightly chilled, and you spent a lot of time inspecting and haggling over a price.  We purchased two tunas that were about 100 pounds pounds of cumulative weight for the price of about $30.  Not a bad deal if I do say so myself.  Pretty sure I got taken to the cleaners.

Then came the more difficult items.  

The morning before the ceremony, a truck pulled up to the house. On board this truck were about eight "number two" pigs, and one cow who happened to be named Rambo. 

I did not name him Rambo, he arrived with that name.  Just for your information.  I would have named him something closer to Mr. Moo Cow.  

Part of traveling is seeing things that you might not be used to, nor be very comfortable seeing.  I did not grow up on a farm.  I never had the chance to slaughter an animal.  I know that if I was starving and it was a choice between the animal and myself, that I would have no problem doing what needed to be done, but I do not take joy in that fact.  However, I was in Samoa, and I would be denying myself of a traveling experience if I did not watch what happened next.  Though I knew it would probably not be the most pleasant thing to witness, I also knew that it would be frowned upon if I did not at least go and observe.  Being male and a visitor, this was expected of me.  Sometimes there are social obligations that you should follow that are a bit beyond your own comfort zone. 

Again, if you cannot, or do not want to read about an animal dying, this is the place to stop reading. Morbidity does nothing for me, but I do feel that it would be doing a disservice to the experience if I do not retell what happened.  Skip down until you see the picture of the cooking pigs and text in green if you wish to skip the graphic parts.

The pigs were first.

The pigs were brought one-by-one from the front yard so they did not get spooked.  There was a ten gallon bucket that had been filled with water up to a point about six inches below the top of the bucket.  The pigs were smaller, not fully grown, hence the distinction of them only being number two pigs.  One by one, the pigs were held by one of the stronger men, face down in the bucket until they stopped fighting and died.  They were then bled.  I asked why they were killed this way, as most of the time we usually just bleed a pig when we want to eat it, and I was told that was just the way it was done for that size of a pig.  One pig was able to break the bucket with his fight.  This one had to be killed using a metal bar to choke it to death.  It was not pretty, but again, I am not writing this at all to judge. 

After all the pigs were dealt with, they walked Rambo away from the house.  They had secured a gun from the neighbors house, but after it failed to discharge, they had to find another way.  The only other method they had at their disposal was an ax...  I wish I could say that his end was a quick one. 

After this was all done, the meat was quartered and cleaned on a tarp and set to cook.  The interesting thing is that the quartered meat continued to twitch and move for an hour.  I had never seen quartered meat twitch and pulse like that before.  

Needless to say, the meat was delicious.  I was used to hunting the on the vast savannas of Safeway, stalking my kill for minutes while it was under cellophane.  This was very different.  

 Number Two Pigs and Taro

The traditional cooking method is an umu, which is basically done by laying the item on a bunch of super-heated rocks.  It is a very long and hot process that takes a lot of skill to do correctly.  The baskets you see in the above picture are woven from palm trees and made specifically for carrying the meal items to and from locations.

Family Dinner

In a society that has traditions that have been handed down longer than many countries recorded histories, there are certain tried and true methods that can always be used.  Yes, paper plates and western commodities exist all around in Samoa.  You can walk in any house, see an older television set, a Nokia cell phone, and all sorts of other things that a person from the United States would call basic necessities.  Here though, there is still a sense of pride in doing certain things in very specific ways.  For this sort of ceremony, the above picture was the only way it could be done.  

Great Presentation

For people that may have a problem with how animals are viewed and treated in other countries, you need to remember a key idea of traveling - you need to not judge another group of people on their cultural practices.  Yes, certain things may be different or downright cruel when you look at it from your own cultural perspective, but that is your own viewpoint and not theirs.  You need to remember that not everyone was raised with the same social, moral, and cultural codes that you hold so dearly.  Yes, there will always be a shock value to the differences that we see in other people, and certain personal moral values cannot be compromised, but before you rush to judgement, attempt to ask and understand.  If you cannot find a moral compromise after asking and attempting to understand, then perhaps that region of the world is not for you.  At least you can say that you tried.

Drive Through Featuring Number Two Pigs

Obviously Not a Number Two Pig

How to fit a dozen people in a station wagon

I am sure that everyone is aware of just how many people you can fit into the stereotypical vehicle.  We have all been on that "road trip from hell" where there are four people in the back seat of a car specifically designed for just three.  You know that feeling when your "bubble" has been invaded and the next time you get bumped, someone is going to die...

If you have never done this on a road in Samoa, where you have a dozen bodies and suitcases in the same station wagon, you don't know shit.

Let me start with the explanation that the roads in Samoa leave a bit to be desired.  Once you leave the main airport area, it is pretty much a free-for-all on road maintenance until you hit downtown Apia.  By Google Maps it says that is is a quick trip - about twenty miles or a bit above a half hour of driving.  

I call bullshit. 

Load of Crap

Our story starts late in the evening.  Most of the flights heading out of Faleolo International Airport that head direct to Honolulu, Hawaii take off at some ungodly hour.  I think ours departed at about 11pm.  Yeah, major load of crap.  Of course it was running late, which made for an even later flight, but we did not know that at the time.  It seems like one plane does the Honolulu - Samoa - Fiji - Australia, and back, voyage.  

We had spent the week with some family in a small village outside of Apia, which is the major port-of-call for that side of the island.  If you have never been to Apia, it is actually a very awesome town.  It has some distinct districts, with cool alleys that are sporting anything from bootleg CD's to fish.  We never knew quite what we were bound to find when we turned down one alley or the other.  While it may be quite lacking in size, it has a very rich history and the people of Apia are some of the friendliest that we have run into.  

Just make sure to carry a few golf ball sized rocks with you.  More on that another time.

The flight was due to leave at a bit after 11pm, and we started on our journey at about 8-9pm.  It is on island time, so we left whenever we all got around to leaving, with the intent of getting to the airport whenever we ended up getting there.  Of course, my need to exactitude was already dead inside, and I had just accepted that "I'll see you at noon" could mean sometime between about 9am and dinnertime the following day.  Things are done differently when one does not ever have a pressing rush to be somewhere.  

We all piled into a small station wagon.  This of course was not some luxury station wagon, but the typical few rows of seats and a hatch-back trunk.  Our gear went in first.  This consisted of three large suitcases.  No big deal, trunk was mostly full.  All good.  Then everyone got in.  I mean everyone.  Then more people got in.  Somehow we got all 12 people into the same station wagon.  It was an amazing orchestrated event with some people splitting laps while others were laid across the top.  Even the suitcases in the trunk were utilized as places to lay down and somehow pack more bodies into the car.

Then came the pothole jarring, swerving to avoid rocks and pigs, 3,960 B.T.U.s of body heat hour-and-a-half long car ride to the airport.  

It was one of the longest car rides of my life.  We were sweating, we were getting carsick, we were doing anything we could to try and sleep, so as to block out the event.  It may not seem that bad, but try cramming yourself and your nearest 11 friends into a space the size of a bathroom and then bump into each-other while turning up the heat and humidity.  Yeah, not fun.

We endured.

All of us made it to the airport.  Not because Faleolo International Airport is anything special, but because we were family.  That is what family does.  They had taken us into their home and they sure as hell were going to send us off in style.  Sometimes enduring is an act of love.

The Kindness of Strangers Part 2

I wrote previously about my interactions with complete strangers and how their kindness and generosity has restored my faith in humanity.  The first post is located here.

As I would consider myself a relatively closed-off person, these interactions really helped me to open up and see the world in a much more healthy light.  While I know that there will always be naysayers to traveling and interacting like this, I would rather take the risk and challenge my paradigm.  

Thus starts part 2.

After our trip to Obama, we headed up to Sapporo.

This proved to be another amazing experience with a person that I had only messaged back and forth with via email.  Talk about an open and trusting person.  We arrived in the city and messaged our host.  He proceeded to tell us that his day had run a bit late.  Of course, when you are staying with someone else, you need to be on their schedule, so I wrote back something mentioning that it was not a problem and that we would find him later in the evening.  He replied back with where we could get a hide-a-key, and told us to let ourselves into his home.  

Let that sink in.  He let us into his home without ever laying eyes on us.  I love the kindness of strangers.  He ended up taking us out to an amazing dinner.  Course after course was served.  We were not allowed to pay.  I tried to pay.  I really did.  I mean it.  The chef was a personal friend of his, and damn was the chef in the mood to cook!

Round 1: Fight

Round 2

Flawless Victory!

These were just the pictures that I remembered to take.  There must have been at least eight round of food.  Each of them had a story, and each one challenged our pallet.  My wife got to try things that I am not sure even exist outside of Sapporo.  Another random stranger that I would now consider a great friend. 

After Sapporo, we got stuck on a plane.  In a hail storm.  On a tarmac.  For what seemed like hours.  Thankfully I was ready with Google Translate.  

Google Translate is a vital application if you ever travel.  It should be listed just below remembering to pack your passport on your checklist.  

I decided to strike up a conversation with the guy next to us on the plane.  We talked about our trips to Sapporo, work, travel, and anything else that kept the time moving while we were stuck there.

Airplane Selfie!

We got off the plane about two hours late.  It was pouring.  The trains were all late.  He waited with us at the train station in Narita airport until our train arrived about an hour later.  This caused him to miss his train.  We tried to tell him that we were fine and we could find our way, but he would hear nothing of the sort.  He took it as his personal mission to make sure his new friends found their way home safely.

We messaged on Facebook throughout that evening and I later found out that he missed his connection because he waited with us and ended up sleeping in a small connection station all night.

I had never met a person before him who would sleep overnight in a train station to help random strangers.  There is no way that my lack of eloquence can do justice to his kindness.

We had finally gotten on the train and of course, there had to be another delay.  We had a small earthquake.  This caused the train to be shut down for about twenty minutes while they evaluated all the tracks and sent us back on our way.  We made it to our destination a bit past midnight and were greeted like this - again, from a random stranger:

Epic!

We stayed with our host for about three nights, and had a great time adventuring together.  We went to a baseball game, got directions to an amazing fish market, went geocaching, and made a new friend.  We still keep in touch today, and I am sure that we will get to meet up again on travels somewhere in that region of the world.  

We ended the trip with a visit back to Fukuoka - our port of departure.  Of course, we had to meet back up with our friends who we had made when we came into the country and spent the day with them.  They came out to meet us for lunch and then had an epic owl adventure.  

Pizza!

We always talk about opening our doors to strangers, helping those in need, and breaking bread with new friends.  We never actually do these things.  We can always make an excuse to not talk to someone who is different - language, religion, orientation, skin color, gender - but ultimately all of these differences can serve to enrich our lives, not divide us from our neighbors.  

Take a chance, meet someone new.  You will thank me later.

  

  

The Kindness of Strangers Part 1

One of the most enjoyable aspects of traveling is the chance to meet new people and explore their culture.  We have been blessed with the ability to meet some of the nicest people through both random happenstance and through planned couchsurfing interactions.  While we have both hosted scores of couchsurfers, we recently had the opportunity to turn the tables and stay with new people up and down Japan.  These are our stories with them, and further proof that random strangers can show you the greatest kindness.

We had just arrived, had no clue who we were meeting, nor any idea of how we were going to find them.  We had a picture to go off of, a name, and the knowledge that there would be someone at the airport when we landed.  After somehow talking our way through passport control, (apparently you need a physical address to enter the country, but somehow I was able to convince them my email worked), we found our couchsurfing host.  The amazing thing was she had waited for us for almost two hours.  Our flight was delayed, and my smooth-talking took some time to warm up.  There were no complaints, just the offer to go to dinner.  Talk about kindness.  This was officially my first time being on the receiving end of couchsurfing, and I was sold. 

Nothing says "welcome to my country" like grilled dead animal.  

Mmmmmm... Dead Animal....

After our amazing experience with our newly acquainted friends in Fukuoka, we meandered through the country and made our way to our next previously unknown person in Osaka.  

He was to prove to be another amazing person who offered us both lodging and friendship while we were in town.  We were set up with a place to sleep and given free run of the apartment.  We stayed a few nights and then moved on.  This was all under the backdrop of both the World Cup and him working, so while we were not able to spend a lot of time together, we still keep in contact to this day.

After an amazing stint in Kyoto with the family of a friend of mine from college, we were to head to Obama.  Now, as I have mentioned in my post about Obama, this was going to just serve as a quick side-trip, but ended up being an extremely memorable part of our journey.  Our host told us that he would pick us up from the main train station in Kyoto.  Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the roads leading to and from Kyoto to Obama, this is no quick trip.  

Yes, 1 Hour and 57 Minutes....

This person, who had never met us before, drove two hours out, and two hours back.  Let that sink in.  He drove four hours round-trip.  He never asked for gas money, food money, anything.  He just did this because he was a nice person.  We offered to take the train to his house - the station was only about five miles from where he lived.  I even offered to walk from the station.  He would hear nothing of the sort.  It was non-negotiable.   

Before this, I would bitch about picking people up from the damn airport near my house.  Here is the map of that journey for comparison: 

Seven Minutes... 

His trip was almost 17 times longer than mine.  Good God, I am an asshole!

I have never complained about going to and from the airport since this moment.  

He and his family made us breakfast each morning, showed us around town during the day, bought us food while we were out, made us dinner, and even took us to the best train station so we did not have to make any connections.  Talk about hospitality.  Did I mention that he did not even know us? 

Breakfast!

Plus, Obama is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen.  Period.

Yeah, Quintessential Mist.

While these few people that I have mentioned went out of their way to make our trip amazing, they did much more than just provide us with lodging - they changed how I view complete strangers.  These people showed me that random strangers could turn into friends in a matter of hours.

It never would have happened if I had not stepped out of my comfort zone.  

Challenge yourself to talk to a stranger today.  Step outside of that comfort zone.  Meet someone new.  Let them change your life.

Part 2