My name is Max Millick. I was in the United States military for over ten years. My whole adult life had been the subject of rules and regulations, governing every sort of behavior from how I greeted people to how I dressed, even how I apologized. Rules and restrictions seemed important to me: they provided a framework upon which I could build a reliable life. As time went on, though, I realized that there was a huge part of the world that I was totally ignorant of. Like most people, I got all my information about the world from the hearsay of others, from the news, from books and Wikipedia. Not that those sources are particularly unreliable, but I wanted to see what the world was like for myself: what was dangerous, exciting, interesting, what the people acted like, what I could relate to, what would be foreign. I realized that I had a choice: I could stay in the military, doing something I was good at, in a place where I was well-respected, even loved, by those who worked for me. Or I could leave it all, quit my job, hit the road, and see it all for myself. I chose the latter. For better or worse, this is a chronicle of what happened afterward.
