I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while, but I wanted to have some concrete proof that the technique is what has been getting the results, not just my boyish good looks and my “give me a citation and I might hunt down your family” demeanor.

Yesterday was that day.

I’ve been stopped a number of times in the past few years after reading this advice elsewhere, have applied it every time, and have only once actually gotten the ticket I should have gotten. Offenses are mostly speeding related, but I once blew through a stop sign in my unregistered RV with a cop behind me. No ticket for that one.

Yesterday Annie and I were driving through Boston. I don’t normally speed, but it’s hard not to in the BMW that I was borrowing. It’s a fast car and the speed really creeps up on you.

I see a cop ahead of me on the side of the road and I hit the brakes. Too late, he obviously has me. I have no idea what the speed limit is or what speed I was going. He follows me for a hundred feet and puts on his lights.

Protip #1: Pull WAY over. I pulled onto a side street and had the right two wheels off the road. Cops have to come on the left side and the further right you park the safer they are. They appreciate that.

Protip #2: Turn off the radio, put the front interior lights on, roll down the window before they get there, and put your hands on the steering wheel. Cops have to deal with tons of shady people and they know that one in a thousand is going to try to do something stupid. If you make sure he can see your hands and is comfortable, then he knows you’re not one of those people.

He walks up and asks me if I know how fast I was going.

“No sir, I don’t.”

Protip #3: Be overly respectful. I think it’s probably fair to say that a lot of cops became cops to get a certain amount of respect. Most probably don’t get that respect because people are resentful of being pulled over. Be the exception.

Protip #4: NEVER tell them how fast you were going, even if you’re lying. It can’t ever help you, and they’ve heard it all. If you admit to being guilty then it’s a pretty easy decision to give you a ticket. If you try to say you weren’t speeding, he knows you’re lying.

“I clocked you going 42 in a 25.”

“Yikes.”

“License and registration please.”

“Yes, sir. My license is in my pocket.”

Protip #5: Always tell them where you’re reaching before you do it. Sudden movements could be interpreted as moves for a weapon.

“Go ahead and get it.”

I get my license out, tell him that the registration is in the glove compartment, and I go and get it.

He sees my Texas ID and asks what I’m doing in Boston. I tell him I’m visiting a friend and add that I used to live in Andover nearby.

Protip #6: If (and only if) it won’t come off forced or annoying, try to have a bit of a normal conversation with him. If he sees you as a real person he may be more inclined to be sympathetic. Don’t go overboard here, though.

He bites.

“How’s Boston treating you so far?”

“Great. It’s a nice time of year to be up here.”

He goes back to his car and starts running my license. I keep my hands on the wheel the whole time. Annie and I start speculating whether or not he’s going to let me off. He seems friendly and I’ve done all the right things, but then again 17 over is a lot, especially in a 25.

Finally he comes back.

“I appreciate you keeping your hands on the wheel and letting me know what you’re going to do before you do it. These things don’t go unnoticed. I’m going to just let you go without any sort of citation, but please slow down.”

“Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.”

That was the first time an officer had ever explicitly told me that he was cutting me a break because I did those things. Besides making the officer as comfortable as possible, these are also the tips that police tell their family. If you’re doing them, the officer may assume that you’re related to another officer and want to cut you a break for that.

Also, Annie suggests that I tell you that doing this will impress girls.

I’m beginning to think that my speaking engagement at UK was partially a ploy to get me to come on an adventure with Luke, the guy who arranged it, and his friends.

If that’s the case, I hope that I’m involved in many more ploys.

My flight was diverted, delayed, rescheduled, and rerouted. In the end I flew into Cincinnati, where Luke’s friend Stephanie picked me up and drove me to a halfway point to meet Luke.

By the time we got to Lexington it was almost midnight.

“So you’ve never been rappelling?”

I hadn’t, but I’ve always wanted to do it. What’s more fun than hooking into a rope and bouncing down the side of a building?

“Okay, we have to go teach you how to do it now. We have an adventure planned tomorrow that will change your life.”

They took me to the UK baseball stadium and attached a rope to a post near the highest deck. Luke clipped in and zipped down the side of the stadium to the ground fifty feet below.

His friend Brian showed how to use a descender and I went down next. It was much easier than I thought it would be, and much more controllable. We ran up the stadium steps and zipped down five or ten more times before packing up.

As I met Luke’s friends, they all talked about the adventure without giving me any more information on it.

“Are you really scared about tomorrow?”

“Shh… don’t tell him what it is.”

“I wouldn’t go. It’s crazy.”

After finishing my speech and sticking around to chat with some of the audience members who stuck around to ask questions we headed off to Wal Mart to get some last minute supplies.

“Can we tell him what we’re doing yet?”

“Yes.”

They filled me in on the plan. They weren’t kidding – this was a good one, and was way better researched and planned than anything I’ve ever done.

And so I put on the wetsuit and climbing harness that they had brought for me and taught one of the three guys charged with documenting it how to use my camera.

Half an hour later we pulled into a rocky patch in between some bushes. We were at "High Bridge", which is a bit of a landmark in Lexington. Built in 1877, the bridge is actively used by trains to pass three hundred feet over the Kentucky river below. It was the first cantilever bridge built on the American continent.

The plan? Tie a three hundred foot rope to a railroad tie at the top, rappel down 300 feet, and drop 10 feet or so into the water before swimming back to shore. Awesome.

Any fear of heights I had has been demolished by repeated exposure to them, so the rappelling didn’t phase me. But I AM a huge wimp when it comes to water, and so I started worrying about that. The air was fifty five degrees and I was already shivering.

"TRAIN!"

We could feel the vibration of the train coming as we started unraveling the gigantic coil of rope we’d lugged up. Eager to avoid both detection and getting hit by a train we lay head to toe on the thick metal guardrail as the train approached.

It flew by us, shaking the bridge far more than I would have expected. We all jumped up and down cheering when the engine passed.

Lowering the rope wasn’t difficult, but seeing how far down it had gone was nearly impossible. It was pitch black and we didn’t know the exact height of the track. We tried to coordinate with the cameramen on the ground via walkie-talkie, but they couldn’t see the end of the rope either.

As a last ditch effort we tied a glow stick to the rope and dropped it.

"Did it hit the water?"

"No, I think it’s still going."

"Yep, it’s still falling."

"Wow. This is taking longer than I thought."

"There… I think it hit."

A whole conversation while the glowstick fell through the air. It didn’t do much to verify how high up the rope was, but we figured it had to be close enough.

After a video of his dying wishes ("Mom, don’t blame this on Matt. It was my idea."), Luke clipped in and hoisted himself over the edge of the bridge.

And then… nothing.

The hanging rope weighed so much that it was acting as a brake. It’s not worth the space to explain how this happens, but basically the more weight on the rope below, the more friction there is, and thus the harder it is to descend.

Using some force Luke fed rope through the descender and jerked down a couple feet.

The first ten feet or so had to be done in the same fashion, but soon he was able to move more smoothly. We’d chosen an entry point that lined up with a huge steel girder that went from the surface of the bridge to the peak of an arch below. Luke pushed out along the girder until he was out of sight.

Finally, after an eternity of waiting and subsequently listening to him yell at the camera guys to take a lot of pictures, we heard a giant splash. He made it.

I was next.

I swung over the railing, the guys at the top double checked my harness and connections, and I began feeding rope through like Luke had. I took a minute to look down at the water to try to scare myself. The amount of danger has nothing to do with how scared I am, so I may as well get myself riled up.

I kicked down the girder and paused at the lower edge of it. One more big kick and I flew down into the air below, in contact with nothing but the rope keeping me alive.

I zipped down in segments, trying to pause to enjoy the view. As if on cue, I looked up at the sky and saw a shooting star.

After a few minutes I started trying to think about what would happen if the rope broke. Sixty feet is just about the cutoff point. Any higher and you’re risking serious injury or death.

I look down. I can barely see the ground in the dim moonlight. Still, I can see enough to know that I’m way higher than sixty feet. Three times it maybe. My glove is getting hot so I take a break. If I fell now I’d be dead. One snap from above and it’s all over. I look at the rope. It’s no thicker than my thumb, and everything rests on the assumption that there’s no defect anywhere along its length.

Now that’s scary, I thought.

I continued down a little bit faster. Once I was below sixty feet I’d be safe no matter what. I had started spinning slowly ever since kicking off of the metal truss, and as I descended I went faster and faster.

(picture is a long exposure with a glowstick tied to my harness)

By the time I got near the bottom I was spinning so quickly that I was starting to get dizzy. Would I be too dizzy to swim? I’d better get down fast so that I don’t get any dizzier. I release my grip more to go faster. Finally I get to the end of the rope and let go, spinning faster than ever.

I fall ten feet into the water, which isn’t nearly as cold as expected. Slightly dizzy, I get my bearings and swim back to the shore, still wearing my leather gloves, shoes, and climbing gear.

The other two rappellers make their way down safely too. Matt, the last to go flies down the last twenty feet or so without stopping at the end. We thought he was showing off, but it turns out he actually couldn’t control his speed anymore.

We packed up our gear, changed into dry clothes, and basked in the warmth from the heater in the car.

Unsurprisingly, this adventure ranks among the most exciting I’ve been on. Thanks to Luke, Brian, Matt, and everyone else who helped with the speech and the mischief!

A couple weeks ago I woke up to a strange e-mail. The subject said “Speaking Opportunity”, which I immediately thought must be spam.

But it wasn’t.

A guy named Luke, who has been reading my site for a while, just happens to be the president of the Entrepreneur’s Club at the University of Kentucky. His club needed a speaker for the kick off event and he wanted to know if I’d be interested.

And of course I was. I’ve done a little public speaking before and really enjoy it. Once I spoke to about a hundred people in LA. I sent an e-mail back asking for details.

Amongst the details was this bombshell - I’d be speaking for five hundred people or so, which is about five times the largest group I’d ever spoken to before. Awesome.

We’re now two days away, and my talk is almost finished. Okay, actually it’s only about twenty percent done, but I work best under pressure and have never ever prepared for any other talk I’ve done. Anyway, we have some really cool stuff planned and I’m really excited to give my talk.

If you’re in Kentucky or anywhere near and want to come see me, it is THIS Thursday at 8pm at Memorial Hall at the University of Kentucky. No charge to come.

I’ll definitely make time to meet any readers who show up, so if you’ll be there then you should e-mail me.

Here’s one of the signs on campus:

P.S. If you want me to speak at your event / school / wedding, send me an e-mail.

I know that a lot of people’s favorite posts are the self improvement ones. They’re the most gratifying to write, and also to read the comments on.

I’d write more of them, but I hate writing them unless I feel like I’m really exemplifying the topic. Otherwise it’s disingenuous. My worst nightmare would be for this site to turn into one of those other “personal development” blogs, 99% of which are written by people whose lives are not particularly outstanding, that churn out productivity porn every day.

“Ten new ways to organize your todo list!”

But right now I’m not really productive. I put in my hours with poker, write posts, and take stabs at other projects, but I wouldn’t feel great about trying to inspire anyone to achieve this level of output. You’re probably already exceeding it.

For about half a year I stuck to monitoring my productivity every day. I went from being wholly unable to produce to being a total productivity monster.

Great achievement and all that, a definite piece of the puzzle but not everything. When I finished Conversion Doubler, which came out exactly as I hoped, I realized that I just don’t want to BE an internet marketer. It’s not fun and exciting (for me) .

Right now I’m doing poker, which takes up an average of six hours a day seven days a week. It’s a grind. I’m not innovating, I’m just learning by experience and information overload. It’s just the particular phase I have to go through now. I could write a post about that, but it would just be one line:

“Keep doing it no matter what. When you feel like quitting, don’t.”

Not exactly a Pulitzer Prize contender.

I have half a billion other projects I could do, but I’m trying to be more selective now. I think of it like dating. If you settle and you date a girl who is “okay”, then you are spending a lot of time NOT meeting a girl who is “amazing”. If I bury myself in a new site I start on a whim, that’s a month or so that I’m not brainstorming and thinking about what I want to do with my life.

So that’s what I’m trying. I have mixed feelings on it. On one hand I feel like “just doing something” is a good way to get exposed to new possibilities. On the other, I don’t spend as much time thinking and pondering as I used to, so I’m trying to do more of that.

There is one small project I’ll be doing this month that has my wheels turning a bit in terms of direction for my life. You’ll all know about it in a week or so.

This lull is the reason some of my posts have been less substantial recently. The upside is that I DO have a bunch of cool things planned in the near future and I’ll be writing about them all.

Maybe you can help. Some of you know me very well, and many more have at least been reading for a long time. Based on what you know about me, what do you think my ideal enterprise would be? Feel free to answer in the comments or by e-mail.

When I asked my friends what my greatest strength was, the response was unanimous and surprising. Maybe this will be the same. Last time I asked for your input, with the survey, you blew me away.

On July 28 I was in my RV heading back to Austin to surprise my friends.and family. As I drove, an e-mail buzzed in. A new comment on a Life Nomadic post, by a girl named Annie.

When I stopped in Dallas for the night I read the comment. A chunk of it:

I just found your website.  Wow.  I am a vegan, a writer and a budding entrepreneur, with a love for travel and minimalism.  Every one of these themes is hit regularly here, so it’s no wonder I love keeping up.  I’ve read the whole blog.

Wow, indeed. I’m a member of a number of minorities. Most of them have very little overlap, and my stubbornness makes me look for the same things in a girl.

Healthy vegan. Non Drinker. No drugs. Non religious. In shape. Good with money. Minimalist, etc.

I don’t expect girls to have these things in common with me. If I find a girl with just two or three, particularly the drinking and eating, I consider her to be truly exceptional. I meet almost no girls like that.

So you can imagine my excitement to read about a girl who was all of these things AND travels too. Impossible. She must be ugly.

She linked to her Flickr account in the comment, which I visited. After a few minutes of figuring out which one was her, I was shocked. She was really attractive.

I always sort of figured that I might meet someone through my site. Seventeen hundred people read every day. About ten percent are girls. That’s 170 girls a day who could match up. And actually I DID date one, but my sister told her about my site and I had met her before.

I sent Annie a short e-mail thanking her for reading the site and telling her to check out this one, since it covers a lot of the same topics. She wrote back and said that she has it bookmarked and is going to read the whole thing in one day. Three hundred and seventy posts.

The next day I got home and surprised my mom, who still thought I was in Europe.

“Wow! Tynan! I can’t believe it.”

“It’s great to see you mom!”

Big hug.

“Did you see that girl who posted on Life Nomadic? You need to e-mail her.”

No exaggeration. The second thing my mother said to me after not seeing me for seven months was about Annie. She wants grandchildren REALLY badly.

We sent a few e-mails back and forth, confirming even more similarities. We both hate weddings and don’t want to get married. We eat the same way. We have similar families and relationships with them.

A few days later we talked on the phone for and hour and a half. The whole call felt frantic, the kind of call where everything is agreed upon and there are no pauses for arguments. Saying “me too” is a terrible habit, but there was nothing else to say a lot of the time.

The next day came. What now? It was obvious we had to meet, but it was way too early. No girl is going to meet a guy that she met on the Internet after four e-mails and one phone call. Then again, if she really does think like me…

And of course, she agreed. Part of me was shocked, but the other part knew that there was no other choice she could make. The one catch was that we had to wait five weeks because her weekends were booked until then. That didn’t sit well with my impulsive tendencies, but it was the only way.

The first two weeks went by dreadfully slowly and the last three passed before I even noticed. Our daily e-mails became longer until the last few days before the trip when we had nothing left to ask.

We never once mentioned dating or anything of the sort, even though it was obvious what our motivations were. It’s dangerous to start going down that path with someone you’ve never met.

Every time I went back home my parents would offer advice.

“Are you going to get new pants?”

“Will you have flowers for her when she gets off the plane?”

“You’re not going to wear SANDALS, are you?”

Well meaning, but simultaneously hilarious.

And then finally the day came and I found myself nervously waiting for her in the lobby of the Las Vegas airport. She came down the escalator with just a small backpack like me and “Scattergories”, my favorite game, in the crook of her arm. When I saw that, all nervousness disappeared.

It didn’t take long for it to feel like we’d know each other forever. We went to Whole Foods as soon as we got there and cooked dinner together (really she did most of the work. I just chopped pears).

We saw shows, went to museum exhibits, rode amusement park rides, visited the Hoover dam, and ran around finding mischief.

Before we met, I tried to temper my optimism with the thought that maybe once I met her there would be something horribly wrong, or that there wouldn’t be any chemistry.

But she did everything right. I don’t mean that in the sense that she was trying to do things “right”, but rather that I wouldn’t have wished she had done anything different.

As we walked through the airport to leave we started talking about our next trip, which will be to Boston in a couple of weeks. In an e-mail after the trip she said that she wasn’t sad to say goodbye, but rather looking forward to the future.

That’s how I feel too. Awwwwwwwww….

(I know the photo is not that great. Much to my mother’s disappointment I forgot to take more photos of her.)

P.S. She’s waffling on starting a blog. In the comments encourage her to start one. She’s a really good writer (at least in e-mails, and it’s what she does), and she obviously has a lot in common with me.

P.P.S Her sisters read my site now, too. Hi, Birdie and Pearl.

I was talking to a religious person the other day. They spoke with 100% confidence. Then I thought about how atheists, myself included, tiptoe around religious people. We don’t want to offend them. It’s the same feeling you get when talking about Santa Claus around kids.

I’m done with that. Religion is ridiculous. There is no god. I’m not even capitalizing the word anymore. There is no heaven.

The ONLY reason that anyone believes in these fictions is because of tradition and information being passed down through generations.

Think about this. If the history of religion was wiped from the face of this earth, and our current population had to figure out why we’re here and what’s going on, how much of it would we logically deduce down to the sorts of fables religion thrusts upon us?

None.

We look back on the funny things in history, like the Greeks attributing everything to their specialized gods, and wonder how they could be so naive. Then we turn on the TV and see Obama and McCain talking about their FAITH. In this day and age, religion is a major factor in who runs our country.

Insanity. Sometimes I think about the fact that a HUGE chunk of our population actually believes that there’s a man in the sky who is listening to their prayers and decides whether or not to grant these prayers based on a number of factors, including how often they pray for it.

This isn’t an attack on religious people, by the way. Some of the smartest people I know are religious. Not all of them, not most of them, but some of them. The best way I can reconcile this is by saying that smart people can believe dumb things. No one thinks that anything they believe is dumb, but we can all think of things we USED to believe were dumb.

Everyone has incorrect beliefs, and always will. For some people it’s the belief in religion. On one hand the whole thing is totally preposterous, but on the other hand there are certain families or communities where NOTHING is pushed as hard and confidently on a child as religion. Logic isn’t always the number one determinant of belief, even if it should be.

I also wouldn’t actually wish for religion to be erased from the Earth. I know that some people get a ton out of it. Some people need external moral compasses. Church can be a really good community, especially in a day and age where traditional communities are virtually non-existent.

I don’t want to convince anyone to not be religious, either. Let people believe what they want.

All I’m saying is this: religious is ridiculous, but it’s even more ridiculous to be quiet when Christians bring up their beliefs. Amen.

EDIT: Thanks guys! He won!

A real post is coming tonight, but in the meantime I have a small favor to ask.

My dad’s best friend, Bobby, is a huge Texas Longhorns fan, and he built a giant bus to tailgate. The bus was originally inspired by the bus my friends and I owned, but blows ours away in every respect. It has wood floors, a huge deck with an electric roof, plasma TVs, and even a solar powered security system.

Anyway, Bud Light and FSN are running a contest for the best tailgater in Austin. It’s down to Bobby and some girl. She put a link up on her Facebook or something and is now beating him.

Can you help me make sure Bobby wins?

All you have to do is click “Bobby” on the little poll at THIS PAGE on the bottom right. No registration or anything like that is necessary.

You should also check out his video, which is the third down on the right.

I would normally never post something like this, but my dad has done so much for me and never asks for anything in return (most recently spending a day helping me get my solar panel up), so when he asks for a favor like this I’d really like to blow it out of the water for him.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for helping me out.

People always complain about my RSS because it usually works terribly. To be honest, it worked so poorly that all of my attempts to subscribe to my own feed to troubleshoot it have been failures.

Finally I decided that I was going to sit down and figure out what the problem was. After a bunch of dead ends, I FINALLY bit the bullet and disabled all of my plugins and then added them one by one to see if one of them broke it.

It was the plugin that made the chronological archive that used to be in the top right (now it just brings you to a blank page). Good riddance!

Last week I had a new high subscriber count, 960, so hopefully having a feed that actually works will boost that even more.

Hmmm…. no one likes reading a short post, so let’s throw some other little news items in here.

In a week I’m going to Vegas and LA. Vegas to meet a new friend and LA to see my old friends. I should have some interesting things to write about after that.

Todd and I have been fleshing out dates and routes for the first Life Nomadic three-month trip of 2009. It’s hard to contain all we want to do in such a short period of time. We’ve found a couple really cool things we’re going to do, and we may leave a week early to learn to kite surf with Lance Mason. He’s really into it.

Our new amazing skateboards come in next week! Can’t wait. I don’t think I’ve ever properly written about these electric skateboards, but I’ll do a full review with video and all that.

In further news, I just bought the most hilarious bathing suit ever. Yes! It all started from wanting to get a smaller bathing suit for packing… and this is where I ended up.

Okay, 75% through a much more substantial post. But first… Ethiopian food. Mmmm….