Let me tell you what happened to me in Amsterdam the other day.

I drive there from my home in the southern Netherlands, near Maastricht, for my interview at 11. I get there at 10 and park in a huge lot, nearly empty. From my film can I dump out all the eligible euro muntjes (coins) that I have: 90 eurocents. That buys me thirty minutes. I dump the change in the dispenser, push the green button, wait for the slip to print, and set it atop the dashboard of my VW Polo.

Having driven two and a half hours to get to Amsterdam, I need to take a leak. I go to the Amstel train station, but I see no toilet. I ask the girl in the food court. None, she says, in the whole station. But there will be, she says. Remodeling, she says.

Reading an old Time report (in a waiting room, they need to update their reading material!) that Mexican drug traffickers are using American national parks and forests for marijuana plantations. Reading the piece shed light on a mystery that has intrigued me since 1994.

On November 2 of that year, my wife, Cathy, and I drove from Montgomery, Alabama to the Sipsey Wilderness, a part of Bankhead National Forest in northwestern Alabama. Sipsey being large (25,000 plus acres), in the middle of nowhere, and it being a Wednesday, we didn’t expect to see anyone.