My buddy Steve. Our chance encounter in Iraq indicates that there probably aren't 6 billion people in the world. No way. Anyway, that's his theory, and he's sticking to it.

To fully appreciate this story, I have to take you back to February of LAST year. I was with my Drive Around the World team, and we were just days from the finish of a 16-month drive all the way around the world, longitudinally. (If you click here, you can read journals from when we were in Sacramento.) The expedition halted in California's state capitol Feb 25th, 2005, so we could see about getting Gov. Schwarzenneger to endorse our expedition. We knew people who had worked on the governor's campaign, and we wanted to see about meeting the Terminator himself.

We drove around the city for a while, circling the block to find parking and to create a stir with the local news. While halted downtown, the campaign manager's son, Steve, bumped into us on his way to Kinko's. He invited us up to his office to hang out with his dad, George, and to hang out for a bit. Long story short, we ended up going out for sushi and beers with them and having a jolly good time. In May of that year, the team got to meet Gov. Schwarzenegger and have a photo op with him. (I couldn't make it, because I was already working on the East Coast in May.)

Fast forward a year and about three weeks, and I am working in a cubicle a scant 20 feet from the very same Steve who bumped into my expedition team in Sacramento, Calif. First NoCal, and then Baghdad. The world, indeed, is a very small place. I cannot BELIEVE that I am working a few feet away from the guy I met in Sacramento. SO weird. Weird, but cool.