GLENWOOD LANDING, LONG ISLAND, N.Y. -- After stepping off a plane from Los Angeles to New York and boarding a train toward Ronkonkoma, Long Island, I placed my tuxedo bag in the overhead luggage compartment and sat down. I was traveling to see my high school best friend marry his high school sweetheart near their home on Long Island. Trying to relax on the train, I started thinking deep thoughts: "Ronkonkoma is a weird name. I wonder what's there. Weird people, probably."

My revelations were interrupted by the ringing of my cell phone. A travel agent was calling to confirm details of an upcoming trip. After we hung up, I closed my eyes and began enumerating in my head every wedding I had ever attended. I counted ten weddings in my adult life, seven of which were for friends close enough that I was in their wedding parties. As I reached Westbury, my destination, the phone rang again, distracting me. I stepped out onto the platform, and as I talked to the unrelenting travel agent, I watched the train leave the station with my bag still in the overhead compartment. I had visions of a weird hobo in Ronkonkoma finding my tuxedo and deciding to wear it to a fancy day at the beach.

In a panic and without a car or the ability to convince a stranger to drive aimlessly at high speeds trying to intercept a Long Island Rail Road train, I could only think to call the lost-and-found office. The man on the phone said the trains were cleaned only at the end of the day, and because of the Memorial Day weekend, the bag would not arrive in lost-and-found until the next week. Yet he seemed very confident that the bag would be recovered.

Exasperated, I called a Men's Wearhouse store in Long Island and told the woman who answered that I had just lost my bag on the Long Island Rail Road and in twelve hours, I needed another groomsman's tuxedo matching the first I had rented.

"Oh no," she said. "Please hold." After a few minutes, she returned to the phone. "Okay, I think we can do it," she said. "Thank God you're mannequin-sized."

"Mannequin-sized?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

"Did you know that you're exactly mannequin-sized?" she asked. "Fortunately, your measurements are the exact size of our mannequins, and we can pull the tuxedo pieces we need off of them. Your new tuxedo will fit just as well as the first, and don't worry about your lost bag. I'm sure it will turn up."

And so, I arrived at the Swan Club on Roslyn Harbor in Long Island, wearing a tuxedo previously worn by a plastic man standing in the window of a Men's Wearhouse in a Long Island mall. No one knew the difference, of course.

It was a beautiful wedding. The bride and groom together looked like a cover of Modern Bride, attractive fountain-filled canals and lush, colorful flowers and trees backed the venue, and the manicotti and burgundy chicken were excellent (especially for wedding food). The couple articulated their own wedding vows, the officiant barely spoke (perfect!), and the reception was a ruckus. Most importantly, they seemed like a couple that should have gotten married. It's always uncomfortable to attend a wedding where the match doesn't feel right.

Yet with all of the happy excitement came a sadness that I had lost my last unmarried guy-friend. Attending ten weddings can make you feel old, but having my best friend from high school get married made me feel ancient. The wedding was a loud reminder that high school was long gone, and he and I had become adults. Or, at least, he had. As I looked around the reception, I realized I was the only unattached member of the wedding party and a single among the three couples at my dinner table.

Fortunately, this wedding was full of interesting guests, and I unintentionally started a dispute at the huge dessert buffet when I complained aloud about the stress of having so many dessert options, many of which I had not had a chance to examine. Women behind me in line all yelled possible solutions: "Take the first cake you like, because there's no guarantee anything down the line will be better," "Take everything you see until your plate is full," and "Get a second plate if you need one." I mostly ignored their advice and held out for almost the entire length of the buffet until I discovered tasty strawberry shortcake at the end.

As I ate shortcake, I tried to entertain my table with the story of the weird hobo in Ronkonkoma wearing a mannequin-sized tuxedo to the beach. One girl asked, "Did you lose the bag on the Long Island Rail Road?" When I told her that I did, she told me about a lost purse she had recovered after riding the train, and like others before and after her, she assured me my bag was not lost. Strangely, the Long Island Rail Road's apparent 100 percent lost-item return rate is renowned.

One member of the wedding party told me a story of his application to be a field agent at the CIA and what it was like to be interrogated attached to a polygraph for two days (I thought maybe he could track down my lost bag). Another guy at my table told me the story of an accidental date he had with Natalie Portman, and he and his girlfriend (not Natalie Portman) offered to drive me back into New York City to minimize any chance of me losing another bag, an offer which I quickly accepted. The CIA guy won my prize for best wedding guest story and the couple won my prize for most adorable and helpful couple at the wedding.

The next day, after an informal get together at the groom's house, I said a final goodbye to my best friend and told him that I hoped I would see him again soon.

The cute couple from the wedding chauffeured me into the City, but before flying home, I spent a couple days with one of my recently-married college roommates and his wife, catching up, playing games, and gorging on Red Mango frozen yogurt. The three of us had a marvelous time together. After leaving New York, I called the Long Island Rail Road again after a long flight home. Their return rate had gone unscathed -- they had located my bag. I was relieved. I hadn't lost anything after all.

Bicycles sit waiting for a class (courtesy of Josh Hikes)

WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, Ca. -- In an office building in Los Angeles, in a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Westwood Village, sit forty bicycles. Dressed in athletic gear with a water bottle and towel, I walk into the room and prepare myself to spend fifty minutes there, pedaling on a bicycle that can't move.

A cycling instructor, a flawlessly fit man with a shaved head, yells at the class like a German drill sergeant into a headset microphone that makes him look like he's about to join Britney Spears on a concert tour. I wonder if his name is Diethelm or Rolfe. Knowing I'm a newcomer to his class, he tells me ominously, "Your only goal is to finish." Maybe he's trying to inspire me, but now I'm more nervous than ever. I attach cages to the pedals to hold my...

An abandoned chair sits on the shore of the Salton Sea

SALTON SEA, Ca. -- On the shores of the Salton Sea in eastern California, dead fish, twisted concrete rebar, and dilapidated office chairs dot the sand. In the water, a lone electrical pole stands, with wires connected to nothing, yet useful to a seagull that has repurposed it for its perch. A collapsing wooden walkway stopping abruptly in mid-air, leading to nowhere and a decommissioned utility meter are the only clues that a house once stood on this shore, until, apparently, the Sea swallowed it whole.

Near the beach, a faded, terse "Gas" sign with red-lettering falsely lures motorists to a shuttered box of a building, and the Corvina Cafe, with a crumbling, simple "Cafe" banner, sits boarded up, with two used tires in the parking lot as its only visitors. On the side of the...

Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle

ANAHEIM, Ca. -- I've written here a couple times about the advantages of traveling alone -- you always have the freedom to do whatever you want and you're forced to meet people you would never otherwise meet. But recently, after an enchanting trip to Disneyland, I wondered -- is Disneyland as magical of a place when visiting alone? Recently, I drove to the park to find out.

As my first order of business, I wanted to buy a Deluxe Annual Passport to the park (lesser Passports have many blackout dates) in honor of my rediscovering the magic of Disneyland days earlier. Outside the park gates, a friendly cashier (known in Disneyland parlance as a Cast Member) let me use the cost of my five-day old entrance ticket toward the pass's cost. After he swiped my credit card, he cheerfully...

Disneyland at night as seen from behind the statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse near Main Street

ANAHEIM, Ca. -- When I was ten years old, I discovered that every student in my fourth grade class was going to Disney World for spring break, except for me. Horrified (though in retrospect it probably wasn't even true), I desperately informed my parents of their unforgivable neglect, and soon enough, they (presumably reluctantly) dragged me and my brother onto a flight to Orlando. According to the Disney web site, our trip supposedly took us to "a place where storybook fantasy comes to life" full of "magical memories." I must have forgotten to take the memories home with me, because aside from the fact that my brother and I wore ridiculous Donald Duck caps, and an older kid tried to steal quarters from me at an arcade until my mom intervened (thanks mom!), I barely remember the...

A Darter models for the camera

OKAVANGO DELTA, Botswana -- Leopards are solitary. Unlike most of Africa's big game -- elephants live in herds, giraffes move in towers, and even lions travel in prides -- leopards rarely associate with each other. They are stealthy, versatile, and hard to spot, and after three days in the Bushveld, we still hadn't seen one.

We weren't complaining.

Our guide Goodman showed us a rich world of wildlife at Savuti, exceeding our greatest expectations, and we knew that experiencing Africa through his eyes was a priceless adventure. It was tough for all of us to wave goodbye to him from our propeller plane as we took off toward Kwetsani Camp in the Okavango Delta's Jao Reserve, the last stop on our Africa itinerary.

The Okavango Delta is Africa's largest freshwater wetland,...

A lion yawns in northern Botswana

LINYANTI WILDLIFE RESERVE, Botswana -- There aren't many cities more beautiful and cosmopolitan than Cape Town, South Africa. During the time we spent there, my family was humbled by Table Mountain, unsettled by the tour of Robben Island, and charmed by the Cape Peninsula. Yet when imagining Africa, most of us conjure images of wild animals, remote Bushmen tribes, and khaki safari outfits; and so, after three days in urban Africa, we set out to find the continent of our imagination.

After a two-hour flight to Johannesburg, a one-hour flight to Maun, Botswana, and a 30-minute flight in a propeller plane that touched down on a grass runway, we arrived in the African Bushveld. More specifically, we landed in the heart of the Linyanti Wildlife Reserve, a 275,000-acre area between the...

Barbed wire on a prison fence on Robben Island

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Located on the southwestern tip of Africa, Cape Town has served as the sea link between Europe and the East for the past three centuries. One of the world's most beautiful and cosmopolitan cities, it sits in the shadow of awesome Table Mountain and hosts a diverse group of inhabitants each of whom speak at least a couple of the city's eleven official languages.

While visiting Cape Town this past December with my family, I toured Robben Island, the location of the prison in which Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years imprisoned. Prisons always make for a strange tourist attraction; it's uncomfortable watching a group of tourists stampede jubilantly around a place with such a miserable history -- especially when the tour ends in a gift shop selling prison...

Hiking toward Coxcomb Mountains Inner Basin

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK, Ca. -- When my friend Justin and I read about hiking to Aqua Peak in the Coxcomb Mountains, a remote location in the eastern wilderness of Joshua Tree National Park, we knew we wanted to go. Surrounded by barren desert, rugged mountains, and rocky canyons, it's the hardest hike in my Joshua Tree hiking book. It's isolated. When you're out there, it's just you, vicious catsclaw plants, a few desert bighorn sheep, and the stars in the night sky.

But I have no idea where it is. We never found it.

I have fond memories of my first overnight backcountry camping trip, which was also in Joshua Tree. The biggest challenge hiking the park is its complete lack of water sources. Terrified we would run out of water, my then-girlfriend and I set out on a three-day...

Dashboard Confessional plays at the Moore Theatre in Seattle, Washington

HOLLYWOOD and ANAHEIM, Ca. -- Now that I'm in my post-college years, during the last time I went to the Avalon in Hollywood to see the band Brand New, I admit I felt a little silly screaming the chorus to the song "Soco Amaretto Lime": "I'm gonna stay 18 forever/So we can stay like this forever.../We'll never have to listen/To anyone about anything/Because it's all been done/And it's all been said/We're the coolest kids/And we take what we can get."

Then, when I saw Dashboard Confessional last week at Los Angeles's The Orpheum Theatre, I also chuckled as I shouted the lyrics to "The Swiss Army Romance": "We're not 21/But the sooner we are/The sooner the fun will begin/So get out your fake eyelashes/And fake IDs/And real disasters ensue/It's cool to take these chances/It's cool to fake...