Bill was an interesting white guy, and a libertarian. He grew up three blocks from where I lived, but he spent many years on a ranch in Texas as a cowboy and ranch hand. His fellow cowboys used to call him the crazy man, because he’d get up after a fist fight, adjust his jaw, and then say, “Let’s try that again.” He later became a white hat hacker, and analyzed computer security systems from his abode in Mount Shasta, California. Now, he was exploring Cuzco, and considered setting up shop in the city, hacking and improving networks for pay, while exploring South America.

Bill was the first white, male, solo traveler I met, and as a libertarian myself, we got along easily. We talked about his home in Shasta, about the interesting people the volcano and surrounding lands attracted, and about how independent minded the people were. Bill used to work with Vietnamese people in one of his odd jobs in Texas, and he even knew a few words of Vietnamese. He became good friends with a Vietnamese family, and admired their fierce independence. When September 11th happened, Bill didn’t fall for the official theory, and he became even more suspicious of the government when he analyzed the reports.

“If them feds ever come out to Shasta, we got our own private militia, and mountain men. We can handle em. I’m tellin ya Dave, we can sure use a fella like "