Summer -- the most agreeable of seasons -- when time itself seems to lose all meaning. During summer, the only reminder that you’re not living one perpetual day is the visit to the store for more Mickey’s and sandwich supplies – a natural interlude that seems to be equally suitable for the creation of memories as well as reflection upon the past. But summer is also a season closely associated with change. For many, summer signifies the transition from high school to higher education – a move from the comforts of the nest to the sometimes harsh realities of the unsheltered world. It marks the blossoming of new love as much as it does the heartache of two divided by distance. For me, this past summer was no different – abundant with new memories and scattered with experiences that triggered old ones. It was a summer of change and of the need for mobility.

When I say mobility, I mean it in the most physical of senses, as in, moving from point A to point B to get more Mickey’s. This summer I spent 72 hours – that’s three entire days – either in a plane or in an airport waiting to get on a plane. Another ten days was spent on a ship in the Pacific Ocean. I laid my head on a pillow in four continents, ordered a beer in five different languages, watched Guess Who on four different flights, and fell in love and didn’t go home with women from six different countries.

Despite the inebriating effects of alcohol, I’ve managed to pick up a few life lessons during my journeys, with a handful in the following list.

1) When you or someone you know plans on regurgitating a bottle of red wine in your hotel room, it’s much better to have tile on the floor than carpet.

In a related lesson, when someone has just vomited everywhere except in the bowl you gave them to vomit in and says he’s going to go take a shower, make sure he actually takes a shower and isn’t, in fact, asleep and naked in the bathtub in a soup of his own, extra-fermented pinot noir.

2) In Japan, a “happy ending” isn’t just something you get at the end of a Disney movie.

3) You can get to know a person just as well in one month as you can in a year.

4) The best experiences are ones you don’t pay for, like rocking and rolling to an earthquake in Tokyo. Or, being picked up at the base of Mt. Fuji in the pouring rain and given a ride to the train station by an old Japanese woman who studied in California during the 70s and now takes every opportunity she can to repay Americans for the kindness that she was shown while living in Fresno.

5) Attempting to hit on women who don’t speak English IN ENGLISH brings no happy ending, but does draw plenty of laughs from anyone within hearing distance. Apparently lines like, “What’s your name,” and, “Do you speak English?” don’t have the same effect on foreign birds as they do on American girls.

Yes, those bastards at Sapporo, Heineken and Mickey’s, along with sake makers all over Japan, have conspired, yet failed in erasing the lessons of a summer spent in motion. New friends, drunken friends, beautiful foreign women and kind strangers are all hard to forget. However, as much as it was marked by movement and lessons on life, the most apparent transformation this summer was one concerning myself and an old girlfriend from high school.

Since going our separate ways in search of a college education three years ago, a divide has been forming between us. With each passing break, the division has become wider, but not until this summer was the sweeping change of our relationship evident. It seems that in a sense, our friendship has come full circle and we are at a point where it’s almost as if we are strangers to one another. In fact, if you marked the beginning of our friendship at the point when we left for college, we would not be friends at all, but merely acquaintances. This comes in a summer where I realized how little time it takes to form a meaningful bond with a person; the fact that you can meet someone, be drawn close to them, and then say goodbye all in the span of thirty days makes the fading of our relationship all the more poignant. But summer is a season linked to change, and to survive one season to see the next, you have to accept it just as you accept the fact that a forty of Mickey’s is not sufficient to cover all five major food groups.

This summer was all about adjustments and mobility and not brushing my teeth or bathing on a regular basis. It was about expanding horizons and the importance of allotting more money for alcohol so you don’t have to buy the sketchiest prohibition-style wine that’s only going to end up gurgling on the floor from a fountain named Mike at 4 a.m. In closing, let me end with one more lesson, although all credit must go to the legendary Miles Davis for this powerful rumination on life: “People who don’t change will find themselves like folk musicians, playing in museums and local as a motherfucker.” That’s right folks, folk music fucking sucks. Hope you had a great summer.