A certain sort of traveler will risk their neck for the sake of risking their neck. I don’t mean taking a chance with the ceviche in a Peruvian market, or a quickie with an attractive but penicillin-resistant prostitute. I mean some action with a corresponding reaction that might be fatal, like asking a Columbian to please take you to those FARC rebels that make lots of cocaine.

I’m not that sort of traveler.

It’s true that I’ve eluded pimps in Manila, Madrid, and Moscow; tip-toed past dope fields in Mexico’s Sierra Madre; and pedaled my bike across Djibouti, a pee-wee African republic sadly known for a long-ago habit of castrating their enemies. But I wasn’t looking for pimps, dope, or castrators; they were simply part of the larger scene. Along the way I was occasionally miserable, but never dead, and here’s why.

I ignore the venerable Boy Scout tradition: Be Prepared. In Djibouti, for example, I failed to equip myself with chain-mail underwear and did not receive training in I-Kik or another ancient martial art. This is not to say I would venture haphazardly into war zones, which is a perfectly foolish act.

I’m not fearless. Djibouti scared me. But there was no war, despite its location between Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. There were no reports of mutilated foreigners, no castrated cyclists.  So I went as I usually did, alone, armed only with a toothy grin. In other words, defenseless.

It may be blind luck that nobody has knocked me off after years of wandering, but I think it’s largely for the same reason that maniacs rarely kill grandmothers. Mr. Evil wishes to avoid a reputation for picking on a bicyclist that’s clearly not much of a challenge. And if he only hopes to earn a nice ransom off a kidnapping, it’s better to nab birders with thousand-dollar binoculars from an organized tour than a lone cyclist.

There is the possibility that I’ve got it all wrong. Perhaps I’m the scary one, and the people of Djibouti left me unmolested because a man pedaling solo on the Horn of Africa is clearly nuts. But I doubt it. The locals didn’t shun me. They were sympathetic, having endured the desert themselves. And they rewarded me with all they had to offer: water, dates, and khat (say ‘cot’), the leaf of a local bush that is chewed daily.

The khat provided a buzz with the kick of espresso, yet the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency considers the stuff a treacherous Schedule One Narcotic, like heroin. I can’t see why. The khat chewers I hung with in Djibouti were as dangerous as Cub Scouts with a hankering for Twinkies.

I was there during Ramadan, and the khat came out at dusk, with the echoing chant of the muezzin to break the day’s fast. The group I was with was delighted that I’d taken the time to visit Djibouti. I asked one man, an English teacher named Hatke, if he would like to visit the United States. He chewed this over, along with his khat, and finally admitted, “I’m afraid to go to America. It seems to be a violent place.”

There was nothing to do but smile. You see, it was up to me to prove him wrong.