David Laitin reflects on lessons learned from a lifetime of fieldwork -- and imagines the road ahead. How did watching the Sardana folk dance in Cataolonia reveal the limits of Gramscian hegemony as an explanatory framework? After one just decides, in middle life, to "learn Russian", how does one get started? How does one arrange to take a family, with two young children in tow, to Nigeria? True adventures on the social science frontier, as narrated by a uniquely experienced voice of authority.