[1] After turning in his early admission application, MacNiven held a press conference in front of Stanford's Bowman Alumni House.

[2] MacNiven said, "There's so many outstanding people applying to Stanford these days that I actually want to be `out standing' in front of them, to show them that he really did have a passion to go there.

It was on this trip that a friend nicknamed him the "Kintarō," which means "Golden Boy," because of his blond hair.

Unable to find a distributor for the documentary of the trek, MacNiven burned 1,000 DVDs and began hawking copies of the film on the streets of San Francisco and at a restaurant his father owns.

[citation needed] In 2006, MacNiven appeared as a contestant on the ninth edition of the American television series The Amazing Race.

Averell, who MacNiven met on the study abroad program Semester at Sea four years earlier,[4] beat out ten other teams to win the show's $1 million prize over Eric & Jeremy.

[10] He also added, "BJ and I approached each country with wide eyes and enthusiasm and joy and a huge spirit of adventure and willing to share that with everybody we met.