My Solo Adventure Across the United States

How are we not meant to seek? How do we define our lives without pushing against limits…even the one’s we warn ourselves not to take?

Is there a precipice in which we have to face death in order to become anything?

I think, undoubtedly…yes.

…

A massive bull elk.

Dead.

I’d never seen a bull elk in the wild, not even a lifeless one.

In the middle of the winding canyon road, his body must have weighed more than 500 pounds. Lifeless, though. He laid there from antlers to tail, fully, across the whole lane.

And this would be the first of many close-calls.

The most fun thing about motorcycles is the lack of weight. The ability to lean into corners, and feeling the centrifugal force pull against your body. It’s a feeling that isn’t like anything else.

But, it also means that you move much faster than cars in a canyon. Also meaning, you may come up on danger a lot quicker, too.

This scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t like swerving to avoid a pothole or an object. It was a mountain of matter that there’s no way you were going around or through.

And once I caught my breath, all I could think about is, “where’s the car that hit him? How the hell was it still operable? How have authorities not moved this body yet?”

It had to have just happened.

A beating heart. A powerful, regal, perfect animal.

Just…gone.

…

Luckily, I was really concentrating on the road. I’d learned from years on a bike (thanks to myself and my brother for that obsession) that riding canyons takes a lot of focus. Not just for avoiding making mistakes, but being ready for what you can’t see.

Like maybe a giant bull elk, just starting the rut.

It was an abrupt stop, but nothing hazardous came of it.

Thanks superhuman reflexes.

It was the moments afterward, soaking in what was in front of me, that truly made me think about this journey that I had embarked on.

“Did I just unintentionally embark on a death wish?”

…

In 2018, I made an impulsive decision to make a clockwise journey around the states.

Just me, an adventure bike, 80 pounds of gear, and the overwhelming desire to have an adventure.

I was desperate to do something that made me feel alive. To take on something that would maybe help me figure out who I was trying to become.

I just didn’t know what that was going to really mean.

This trip wasn’t what I expected.

But it also was one of the greatest feats I’d ever done on my own.

We can never truly understand everything we’re going to come across when we embark outside our castle walls of comfort. The exhaustion of the trek, the numbing of the repetition, the fear of being vulnerable, the spikes of fear when you’re not ready for what the road you take on will throw at you.

I almost got taken off the road by a wild turkey, I found myself breaking camp in the most quiet, eerie, isolated spot in the redwoods for the fear of something watching me. I got caught in rainstorms that even four-wheeled vehicles were pulling over to let it pass.

I was detoured by the aftermath of Hurricane Florence that effected states as far in as Tennessee. I was blown across the lane by 40 mile an hour winds and found myself hiding from it by riding next to semis.

I found myself awake all night at a couple campsites, clutching my pocket knife, the only weapon I had, in fear of the obviously drugged-up neighbors that never took their eyes off me while I was there.

I found myself crying from relief once I got to the beaches of California, because I knew I had made it seventy-five percent of the way, and I had been holding onto my bike and my life with a death-grip of fear for weeks.

…

I made it.

An 8,000+ mile trip around the states (should have been more, but Hurricane Florence kept me from making it all the way to the East coast), from Idaho to Ohio, to the West tip of North Carolina all the way to Santa Monica, California, up into the West of Oregon and back home.

Miraculously, I hadn’t wrecked, my bike had held up — as well as my sanity and soul — I hadn’t gotten injured, I had seen so many tiny wonderlands with cool people, and I did it all on my own.

I had seen the epic mountains of Montana, through frigid mornings that made me stop every fifteen minutes. I had been to the sandy beaches of Lake Michigan where it looked liked the edge of an ocean.

I spent a whole night riding half the speed limit from fear of hitting a pair of the hundreds of eyes (deer) that stood to the edge of, and ran across the dark asphalt in front of me.

I rode through days of back roads that promised no signs of civilization, only fields of corn and wheat.

I rode through the epic redwoods of California and rode the whole West coast of the state’s highway 101, in awe of the endlessness of the Pacific while on one of the most beautiful and peaceful roads to ride on two wheels.

I’d been in so many heightened states of loneliness, fear, excitement, trepidation, relief, exhaustion, loss, and panic.

Over the period of a month.

…

The whole thing is years behind me now.

But when I give myself a chance to really think about it, so much happened. So much fear faced. So many unknowns. So much dread.

But also so much awe. So much fulfillment. So many tiny moments of peace between the white-knuckling of strain of “what the fuck did I do”?

I’ll always be proud of that ride.

So many of my friends and family asked, “why”?

So many reiterated that it was “dangerous to do alone”. That there was a lot out there, and that I should think seriously about what I was doing.

What was I gaining from such an impulse? Something so hastily planned. Something that I may or may not be ready for.

I had ridden motorcycles since I was a kid, yes. But never ACROSS A SECTION OF THE WORLD AND BACK.

It didn’t matter.

I was going to do it anyway, and they all knew that.

…

I don’t want to lie to you though.

I almost turned back. A few times.

My greatest feat was making it all the way East. Making it past the Idaho State line, then making it past the one-thousand-mile mark.

Once I did though, the dangers that I would potentially have to face going back the same way I came were enough for me to push forward, mile by mile.

I couldn’t go back, and my mind changed.

Pushed me forward rather than back.

Too many dangerous roads, too cold, too wild across those Northern states. And so I looked in front of me. I looked to the East coast (thanks for nothing Florence), I looked to moving South to warmer weather. I looked to all the green and wildlife of the Midwest. To shooting back West, driven by the pull of California, fair weather, The Rock, lots of people, and proximity to home.

I became determined to close something that I had no choice now, but to complete.

It was the only way back to what I knew.

…

It wasn’t a romance like I thought it would be.

Really, I expected to ‘find myself’ out there. But what ended up happening above all else is not what I found for my future, but what I found in myself that I had ignored for so long.

Facing fear.

Facing challenge.

Facing the fact…that I had a defining narrative that I wasn’t good enough to accomplish anything spectacular.

And sometimes it takes a forceful push to really get you anywhere close to realizing that about yourself.

Maybe something like taking a solo motorcycle trip around the United States and coming back alive, unscathed.

…

So, don’t just wander, Reader.

Adventure.

Find a way.

Push yourself past the point of no return, and maybe you’ll find something that you never could have otherwise.

Maybe you’ll even have to dare and defy death.

Truth and Love, Reader.

…

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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