A Lonely Road to Nowhere, Article 3: The Stakes

Prior to the day I quit my job, a six-month bike ride across North America had been a “someday” idea. It existed out of my reach, somewhere on the horizon.

But the day I quit my job, the bike ride came right up to me with a pen and paper asking for my autograph.

It was calling me to commit to it fully at that exact moment. Not one day when I was older and more settled down. Not when I had more time or money. Not once I had more experience with bicycles.

And yet, I hesitated.

I didn’t hesitate to commit to my ride because of the ride itself or my inexperience with bikes, though. I wasn’t wary of it just because it was a daunting feat in and of itself – though of course it was.

I hesitated to commit to my ride because doing so would mean I was fully committing to myself.

The Stakes

Flying to Deadhorse, Alaska, and starting on a bicycle ride to Key West, Florida, would mean I would be solely responsible for my own upkeep throughout the entire journey.

I would have no steady income. I wouldn’t have any employer-sponsored health benefits or retirement options. No one would even be riding alongside me. It would simply be me, my bicycle, and the open road.

That truth was simultaneously the most exhilarating and terrifying fact about the whole thing.

All my life, I had wanted independence. I had wanted to be my own person, make my own way, and actualize the objects of my own desires.

The trouble was that I knew me. I knew how dependent I truly was on everything and everyone around me. I knew how broke – and broken – I had been at various points in my life. I knew what I had been through, the struggles and the successes.

I knew all the self-doubts that raged through my head and body every day. I knew how it seemed like I had faked my way to every good outcome I had ever experienced.  And I was starkly aware that it felt like I had deserved every bad outcome that had occurred to me.

I carried all this heavy internal baggage with me on the day I quit my job.

Committing to my bike ride would mean I was committing to riding 6,500-7,000 miles across North America with all that internal baggage in addition to the physical gear I would be carrying with me.

There was no possible way I could know what that truly meant when I decided to go for it, though.

All I knew was that carrying my internal baggage was going to be the hardest part.

First steps

Me, riding mile after mile, day after day, with me.

How could I possibly spend that much time with myself?

How could I hand the reins over to a guy who had failed so many different times throughout his childhood and adolescence? How could I commit to someone who hadn’t ever committed to going all-out on anything in his entire life?

All those questions reverberated inside me as I sat looking out my window the day I quit the cush job I had been trying to land for so many years. I couldn’t commit to that guy, could I? After all, what had he done to make him worthy of being committed to?

When I asked myself that question, a shift happened inside my head. I scrolled through a mental feed of accomplishments that the guy whose body I inhabited had achieved in the first decade of his adult life.

That guy had left home with nothing at eighteen years old. For the six years that followed, he would live and study a diverse range of topics on three separate continents.

He would then move countless times and work in numerous industries doing what needed getting done, no matter how menial the task might be.

He would get himself into – and later out of – student loan debt.

He would leave home again after covid and seek opportunities to develop practical trade skills that would always be in need. And he would learn them in harsh mountain environments in all weather conditions.

Then, before he felt ready or quite knew what he was getting himself into, he would load his car down with his few worldly possessions and drive 5,000 miles to Alaska to start another new life in the great white north.

The Shift

Now, that guy needed to take another shaky first step.

Because after all those years of traveling from place to place and doing whatever I needed to do to make a living, I wasn’t just earning a dollar so I could eat for another day. I was becoming the kind of guy who isn’t afraid of taking steps to create a fulfilling life.

I was leaving behind the guy who takes a J-O-B just for the paycheck and benefits, and I was becoming a guy who accepts the ideas that call to him late at night when he can’t sleep.

On the day I quit my job, I was a drifter on a lonely road to nowhere.

On that same day, when I decided to commit to my bike ride, I became a young man setting off on a self-imposed rite of passage to create my own meaning instead of searching for it in some job.

My bike ride was not simply a journey from Point A to Point B. It was a deep dive into the person I was when I started riding and the person I could be by the time I finished.