It rained a lot on this trip. Of the 7 days I traveled, only one of them was dry. On a few of them I found myself in absolute sheets of rain. Twice I pulled off and waited it out, rather than try to navigate limited visibility, standing water and of course drivers of cars who were in the same conditions, but often exercising far less caution. Sometimes the luxury of not being in a hurry is simple self-preservation.

When I planned this trip, my mind’s eye envisioned plenty of clear days with open roads and expansive vistas. There was some of that, but it wasn’t the prevailing existence. But that turned out to be just fine. Not just because of Gore-Tex, but because the impetus behind the trip was a different sort of clarity. Following on my father’s burial ceremony, I wanted to give myself the time and opportunity to reflect and process – the life of his I knew, the life I learned more about at its end, the relationship we had and didn’t have. I don’t know about you but I can’t reflect on demand. I need to get into the right mindset.

We talk about “taking a walk to clear my head,” but for me that’s not what actually happens. The only time I can “clear my head” is when meditating, which I’m tragically bad at. For me it feels like using a bucket to bail out a boat that’s sprung a leak. A big leak. But I’ve glimpsed some of the benefits of a clear head which, for me, is not the absence of thought as much as the removal of clutter that allows for more focused reflection. So “taking a walk to clear my head” is really more “taking a walk to redecorate my brain.” And since I’ve had the moto, I’ve found that being on the bike prepares me for decluttering better than anything else I’ve tried. I can’t actually “clear my head” on the bike. I’ve made that mistake a couple of times with nearly catastrophic ends. What I can do, and need to do, is remain present and focused. Which is not the same thing as clearing my head but achieves the same objective of removing the clutter.

I think that’s why I crave being on the bike so much – because of the mindset it helps me be in. These extended rides over multiple days in particular are transformational. You know how it feels to do a new workout for the first time, where you feel only awkwardness, frustration and lingering pain? But once you do that workout for a week you start to achieve flow, confidence and strength? On these long trips I’m never far away from that decluttered mindset, and snap back into it pretty quickly once I hit the road. The Dutch have a word niksen, which is the practice of doing nothing. Which is different than relaxing in front of a TV or scrolling through Instagram. It’s literally (terrifying) act of sitting alone with your thoughts and nothing else. It’s another way of decluttering your brain to see what creative thoughts filter back in. I think of riding in the same way. Maybe it needs a name, like braaapsen or something.

So I got my clear days after all on this trip. Maybe comparing the reflections I had with the “expansive vistas” I imagined breaks the metaphor, but I do feel the road ahead is more open than it was before I left.

A few days ago on my way into Niagara-on-the-Lake I stopped for lunch in St. Catharine’s Ontario, a city of about 135K people on the south west shore of Lake Ontario. Like a lot of cities its size, it’s a former manufacturing city whose glory days are well behind it and is now depressed and trying to reinvent itself. There was ample street parking in the central business district so I found a spot and intended to walk around a bit and see if anything tempted me for lunch.

As I was walking away from the bike a man about my age complimented me on it, saying he really liked the styling. He was leaning against his car, smiling and approachable. He was with a younger woman who wasn’t saying much. I soon learned why as the man – whose name was Graham – began to hold court, ostensibly talking to me but spurred on by his audience of now multiple listeners. He told me about the city and its history, its politics and its economics, but in a way I only half understood. He made references to local politicians I couldn’t be expected to know, American presidents I should have known more about, and classical figures like Jason and the Argonauts I vaguely recalled but was struggling to put into context. It all felt like a Dennis Miller monologue that is obviously clever but only intelligible to a fraction of people who understand all the obscure references. Or like opening Twitter for the first time in a week and having no idea who Baby Gronk is, or why we’re supposed to hate a chain restaurant.

But I took away what I could. For instance, he talked about last names and ancestral heritage and asked me where my last name came from (Poland). He told me some day I’d go there and be in the place where they were from and feel its essence and recognize it in me and better understand who I was. This sounded useful to me, but not practical as this trip was by motorcycle. So I did the next best thing.

On the way south from Niagara-on-the-Lake I had to pass through Buffalo. My dad – whose passing precipitated this whole trip – grew up near there in a blue collar town I barely remember called Dunkirk. I decided to go visit the town, see the house where he grew up, and explore a bit to try to get the essence of the place, and to see what I could learn about my dad from it.

What I saw and learned maybe does help me understand my father a little more. sure. But I’m writing about it – and trying to remember it – not because of what I saw in Dunkirk, but because I gave credence to an idea I might not have been open to in daily life. Who has time for the ghosts of their ancestors between meetings, or when it’s garbage night? On the motorcycle, I give myself permission to go down narrow lanes and gravel roads, trusting the GPS will figure out how to get me back. I think it’s that permission, that freedom from agenda, is the best part about them. Sometimes change comes not from finding, but just from looking.

There’s a Ray Bradbury story from 1952 called “A Sound of Thunder” that undoubtedly inspired plot lines in Back to the Future and The Flash and many others. It takes place in a future where time travel is possible, so of course the technology is monetized as exclusive tourism for the wealthy, who can travel back 60 million years and hunt dinosaurs. In one group, a guy veers off the path built to minimize time tourists’ impact on the world, which could have unforeseen consequences millions of years in the future. When they get back from the hunt, things are changed in subtle and not so subtle ways. Some words are spelled differently, and a fascist presidential candidate has just won the election that he had previously lost before the group traveled back for the hunt. The guy who got lost in the forest looks down at his boots and sees among the mud there the remains of a single dead butterfly, trampled as he stumbled through the prehistoric brush.

Treading on butterflies is unfortunate and causing the election of fascists objectively bad. But the notion that actions in the present can impact a future world is worth remembering. A lot of people I know are trying to become better versions of themselves. It’s one of the reasons I take these trips. But if all I’m doing is taking from the world I’m interacting with to try to make my life a little better, well that’s selfish. And myopic.

This trip began with a burial service for my father, who passed away a few months back. (The ground was frozen then so the burial service needed to be postponed.) At the service, the priest said a few words and then asked if anyone else would like to speak. Almost immediately someone did – a friend of Dad’s from 40 years ago who moved away 20 years ago. Then another. And then a procession of others. They all said the same thing, one way or another – that my dad touched their lives through his generosity. Not just money, but time and attention and wisdom and community.

I do think a person’s life can be measured by the other lives they’ve touched. and I remember distinctly thinking that, and thinking about my dad’s inveterate sense of community, as I rode out of my hometown the morning after the service. 10 miles later I stopped for breakfast in Camden, NY where I went to high school and where my dad taught chemistry for almost 40 years. An old guy was having a cigarette in the parking lot when I pulled in, and started to make his way towards me as I got off the bike and removed my helmet. He wanted to talk, clearly. I’m used to this on the bike. It’s almost always other motorcycle people who want to ask about the bike and the trip and offer advice. And so it was with this guy, whose son rides motorcycles. But this guy wanted to keep talking. He told me about engineering designs he had made including a design for a chair he was trying to patent (at age 83) and get into the market. He told me about how he invested $500 in IBM in the 70s changed his life financially. He told me about his wife who wanted him to stop working on a project that consumed him because he should have been retired, and so he did but for 15 years secretly hoped she’d relent and let him go back to doing what he loved. About how she passed and he missed her, but he relished his return to the project.

What was normally a 60 second exchange was a 15 minute conversation. Instead of cutting it short, I just stood outside with the man – Dave was his name – and listened. He needed someone to tell his stories to. Just someone to listen. If I had been traveling by car and on an inevitable timetable, I probably would have kept it short. In fact he probably wouldn’t have talked to me at all. Instead I had no place to be but the road ahead, and nothing to do besides try to be a better participant in this world.

Last night at dinner I thought about Dave again, and hoped he enjoyed telling me his stories. At the brewery where I ate, I saw a chalkboard behind the bar that said “Beer it Forward” with a couple dozen names written on it. I asked the bartender what that was about. “It’s something we do for the locals. It’s a small town and we have a lot of regulars. They can buy their friends a beer even when their friends aren’t here, so it’s waiting for them the next time they come in.”

Inspired, obviously. Normally I’d quietly regard it as such and get on with my meal. But after thinking about my dad and listening to Dave and reflecting on how these trips can make me a more active participant in the world, I said to her, “I’m just passing through and don’t know anyone. Can I still do it?”

She thought a moment and said “Sure,” so we came up with the idea that I would Beer it Forward to the next person who sat in the seat I was in at the bar. She gave me a piece of paper to put my name on (just “Mike”). When my check came it included the $8.13 Beer it Forward charge.

Whenever I learn something new there’s a period at the outset when I have to be super intentional about everything. I recently started taking tennis lessons and it’s mentally exhausting because of all the things I need to remember with each stroke. To make technique unconscious, it first has to be entirely conscious. I feel that way sometimes on these trips. But instead of grooving my body to hit a consistent forehand, I’m trying to teach my brain to be a more authentic and connected person in the world. And like my tennis, it’s awkward and faltering sometimes. But once in a while I hit a shot that’s pure, that makes me realize what it’s supposed to feel like.

They don’t put coffee out until 7:15am at my hotel and there’s no backup machine in my room so I was irritated at first at the interruption to my schedule. I woke up at 5:15 and found myself facing 2 hours without coffee. What is it normally – about 5 minutes? The time it takes me to brush my teeth and pee and feed cats. They always come first, before my coffee. Maybe that’s martyrdom. Maybe it’s kindness. By now it’s just habit.

I came out to the back deck to look at the water. What I noticed was that despite the lake occupying about 3/4 of my field of vision, what I noticed more was how it sounded. Or rather how it didn’t sound – like beltway traffic, lawnmowers, construction, industrial hum, someone’s outdoor speaker, and all the other noise that I think all subconsciously conspire to keep me from going outside at home without a specific purpose. I sat for a while and listened. I missed my coffee. And then I thought of mindfulness and of the idea of being tuned into what I was feeling. And so instead of finding irritation at not having coffee, or trying to distract myself because I really really wanted some, I leaned into its absence. Like breathing into a sore area during a stretch. I tried to make something as small as a delay to my morning coffee into a conscious experience. And I realized that’s what these trips are for. Breaking out of routines is exactly the point, and every time I do it I have an opportunity to not just experience something a little differently, but to see if this new way is worth keeping.

None of these little trips is going to radically change my life. But my life has changed radically since I started taking them – with that first one in January of 2021 to a cabin near Roanoke with the mountain bike I waited 25 years to buy. As I reflected on this while I saw and heard the water, I thought of shopping for clothes. You go to a store and see a dozen things that are interesting, maybe try on half a dozen, buy one of them and take it home. The trip didn’t change your wardrobe. Maybe it added a little something to it. Maybe it displaced something from it. But over time if you keep going you have a whole new look. I think that’s what I’ve been doing. Trying stuff on out here and seeing how much of it I want to bring home. I don’t ever want to return as some transformed version of myself, or to some transformed version of my life. But there’s always room – and need – to make myself and my life a little different, and if I’m lucky, a little better.