different upbringings and experiences, we are all very much the same. Getting to the crash site was far more impactful than I expected. I am not the same person as the one who began the ride. As we got closer and closer to the crash site, I started to feel my Dad’s presence. All my life as an endurance athlete, people have asked, “Why do you push so hard? Why do you do such long races? What are you searching for?” I never had an answer. And I certainly never would have said, “I was searching for my father,” because that just didn’t occur to me. Now I know that he brought me to Laos to find a missing part of myself. After reaching the goal of the crash site, we still had hundreds of miles of riding ahead. I
always pushed back due to film logistics – charging batteries, packing equipment into trucks, loading the motorcycles with film equipment, and filling water and food supplies for a day on the trail. Initially I was frustrated that the film crew slowed me down, but now I’m grateful. It gave me a lot of time to journal, think, and process. In the same way, I was constantly pushing Huyen Nguyen, a Vietnamese mountain biker who rode the trail with me. But Huyen taught me to slow down, which allowed me to look, to listen, to change focus from just me and look outward beyond my mission – opening my eyes to the bigger world around me. That change in pace and perspective allowed me to experience the ride in a much more complete way. She also taught me that you don’t need words to communicate and that despite very
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78 | September 2017
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