This week, I published my AI manifesto so that people could see how I am using it in a world that is increasingly machine-generated. Then I heard Petty’s song on the radio. Holy shit!

I’m going to let the song speak for itself. The parallel between the 2002 radio industry and today’s AI industry is stark. Corporate efficiencies and technological change are driving the mechanization of content creation and distribution; underneath it, the human longing for the human touch and authenticity is alive.

History repeats itself whether we like it or not.

I do not see myself as the DJ, but then again, maybe being at the bottom of the dial is where the real stuff happens!

• I will never post something AI has written, even small things. Not my essays, notes, or photos (I did once and regretted it!). It will always be in my own hand.

• I will never let AI change my mind about things I think are important parts of my writing.

• I will never let AI alter my voice.

My philosophy about AI
AI is just a tool, like any other tool man has invented throughout the ages. It makes some things more efficient, like all tools. But that does not mean I believe that we should use AI in all aspects of work or life. And I hate to burst people’s bubbles, but it’s been around in our lives, silently, for decades.

It is not human, and never can be. It can only imitate human critical thought, creativity, and natural beauty. It can not create it. Yes, AI poses ethical dilemmas that prior technologies did not – like every technology before did. The lightbulb vs. the candle, bronze vs. the stone, the elevator and urbanization, you name it. AI’s are just different, and further-reaching in the scary ways it can trick us into believing something is real.

My philosophy about why I write
I write because it frees me to be authentic to the world. It is the entire creative process that liberates me, not just the words on the page. I love the brainstorming, the strategy, the beginning-middle-end, the actual typing of words on the page. I view it like painting; it happens layer by layer, through iteration.

If I were to delegate my creative process to another human, much less an AI model, it would literally steal my freedom. I will never let that happen.

How I use AI in my writing
I am not yet fortunate enough to have a human editor; I wish I did! I use AI as a tool during my writing process in five ways:

• To proofread a scene or chapter for accuracy against my story outline or codex; it’s great at busting me for inconsistencies in narrative and voice.

• I find it useful for testing ideas, like I would with another person. “Hey, I’m thinking that I may have missed an opportunity for interiority in this passage; what do you think?”

• I’ve used AI to break logjams where I’m working through the meaning of something. Sometimes I take its suggestions and write 100% in my own hand.

• I am a terrible typist, and I try to get my ideas down really fast so they are not lost; this leads to a lot of typos, sometimes unintelligible letters on a page! AI can be a good copy editor, but only for the small stuff. I never let it restructure my prose or even my punctuation (which is often incorrect, but I like it that way!)

• One time I was missing a photo for one of my essays, so I worked with AI to create one using a couple of real photos I had taken. I will probably never do this again; it felt inauthentic.

I will continue to use AI, like I would a paintbrush for a painting. Just as a tool, never as a creative, never as a co-author. If for any reason I do, I will tell you.

I’d love a conversation about this. Or, if you disagree, please say so.

Every year I pick a song for my summer anthem; last year it was “Levitating” by Dua Lipa (my friends still can’t believe that I picked that!) I play the summer song over and over; driving, surfing, riding my motorcycle, everywhere. Usually loud.

This year the song is 726 by Goose. I’ve been waiting for July 26 to roll around so I could honor the song’s title before writing about it.

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with a few buddies on Jackson Lake wake surfing. Spectacular in every way. My turn came up, so I put 726 on the stereo; loud. “What the hell is this? Some sort of chick music?” one of my friends shouted out, referring to the cool vibe of the song. He probably expected to see me surf to something from Ozzy’s archives. After seven minutes of surfing and one song, I ended my session and hopped back on the boat. “Wow, that was awesome, you were in the zone, somewhere else,” the same friend said. “Now I get it!”

The sound of this music transports us immediately into summer, and into our soul. It has an arc. A laid-back meter with an airy feeling, like summer. Yet it evokes a deep, sad feeling of drifting and passing. Just like summer passing (especially living in the mountains like I do, where we only get about 10 weeks of it).

The listless, hazy feeling of summer in 726 is really about drifting through a directionless period of life. The arc builds anticipation, then acknowledgment, and ends with release.

“Somebody’s waiting / Tired and laden.” Our spirit is the somebody, perhaps somebody we’ve suppressed. The somebody who’s worn out or ignored.

It is also always waiting to help us get back on track. “And all I’ve caught of a soul / Is knowing it’s on me.”

Everything we need is already inside of us, “hid out and shaking”, ready to be discovered. We only have ourselves to blame for not moving forward, even when we are “up on a haze.”

The bridge tells us to let go, “We all just need a little direction sometimes / ‘Cause no one’s holding these hands.” It’s on us to find it. But maybe we’re “holding on a little too tight” to see it.

“And I am swimming up on a tide / Well I’m tired of waiting / It’s already taken a little too long to get back up.” Directionless times can feel like we are being carried by the ocean, with an abyss beneath. The fear of not knowing where we are going, and maybe even sinking. Definitely not surfing! We need to trust the tide to eventually bring us back to shore, solid ground. Sometimes it takes a little too long for our liking, so we wait before taking action.

The action happens by following our spirit, not just our minds like most men are taught. It requires intention and the willingness to be led from within. “So show me the way in / I know that it’s blatant lord.” It’s already there; lean into vulnerability and honor the spirit beneath.

The vulnerability reveals the spirit with the clarity of a “diamond.” An awakening that feels like “cold, cold water.” It recognizes that the spirit and the ego are two entities that travel together: “Never showing us alone / We’ll go someday / To where I’ve known us all along.”

726 closes by releasing all the tension and loneliness it has built. We are never far from home — the home where our spirit lives. The fade-out is a three-minute instrumental, not a jam, but a melody for reflection and dropping in and being carried home.

On another topic, if you are someone who doesn’t like jam bands, Goose might be the jam band for you!

No Honest Miles drop this week; see you next week!

The whole song is about people doing their own thing and transferring “weights” to others in different ways. A kind of craziness that makes no sense, but we all do it.

“Hey mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed? / He just grinned and shook my hand. ‘No’ was all he said.” No refuge from the burdens we were each beginning to carry:

• Evan’s burden of not knowing where our bikes were and not trusting the people I had hired to get them there, and trying to transfer it to everyone.

• Aaron’s burden of thinking he was the only one who could fix everything for everyone.

• Tucker’s burden of not accepting that he’s on a trip with a group and can’t be completely independent, pick his own route, or go at his own leisurely pace.

• My burden of assumed, not granted, group leadership — and holding myself accountable for everything that had gone wrong to this point.

“Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee? / He said, do me a favor, son, won’t ya stay and keep Anna Lee company?” No bikes. My research, my work, my plan and booking had gone awry. Empty messages from Veronica. Everyone turning to look at me. I raised my hand to put this trip together. Now I carry everyone’s worry about when the bikes will show.

“Take a load off, Fanny / Take a load for free / Take a load off, Fanny / And you put the load right on me.” The chorus cuts both ways. Taking a load off someone is generosity. Putting your load on someone is theft. Same lyric, opposite acts. Aaron shaving down a helmet liner, checking everyone’s tire pressure — that’s the first kind. But it also robs the rest of us of a chance to carry something. I was doing the same thing, in almost the same way, with the route planning and mapping.

“When I saw Carmen and the devil walking side by side / I said, hey, Carmen, come on, let’s go downtown / She said, ‘I gotta go, but my friend can stick around.’” This stanza captures how I felt descending from the safety of a well-traveled public road to a river devoid of soul. Environmental degradation, razor wire, despair. Just to see if we could get a better deal on emeralds at the source. It didn’t feel right. A moral compromise, another accumulated burden.

We caught our “cannonball” out of Muzo the next morning, our bags sinkin’ low. We rode out carrying everything we rode in with, and then some. The weight doesn’t come off; it just redistributes.

In case you missed it, Chapter 7 of Honest Miles dropped last Sunday. Check it out here:

We meet downstairs at our agreed-upon 7:00, and head out to the restaurant around the corner, where we had eaten the night before. The sun has not yet peeked over the tall, forested mountains that surround the town. The air is heavy and still, and already feels suffocating. We order coffee, huevos fritos y jamón con arepas (fried eggs, ham, and arepas), a standard in Colombia. The too-weak coffee comes quickly. We sip it as we watch the street outside begin to wake up.

“I brought my helmet to see if we can tweak it to fit better,” Evan says. “The thing gave me a headache all day yesterday.”

“Where does it hurt?” Aaron asks as he reaches for the helmet.

“Right here,” Evan points to his forehead.

Aaron jumps in and takes over before discussing a solution with anyone. He borrows a knife from the kitchen, removes the liner from the worn black rental helmet, then starts shaving the protective foam from the front of the helmet, removing about a quarter inch of material. He reinstalls the liner and hands it back to Evan. “Try this.”

Evan pulls the helmet over his ears. “Better, could use a little more.” He hands the now-compromised helmet back to Aaron, and the process is repeated. This time the fix works. Less protective now, the helmet won’t be causing Evan more pain.

“I made a really cool off-road route for today,” Tucker says.

“Send it to me so that I can have a look, I just sent everyone the one I made last night,” I reply.

Tucker fiddles with his phone and isn’t able to get the route to export properly so it can’t be shared.

“Let’s stick with Shaun’s route since we all have it,” Evan says.

“I’m cool with that,” Aaron agrees.

Tucker ignores the exchange as he continues to struggle with the download on his device.

After breakfast, the hotel manager takes us to retrieve our bikes from their stable. He removes the padlock and opens the makeshift steel door. With some relief, we find everything the way we left it the night before. We ride our bikes back a block, up the hill to the hotel, and park in front. We agree to head out no later than 8:45. Thirty minutes. Plenty of time.

We return to our rooms to pack up. On the way out, I pay for my room — 150,000 pesos, about $37, cash-only here. I arrive at my bike around 8:30, and Aaron is already there working on his. Evan arrives. Sorts some gear and plops his duffel on the bike. Then tightens a strap. Loosens it. Retightens. All three of us are loaded with our duffels within a few minutes. We share Aaron’s tire gauge to check tire pressures while we wait for Tucker to arrive. Aaron checks Tucker’s.

8:45 rolls around, and Tucker is still not down. The sun peeks over the top of the west-facing, three-story hotel and immediately heats the morning air to a muggy heat. I begin to sweat. The three of us are looking for shade while we wait for Tucker.

He finally appears. “What’s up, guys?” he says enthusiastically. Aaron glances at me. I meet his eyes, which roll, then look away. No one says a thing.

“I checked your air pressure, the rear tire is at 26 psi and could use a top off,” Aaron says to Tucker.

“Thanks, man, you’re awesome,” Tucker replies with appreciation.

“Let’s take care of it when we fuel up,” I say.

While Tucker loads his belongings, I study the road ahead on the map. I think about distance. About heat. About daylight, already slipping. I suppress my urge to push things along. Our destination today is Muzo, a short 90 miles, but in unknown terrain.

Tucker’s gear is the most extensive of everyone’s. He brought everything he planned to ride with on the trip from home, since his bike was coming directly from Miami, where he bought it sight unseen. He piles his gear on the sidewalk next to the bikes and begins stuffing items into the bike’s side panniers.

“Can we help,” I ask with annoyance.

“Don’t hurry me, it will only take longer,” he retorts.

Panniers loaded, he grabs his giant yellow dry sack duffel and straps it to his tail rack, then takes the fishing pole he has hauled down here and slides it under the straps. The uneven load bulges.

Tucker finally mounts up, and we roll out at 9:15. No one comments on the time.

Before heading southwest to Muzo, we head a couple miles north to check out a waterfall that supposedly flows through a hole in the side of a cliff — the reason we stayed in Florián. A Tucker find. At the waterfall, the tension loosens. We park on the side of the narrow road and dismount. A small, faded sign marks the trailhead.

We hike a couple of hundred feet down a steep, slick trail to a rickety suspended footbridge that crosses a stream bed flowing into a cave — really a grotto with a 50-foot ceiling. We scramble down the damp, mossy rock footing and around automobile-sized boulders to a slow-moving stream, a trickle this time of year. We then follow it to where it exits the cave, here it drops 1,400 feet straight down. I can see Florian tucked in the rainforest on the side of the mountain, a few hundred feet lower and a mile or so to the west. I’m noticing the lack of graffiti, trash, or broken bottles that usually accompany sites like this in most parts of the world.

A weak mist rises. Hummingbirds buzz around, nectaring on the jungle flowers that surround the mouth of the cave. It feels mystical. We speculate about what this place might have meant to indigenous people. Did they perform rituals here? Sacrifices? Burials?

We linger, trying to capture some photos of the birds. Eventually, I start back up the trail, hoping that my exit will suggest it’s time to move on. Evan and Aaron follow.

Back at the bikes, Aaron, Evan, and I are ready in five minutes. Helmet on. Gloves on.

Tucker is still coming up the trail. Many great photos to be had. We wait another five minutes. It’s now 11:15, time to roll.

We ride the two miles back into Florián and fuel up at its only gas station. Aaron helps Tucker top off his rear tire while Evan and I take turns topping off our bikes. I pay for both to save time, and Evan agrees to get the next tank. After Tucker and Aaron are ready, we head out of town the way we had come in.

* * *

We leave Florián behind as we ride past the same small rows of shacks from the night before, all feeling less substantial and quieter in the glare of the sun now directly overhead.

We decide to distance ourselves to let the dust settle between bikes, agreeing to stop at every intersection so we can stay together. We all have the day’s route up on our screens. Aaron leads, me next, Tucker, then Evan. The road is more traveled during the day, with a steady flow of farmers on small motorbikes, occasional tractors, and overloaded agricultural trucks carrying varying loads of harvested crops. The road is not wide enough in most places for two vehicles to pass, and it’s tight even for our motorcycles when oncoming trucks approach. The going is slow and dusty.

About 10 miles out from Florián, we come to a small village where our route splits from the route we took from Bogota the night before and turns west toward Muzo. By the time I arrive on the edge of town, Aaron is pulled over and waiting. I pull alongside him and shut the bike down. We both remove our helmets for a drink of water and a snack. After a short wait, Evan arrives before Tucker.

“Evan, did you pass Tucker?” I ask.

“No, I never saw him,” he replies. “I thought he was in front of me.”

“He was,” I reply.

“I wonder if he took a wrong turn,” Aaron says.

I pull my sweaty helmet back on so that I can use the intercom to try to reach him. “Tucker, come in. Do you hear me?” No response.

A couple of minutes later, I try again, but nothing.

“Let’s have a snack and wait a few more minutes,” Evan suggests. We do.

“I’ll try him on my phone,” Aaron says. “I’ve got two bars here.” No response.

I finish my energy bar and have some water. “I’ll ride back to see if he’s OK,” I say, hoping that he hasn’t crashed or flatted.

“We’ll wait here,” Aaron replies.

I head back the way we came in and ride about three miles to the point where I last saw Tucker in my rearview. He’s nowhere to be found; I’m now worried. I turn around to ride back to Aaron and Evan so we can formulate a plan to find Tucker. As I pull up to where I had left them twenty minutes prior, I see three bikes parked. I pull up and remove my helmet.

“What the hell, where were you Tucker?” I exclaim.

“I decided to explore the route I made last night to see if it connected to where we are going,” he replies. “It dead-ended into a single-track goat path.”

I feel my blood pressure rise now that I know his detour was intentional. “Dude, we were worried about you. We’ve been waiting 45 minutes. We have to stay together out here.”

I’m pissed.

“I agree,” Aaron says calmly, but with annoyance. “Let’s stay together.”

“And on our agreed-upon route,” I add.

“Yeah, probably a good idea,” Tucker says.

Evan, who is still getting a feel for the group, sits quietly on his bike and looks away from the conversation.

“We should hit the road, it’s almost 12:30, and we’ve only made it 15 miles,” I say.

* * *

We settle in on the ride for the day, a mix of dirt and poorly maintained paved two-lane mountain roads. We arrive in Muzo around 4:00.

“I guess I was wrong about how long it would take to get here,” I say over the intercom as we roll in.

“It was a fun ride, glad we’re here before dark,” Aaron says.

Muzo is the emerald-mining capital of Colombia, and like most mining towns, it feels raw and uneasy. Gaunt men, young and old, walk the sidewalks in the dead, humid heat, their ragged clothes and hands stained black from the shale that hides the tiny emeralds. I see very few women or children. Aside from its emeralds, the town was the site of the Guerras Verdes (green war) between El Chapo’s drug-cartel-funded Marxists and the government, which ended in 1991 after claiming nearly 10,000 lives. The pall left by the conflict 30 years prior lingers.

Tucker locates a hotel on a booking app at the edge of town, more of a walled motor lodge. The heavy-wheeled gates are locked shut when we pull up. He buzzes reception on the scratchy intercom. A teenage boy shows up in a few minutes, unlocks the gate, and rolls it open. We ride through and park in a covered area near the front office. It feels more secure than the night before.

While Tucker talks with the receptionist, I spot beers in a small refrigerator in the corner. I grab four Aguilas and pass three to my friends as we go through the slow registration process. The cold beer goes down quickly. I grab four more before paying the receptionist for all eight.

My ground-level room is air-conditioned. I unpack my gear and take a cool shower. I head to the small courtyard and try to call Betty. Voicemail. I text instead — “We are in Muzo at our hotel, fun ride, call when you can” — and add a red heart emoji. Aaron and Evan join me at the small round metal table where I sit.

After a few minutes, Tucker rolls in carrying a six-pack of beer. “I talked to the hotel manager. He hooked us up with a tour guide who will take us to an emerald dealer who will open his shop for us tonight. 20,000 pesos for all four of us, about $60.”

“That sounds great,” I say with hesitation, reluctant to commit to a guide who doesn’t speak English. But the others are up for it, so I go along.

The tour guide arrives on a small dirt bike. He walks us toward the center of town past a small arena where kids and families are beginning to gather for a soccer match, halogen lights already blazing. The emerald dealer is there when we arrive at the storefront, inside with a younger version of himself, presumably his son. They unlock the door and show us around.

The store shelves are sparsely stocked with necklace pendants, small gold rings, and earrings, none of high quality. I start examining the raw stones and think of Betty. There is no way I would buy her a piece of jewelry; she is far too particular about what she wears. I decide to find three stones of similar shape and quality for her to have set in something she would value. A gift with real meaning, and something she would wear with her designer brands. The thought process makes me miss her more.

He explains in Spanish how emeralds are graded for darkness, clarity, and occlusions. Tucker translates. Aaron and Evan look around but aren’t buying. I feel rushed. The owner brings out several small white envelopes and empties them onto a tray under a bright light with a magnifying lens, pointing out the specific traits of each stone. It takes me about 15 minutes to find two that are close in color and size. I can’t find a matching third.

The merchant breaks out his calculator and scratches a number on a small pad: 1,500,000 COP (about $450). I respond with 1,000,000. We settle on 1,250,000. I instantly feel I’ve been swindled — I hadn’t considered the cut for the tour guide, and possibly the hotel manager who recommended him. I watch as he carefully folds the emeralds in white paper, then inserts them into a white envelope. I dole out fresh bills. He hands me the envelope across the counter.

Tucker completes his own purchase.

The merchant closes and locks the door as we exit the store. It’s almost dark outside. The guide takes us across the plaza to the Emerald Museum, which is officially closed but open for us by arrangement. Like the town, the museum is tired — poorly lit exhibits of miners’ tools, ore reproductions, and photos of revolutionaries. Fifteen minutes to see the whole thing.

Exiting the museum on the plaza, I notice the ragged population again. I can’t stop thinking about whoever controls this trade — the men who never get their hands dirty. The buyers, sellers, traders, and exchanges. The disparity scares me deep down and makes me want to keep moving.

We eat dinner at a small restaurant, then head back to the hotel.

“The guide will take all four of us to see a mine in the morning, $20,000 pesos each,” Tucker announces. “He’ll meet us here at 6:30, breakfast at his place first, should be done by 10:00. Should we do it?”

“Sounds good to me,” I vote. The others agree.

“Let’s sort out tomorrow’s route before committing,” I suggest. “I plotted one that looks interesting.”

“Yeah, I did too,” Aaron says. We compare them. His is slightly longer, about 80 miles, but it’s impossible to tell which will be more interesting.

“I vote we take Aaron’s route,” Tucker proclaims without having looked at either.

“How can you pick a route without looking at the options?” I ask.

“Let’s take Aaron’s route,” he replies. “It will be more fun.”

My temples pulse with the dismissal. I suppress the feeling. “All right then, shoot us the track on WhatsApp, Aaron.”

* * *

It’s light out, but the sun isn’t up yet, and it’s relatively cool. We are all ready to depart the motel at our agreed-upon 6:30 AM. The tour guide arrives on his dirt bike. We follow him past the edge of town, a few miles down a wooded dirt road, before turning sharply up a narrower steep road. We ascend a series of switchbacks through the rainforest. Partway up the mountain, we pull into a crudely developed parking area that overlooks the town a thousand feet below. There we are led up a path to a couple of outdoor picnic tables. Pigs and chickens roam the yard.

We are seated at the tables, and a woman comes out of the house almost immediately with a tray of small coffee cups and a small milk pitcher. We sit sipping the weak coffee and quietly talk about what might be next. Then the guide and the woman return from the house with four plates of fried eggs, ham, and arepas, along with fresh guava juice.

After we eat, the guide explains to Tucker, who translates, that we will be hiking up a steep path to an abandoned emerald mine for a tour. He brings us rubber boots and hard hats with lights on them. We swap among ourselves, trying to find the best imperfect match.

The guide leads us out of the yard with an electric jackhammer slung over his shoulder. He hands Aaron a five-gallon plastic bucket to carry and hands Evan a rolled-up screen. We hike about 15 minutes to a small, crooked mine shaft entrance nestled on the steep wooded slope. The old timbers supporting the shaft entrance are tired. The inside of the mine appears completely black, like coal. We crowd around the door, perched on the small flat area in front of the opening, while the guide connects the jackhammer’s power cord to a generator. He fires it up before handing each of us a pair of foam earplugs. Then he leads us in.

We crouch as we walk about 100 feet down the shaft; it’s completely dark except for the beams from the cap lamps on our hard hats. Water drips. The guide stops and signals us to stand back. Then he begins hammering aggressively into the black walls with the jackhammer. Shale crumbs and chunks the size of walnuts accumulate at our feet.

Then he hands the jackhammer to Tucker, who repeats the process for a few minutes. We each take a turn. It feels like a hundred degrees in the cramped tunnel, and I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. After we each have a turn with the jackhammer, the guide shovels the shale ore into the plastic. We turn and begin exiting the shaft, our pace faster than when we came in.

It takes my eyes a minute to adjust when I exit the pitch black of the mine, the day’s sun now fully up. I feel like I can breathe again.

The guide grabs the screen he had stashed beneath a bush and turns on a water hose. He dumps some shale onto the screen and positions Aaron and Evan opposite each other, each holding two corners of the screen. He begins running water over the screen and motions for them to start shaking it back and forth. The shale crumbles and washes off the screen. After about five minutes of shaking, we find our first emerald. A green, cloudy, cracked breadcrumb of a gem. Then another, and another. We are all now focused on the screen and on what riches we might find.

After about five minutes of shaking, the guide dumps a fresh batch of shale on the screen. Now Tucker and I give it a try. We find a few more of the same cloudy gems. The guide lets us keep our loot and gives us a small ziplock for safekeeping. I notice that my hands are now black.

Before we leave, Tucker asks the guide about a place he had read about, where active mining still happens, the Rio Minero. The guide says we can check it out, but warns us that it is still a commercial operation. He offers to take us there for another 20,000 COP each. We decline, opting to explore it ourselves.

* * *

On our way back through Muzo, we fuel up and top off our tire pressure for our 110-mile ride. Tucker’s tire is low again, not his fault, just a slow leak. While he tops it off, I check my messages for an update from Veronica.

“Motos are still in Miami customs, will update when I learn more,” is what I read. I read it aloud to the others.

“I think we are being scammed,” Evan replies.

The rest of us dismiss the accusation.

We head out of town on a well-traveled, wide dirt road that leads us through a small gorge. We can see the river a few hundred meters below us. Just past the gorge, we turn off the main road to another well-developed dirt road that descends to the river bottom. The road is lined with chain link fences topped with razor wire. There are buildings perched on the steep hillside that suggest commercial operations, and the military presence here is felt. We don’t see anyone on the road or behind the fences. I still feel we could be stopped and turned back any minute by an armed patrol.

We continue to the bottom, where we encounter a river about 50 yards wide.

The plain is devoid of flora. Piles of black tailings the size of small huts litter the drainage as far as we can see upstream or down. We stop to check it out, then decide to cross. I go first. It’s not deep or slippery, and the KTM crosses without incident. The rest follow.

Once across the river, we spot about 50 scattered miners, each sluicing for emeralds. They begin to notice us and our four orange KTMs on the shore and start setting down their tools. I immediately think about how each of our bikes is probably worth more than these miners earn in a year or two of hard labor. We dismount the bikes and remove our helmets.

“Let’s go see if we can buy some emeralds from them,” Tucker says.

“I bet we can,” Aaron replies.

I’d already blown my emerald budget the night before and wasn’t interested in buying more. I was still curious about the miners and what they had to offer. Something tells me this place is not safe. Not just a place to get ripped off, but possibly robbed. I get the sense that very few outside visitors who are not in the emerald trade venture here.

“I’ll stay behind to watch the bikes,” Evan offers.

“Thanks,” I say, “good idea.”

Tucker, Aaron, and I walk toward the miners, who have now gathered in a group of about 15 or 20. A particularly muscular, tattooed, and assertive leader, less dirty than the others, approaches us and does the talking. He controls the conversations with each miner as we inspect their gems one by one. A couple of miners try to bypass the leader and are quickly put back in line.

Each miner reaches into their trousers and shirt pockets, retrieving small, dirty, folded envelopes containing their daily finds. The circle now closes around us, tightening with the excitement of making a deal. The miners empty their emeralds into their dirty palms to inspect. Two, three, five stones at a time. Most are larger and darker than the ones we had mined ourselves earlier in the day.

We find the prices lower than at the Muzo store, but the stones are not curated. Tucker and Aaron each find a couple they want to buy. We are short on cash, so we pool our pesos to finalize the transaction and pay the leader directly.

When we start walking the 50 yards back to Evan, I notice that a few straggling miners have approached him directly from upstream with their wares. He does his best to ignore them, but I can tell he is uncomfortable with their approach.

Back at the bikes, we quickly put our helmets back on, trying to ignore the onslaught of approaching miners the way one does when closing the windows on a car to keep the mosquitoes out.

“No estamos interesados en comprar más esmeraldas,” Tucker repeats more than once, clearly communicating our disinterest. They don’t leave us alone until we fire up the bikes and begin to ride away. I’m thankful for his language skills.

As we ride along the riverbank and back across, I feel like I’m being watched all the way to the main road.

I am fiddling with my phone, trying to get the map to recenter while riding with one hand, which causes me to momentarily swerve into the lane to my right. Immediately behind me, Tucker sees a bus almost clip me.

“Look out, Shaun!”

“Damn, that was close,” I respond as a sweat bead rolls from my forehead into my left eye.

The close call reminds me that I’m not wearing any of my usual protective gear; riding boots, knee and shin pads, elbow pads, chest protector, and Cordura pants and jacket all on my crated Triumph in Miami. I joke to myself that I might as well be riding in sneakers, shorts, and a tank top. At least I have my helmet.

We somehow manage to stay together as we navigate the same neighborhoods from the night before, spilling single file onto the eight-lane heading north. The dry 67 degree day feels more like 90 with the intensity of the high-altitude sun and heat radiating from the pavement and black diesel exhaust belching from the buses and trucks around us. Scooters, buses, trucks, cars, and motorcycles everywhere — more two-wheeled vehicles than cars. I can’t imagine choosing a car in this country.

Motorcycles slip between lanes of traffic like it’s normal. I’m not convinced it’s safe. Catch a mirror with your handlebars, and you will go down and maybe under. My singular concentration is on not being run over by a huge truck.

Aaron chimes in with a suggestion, “We should split lanes.”

“You already are, I see you six cars ahead,” I reply.

“I’m not too comfortable with that,” Tucker says. I’m not sure I am either.

Aaron is the most experienced city rider in the group. He lives in Salt Lake and has owned motorcycles for commuting to work. He knows how to navigate a stop-and-go freeway. Evan too. But not Tucker or me.

“I’m thinking we should — right now we aren’t making five miles an hour. At this pace we won’t make it out of the city before dark,” I say, exaggerating.

“Alright, let’s split lanes,” I hear Tucker say, riding on my rear fender.

I check my mirror and use my left signal as I pull onto the white line between the crowded lanes. I shift from first to second and accelerate, passing between a row of cars and a large tractor-trailer, then a bus, and more cars. I see Evan in my rearview mirror, right behind Tucker. Aaron is now out of sight ahead of us. My shoulders tighten, and I grip the bars like my life depends on them, choking the blood from my forearms. On one hand, the intensity is exhilarating, on the other, I’m wondering what the fuck I’m doing out here.

It takes an hour to travel the 10 miles to the edge of Bogotá. Despite the thinning traffic, my nerves are frayed and I keep thinking, “Get me off this road.” We ride north another thirty minutes to a major intersection where the route splits — this is where the day tips one way or the other. I feel disoriented. My internal compass had been calibrated for moving south, toward Tierra del Fuego. Momentum, just not forward.

Out of nowhere, I remember that I had forgotten to call Betty this morning, my riding concentration broken. I’ll have to wait until we get to Florián.

I see the split on the map on my phone. Small roads, dirt, and fun. Or the main road, trucks, and traffic. Both dangerous, but in completely different ways.

Over the intercom, I say, “We might not make it to Florián before dark if we take the smaller road. I don’t really want to ride in the dark.”

Aaron answers immediately, “Let’s take the route I made; we can make it.” Riding in the dark concerns him less.

“I’m totally down for that,” Tucker backs him without hesitation. “I want out of this traffic.”

The lack of an intercom keeps Evan out of the discussion and decision-making process.

I don’t oppose the plan, especially since I feel like we’ve pushed our luck with the dense traffic enough for one day. I repeat the concern about daylight, “we have only three hours of light left,” and don’t push back further.

* * *

Bogotá is located on a high, dry, flat plateau, the Sabana de Bogotá (Bogotá Savanna), that averages 8,400 feet in elevation, sitting between the Cordillera Central (Central Range) to the west and the Cordillera Oriental (Eastern Range) to the east. The route we are now on will take us over two small passes, one that tops out at 10,000 feet and the other at 10,500 feet, before dropping to 3,000 feet into a valley. There, we will ascend to the other side, to Florián, which sits at an elevation of 5,700 feet.

The ascent from the plateau passes over a mountain dotted with small farms and houses. The road quickly narrows from paved two-lane to cobblestone one lane to dirt. The barbed wire fences come right up to the road, no margin. Again, I ride faster on the dirt, leaving everyone except Aaron behind. Herders move their livestock down the roads, rotating from pasture to pasture. I lead for a while, following the green route we all loaded onto our smartphones back at Jorge’s garage. The road gets progressively steeper. Eventually, I miss a turn by a hundred yards, and our procession stops.

“Did you see the turn?” I ask over the intercom as I see Aaron ride up behind me.

“No, but it’s gotta be there,” he replies.

We turn our bikes around on the steep path and head back the other way. We catch Tucker and Evan before they reach the turn we missed, saving them from a U-turn on the steep rocky road. Aaron now leads on the now smaller road. The summit is not really a summit; it’s just the highest point of this part of the route where the road peeks around a ridge that continues up out of sight. The view into the Bogotá Plateau and east to the high peaks of the Cordillera Oriental is spectacular. The valley activity below is completely obscured by the day’s thick smog.

We descend the ridge, cross a small valley, and begin ascending the second, 10,500-foot ridge. Here it is more rural. Farms, but fewer of them. We ascend a dirt road through a forest where the air begins to cool and condense into a cool mist. The damp road is slick, and I can feel the rental KTM’s tires and traction control take over as I go up the steeper switchbacks. Peeking over the summit, Aaron and I decide to stop to wait for the others.

Looking north, the Cordillera Central is now in view; it appears as a series of velvety green, knife-edged ridges. Here, the air is clear, and I can see the bottom of the valley a mile and a half below. Small, irregularly shaped farms cling to the hillsides and the valley floor. A major, paved road winds through the bottom. Clouds are below us.

I’m chilled and dig into my luggage to find my insulated flannel shirt, the thickest layer I have with me. Tucker and Evan arrive, and they do the same. We each grab a snack and drink some water before starting the descent. The 16-mile descent winds down switchbacks that repeat every few hundred yards on loose, steep gravel. Each rutted switchback turns sharply toward the exposure below, then back again. The edge of the road is jagged from erosion and landslides. There is no room for error here; I ride standing and alert

The ABS system on the KTM is a lifesaver, preventing the front wheel from washing out in every turn. About a third of the way down, I stop to wait for the others. Aaron is close behind as usual, Tucker and Evan are several minutes back. I take the opportunity to remove my flannel and restow it while we wait, the humid heat now causing me to sweat. Aaron does the same.

I check my watch. It’s 6:15. The group eventually takes an hour to descend the valley, including stops and waiting. At this pace, I realize that there will be no way to make it the remaining 20 miles to Florián before dark. Rule one: don’t ride after dark. We will be breaking it on day one.

Aaron and I take turns setting the pace out front on the rough dirt road, stopping every 20 minutes or so to wait for the others. The road here winds up through the rainforest. About halfway up, we encounter a wide stream that flows across the road, the first of two. I stop to inspect it before crossing, not knowing how deep or swift the water is. Aaron rides up behind me.

“How’s it look?” he asks.

“Not bad, maybe 18 inches deep, slow moving,” I say.

He doesn’t reply, or stop, and rides through the stream and up the steep, slick exit on the other side. I follow, trying to hold my feet high to avoid getting my boots and jeans wet. Aaron waves me on up the hill and waits to be sure that Evan and Tucker ford the stream safely. No incidents.

Dark falls fast as expected. We pass a few people walking on the primitive road in the dark. I imagine they are heading home from working in the fields.

Chickens and occasional goats scatter as we approach. All living things are heading in for the night. I stick my boot out twice to avoid being bitten by the dogs that bark and chase us with intent. Smells of onions cooking waft from the dimly lit shanties as we pass, a contrast to the peaty smells emanating from the rainforest between settlements.

A chicken on the side of the road decides to fly directly in front of my headlight. “Did I hit that chicken?” I ask Aaron, now behind me, over the intercom.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Good thing, I bet that’s a tough one to settle up with its owner.”

He laughs.

I don’t feel safe stopping, unsure about the people we see walking sporadically in the dark. Not necessarily bad people, just unfamiliar. We pass another line of three or four dwellings, ride a quarter mile, then stop again to wait for our friends. Once we see Tucker and Evan’s headlights, we start again before they reach us to keep the momentum and spacing.

“Why don’t you lead for a while?” I tell Aaron. I give him a 30-second head start to let the dust settle. When I get close to him, dust in the dead air fills my headlight and almost completely dims it. I can’t see the drop-offs into the jungle below, but I know they are there. I stay focused on the narrow band of light in front and Aaron’s taillight when I can see it.

No one talks.

Florián is dark when we approach. Aaron and I stop at the edge of town to wait for Tucker, who has booked one of the two hotels in town for the night. He leads us into town. The few halogen streetlights are spaced so far apart that most streets remain unlit. The town is run-down, well past its heyday.

* * *

Florián clings to the edge of a gorge, six to eight blocks of cobblestone, cinder-block structures, and concrete. The hotel is easy to miss. We overshoot it by a couple of blocks and end up on the other side of town from where we entered. We circle back down the steep street and ride slowly so we don’t miss the hotel.

Tucker sees the hotel, front door wide open, and stops. I check my rearview and make a U-turn. The others copy the move, so our bikes face uphill. We roll them backward diagonally into the curb to prevent them from rolling backward. Tucker dismounts, removes his helmet, and walks past a little barefoot kid running out as he enters the rundown inn. The rest of us wait outside until he returns.

“The good news, we each have our own room. The bad news, the place is a shit hole,” he announces. “I really fucked this up. There must be a nicer place here.”

“Dude, no worries,” I say. “None of us is here for the lodging experience,” thinking this type of lodging would likely become a norm on our trip.

Aaron pipes in, “This place will be fine.”

“Is there a place to park our bikes that is secure?” Evan asks.

“The owner said it’s down the hill, a block away; he will lead us there after we unpack,” Tucker replies.

We unstrap our bags and head into the cramped hotel. A blast of frying fish smell and onions hits me as I enter the reception area. Inside, children sit on a bed watching football, the owner’s family. Oil and heat hang in the dense, still air.

The owner takes our passports and fills out the usual forms, and returns them. It’s fast and efficient. Then he leads us up a steep, narrow flight of stairs to a dark hallway that opens onto the back of the building. He shows each of us to our rooms, mine is the last one on the right with a screenless, open window overlooking the pig pen and chicken coop below. Beyond is a steep cascade of houses stepping into the dark jungle below—corrugated metal roofs, blue tarps stretched where walls should be. The smells mix and drift in.

The room is barely larger than the bed. Muggy. The mattress sags, half bed, half hammock. Still better than sleeping on the roadside without camping gear.

The three-foot-by-six-foot private bathroom is worse. The toilet, which blocks the entry to the shower stall, is jammed so close to the wall that there’s no way to sit—only to squat with your head against the wall. Bare wires poke through a hole in the ceiling, wrap around the shower head, and snake down to a lightbulb hooked to the ceiling. I study it longer than necessary. Electrocution feels plausible.

Once settled, the owner leads us down the block with our bikes to a “secure” place to park for the night. He stops at a corrugated metal building that appears to be a livestock stall. He unlocks the metal gate and points us in. It smells of horse manure and urine. One by one, we manage to wedge the four KTMs side by side. We can only exit by climbing over them; when we are done, there is no room left in the stall. He replaces the padlock and walks us back to the hotel. He points out two small cafes on the way back, both still open.

* * *

Back at the hotel, we agree to meet in twenty minutes to head out for dinner. I head up to my room, undress, then remember that I need to touch base with Betty. I call her and get voicemail. Then I text, “just tried calling. We made it to our hotel for the night. Call when you get this. Love you!” The interaction with my phone makes me miss her.

Stepping around the toilet, I reach in to turn the shower on, only to find cold water here. I use the ketchup-style pack of soap to wash my hair and sweaty body. I’m careful not to splash water above my head, knowing that the bare wires a few inches above my head are probably not grounded or connected to a breaker. I dry off, put on a clean T-shirt and underwear, and then the sweaty, dusty pants I had ridden in all day.

Everyone shows up as planned in front of the hotel, and we head back around the corner to one of the cafés we had passed before. The halogen-lit establishment has four tables, each with four plastic yard chairs. There is a couple having dinner at one, the rest are empty. Yells and cheers of kids playing football across the street in the brightly lit arena filter in.

We scope the menu: pan-fried trout, fried chicken, potatoes, and beer. “Cuatro cervezas, por favor,” Tucker orders a round.

“Y aguas, por favor,” Evan continues.

The cold beer tastes amazing, and within a few sips, the edge of the day begins to dissolve. Aaron checks his WhatsApp messages. Nothing from Veronica.

“She’s ghosting us,” Evan proclaims with accusation.

“I’ll text her now,” Aaron says.

Within a minute, she responds, “Your bikes are still tied up in U.S. Customs; our forwarder there is doing everything they can to get them through. We hope they come this week.”

“This week!” I exclaim. “What the fuck, this week? She can’t be serious.”

We lament our bikes and manage to change topics. Our order arrives, and as expected, everything on the plate is deep-fried. This is probably a good thing given the number of flies I see buzzing around. We devour it within minutes, then decide to settle up rather than have another round of beers in this place with the flies.

We are still hyped up from the day’s ride and decide to check out a local bar a few blocks up the hill instead of going to bed. The tavern’s windows and doors are open at both ends to encourage airflow. Several rough-looking characters hunch at the bar, drinking and smoking sour-smelling cigarettes; ragged clothes, tattooed, and worn from work. I’m glad I’m with three other guys, even though none of us remotely blend in.

We order a round of beers and find a small, worn table near the front door, hoping for a draft of fresh air. Instead, we get more cigarette smoke from outside where two men are talking on the mostly deserted sidewalk. Tucker has brought a deck of cards, and we play his favorite game, Screw Your Neighbor. The mood lightens. The day has exhausted us, but we are finally riding in the Andes.

We walk back to the hotel around 10:30.

“Meet downstairs at 7:00 for breakfast?” Aaron asks. We all confirm, before heading up the stairs to our rooms for the night. I check my messages one last time before turning out the light, nothing from Betty.

I love this song… pop country and all! Lambert absolutely captures the momentum and rhythm of the “roaming town to town” exploration we were looking for. Our motorcycles were trapped somewhere in a U.S. Customs warehouse 1,500 miles away. We had no idea if or when they might show up, so we took immediate action to build momentum.

“I wanna go somewhere where nobody knows / I wanna know somewhere where nobody goes”

...and we did! We didn’t hesitate; we rented bikes and hit the road. We weren’t even going south toward our destination 7,000 miles away. We knew we’d have to circle back to Bogotá the second word came through. But for us those days, the not-knowing didn’t matter.

“There’s something ‘bout the way I feel when the wheels go round and round and round”

We didn’t even have our proper riding gear, it didn’t matter our wheels were going round on some kick ass, Austrian-made KTM 890s that Aaron had found.

“Highway vagabonds. Living like hippies. Moving right along to the next big city”

Lambert’s vagabonds never have to go back; they don’t even need direction. We did. That’s the difference, and it’s also what made every day of the loop Tucker devised worth savoring.

Chapter 6 of Honest Miles drops on Sunday.

I have a checklist of things that need to happen before heading south: confirm dates and addresses with the shipper who will get our bikes to Miami, fix the Triumph’s cruise control issue, mount a fresh set of tires, and change the oil.

I load the Tiger the way I will be riding it — panniers packed, an old leave-behind duffel with my riding gear and boots strapped to the rack, and snacks in the tank bag, everything in its place. The only things I will carry on the plane are my helmet and my dry-bag top duffel.

The cruise control issue is electronic, not something I can easily diagnose at home. A short call with a technician in Idaho Falls leads me to believe that the rear traction control sensor (TCS) is malfunctioning. This could be an expensive repair that requires the diagnostic analyzer, which only the dealers have; thankfully, it is covered by warranty. I put the loaded bike on my truck and drive it the 90 miles to the dealership. There, I tell the shop manager about the LatAm trip and that a transport will pick up the bike in four days to take it to Miami. He assures me they can resolve the sensor issue by then.

I walk past the service desk into the shop, past the signs that always read “EMPLOYEES ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT”. I want to be sure nothing gets lost in translation between the Manager and the person who will be doing the work. The repair and the timeframe are critical. In the shop, I find the tech behind a row of broken bikes waiting to be fixed, he’s wrenching on a dirt bike sitting on a lift.

“Hi, I’m Shaun. We talked on the phone a couple of days ago.” I put my hand out, and he wipes his greasy hand on an equally greasy red shop rag before shaking mine.

“Tim, nice to meet you,” he replies. “Is the Tiger yours?” He asks.

“Yep, taking it to South America.”

“Cool, would love to do that someday,” he responds.

“Can you help me unload the bike?” I ask.

Tim hits the red button that lifts the large service bay door. It’s raining outside, cold.

“Back it up to the loading dock,” he says, not wanting to roll the 500-pound machine off the 4-foot tailgate. I am relieved the dock is there.

“I know you will need to remove everything from the bike to get to the TCS. I just want to be sure we get everything put back on before the transport picks it up in four days,” I explain. I hand him the top duffel with my riding gear in it, “When you’re done, can you strap this to the top rack?” I hand him two old ratchet straps from the bed of my truck, “Use these.”

“None of that should be an issue,” he replies. “I’ll put all the luggage over in that corner so it doesn’t get mixed up,” he points to an empty corner next to the restroom, the only space in the whole shop that isn’t presently occupied.

“Thanks, man.” Now that he’s met me, I feel like he will prioritize the repair and the repack.

My gut still says this is risky. I have no choice but to ignore it.

A week and a half before Thanksgiving, the transport picks up the Tiger from the dealer. In the process, he texts me several photos and a short video to show me that all my gear has been reloaded onto the bike and that everything is intact. I respond with a thumbs-up emoji. He then heads south to Salt Lake to meet Aaron and pick up the brand-new Yamaha Tenere’700 he will be riding, untested.

Tucker has found a used, low-mileage KTM 790 Adventure R at a dealer in Miami who would prep the bike with new tires and an oil change, then deliver it to the airport to be crated along with the other bikes, also untested. Evan had traded his BMW 1250 for a Ducati Desert X 900 several weeks before and had broken it in. He was accompanying it from Virginia to Miami on the Amtrak Auto Train, tested. Aaron and my bikes arrive a couple of days ahead of Evan and his bike.

When Evan arrives at the shipper’s warehouse, he snaps some photos of our bikes next to his and texts them to us with a note, “This place seems legit, lots going on here.”

Now, all the bikes and our gear will sit in the freight forwarder’s warehouse for a full week before Thanksgiving. Plenty of time for emptying fuel tanks, crating the bikes individually, and clearing U.S. customs.

* * *

I coordinate with Veronica to have our bikes delivered on the Monday after Thanksgiving. She made it clear that we needed to be there when the bikes arrived to receive them at customs. She assures us that there shouldn’t be a problem coordinating our arrival with the bikes’ arrival from Miami. Her people would walk us through customs and help uncrate the bikes. Something she says she facilitates every day.

I create a WhatsApp group called “Bike Shipping” that includes our crew and Veronica so that we can all be on the same page. “Bikes are crated, waiting for U.S. customs,” she assures us with a note on Friday.

Tucker, Aaron, and Evan fly to Bogotá on Friday to check it out for a couple of days before our bikes arrive. I can’t join them since I am still in Bozeman visiting my family for the holiday.

My 7:00 A.M. Sunday flight to Bogotá starts in Jackson, with a four-hour layover in Houston. Evan sends a message in the Bike Shipping group: “Veronica, any updates on the bikes?” No response, all day. I’m not worried — the bikes should be through customs by now and sitting on a wide-body plane ready for takeoff to Bogotá.

The passengers are a mix of businesspeople and tourists. No wi-fi on this flight. I watch a movie on the seatback screen, then nap for a couple of hours, head bobbing. We land at 10:00 P.M., right on time. I turn my phone on while we taxi to the terminal. A flurry of WhatsApp notifications pings my screen the second my phone hits the cellular network.

The first one I see is from Tucker. “Aaron found us some bikes we can rent while we wait for our bikes.” My stomach sinks knowing what I will read next, in reverse chronology, an unraveling.

I open the chain between Veronica and our group. “I do not know when they will get here,” her last message. I know what has happened, and I decide to skip the whole chain.

I call Tucker. “What’s going on?”

“Sounds like our bikes aren’t going to be here tomorrow,” he answers.

“Any idea on an ETA?”

“Veronica thinks they will get here in the next day or two, she won’t commit. Aaron found us some bikes to rent while we are waiting,” repeating what I already knew.

“That’s great, how much are they?” I ask.

“$150 a day.”

“Not bad, I think that’s a good idea,” knowing that it’s more than any of us wants to pay.

“Evan is in, and so am I. I’ve already started mapping a route that allows us to see most of what I think is interesting in Central Colombia,” he says.

“Excellent, let’s do it,” I say hesitantly, knowing that the plan he and I had discussed is now just his.

I deplane and start walking toward the immigration passport checkpoint in the dimly lit airport, earbuds in. I can see that the maze leading to the booths where the immigration officials sit is nearly full.

“We are out at dinner right now. Come to the hotel, and we will meet you there,” he says.

“I gotta go, an officer is telling me to put my phone away. Send me the GPX routes, I’ll look at them on my cab ride.”

The core piece of this plan is to do a loop North and West of Bogotá that never puts us further than a day’s ride away, so we can return to the city as soon as we get word that our motorcycles have been shipped from the U.S. This plan is way better than sitting around Bogotá killing time waiting indefinitely for an unreliable plan to materialize.

The rental bikes solved part of the problem of gaining forward motion, but I felt naked. One of my main concerns is not having my riding gear with me. My boots, riding pants, jacket, protective pads, and gloves were all strapped to my bike, supposedly sitting in a customs warehouse in Miami. I can live with everything else for a few days, but my riding gear is all designed for protection.

It takes about an hour of standing in line to get through immigration. Before exiting the terminal, I go to an ATM to withdraw 80,000 pesos, about the same as $200 U.S. Dollars. I stand close to the machine to conceal the withdrawal, the whole time turning my head, making sure not to get mugged from behind.

It’s warmer than I expected when I exit the 8,300-foot-elevation airport. I am immediately accosted by several drivers hustling for a fare in broken English. I walk directly past them to the taxi stand without making eye contact. The line is about five people long. I count back the queue of taxis and see that mine will be a beat-up Renault compact. The driver arrives, opens the trunk, and reaches toward me to retrieve my duffel and helmet. I retract, opting to keep my belongings in the back seat for security. The tired rear seat engulfs me as I jump aboard and close the door. A seat spring pokes me. The air is sour. I can smell the remnants of garlic and onion odors from the driver’s dinner. The Translate app on my phone helps me communicate the hotel’s address to the driver. I roll the window down so I can breathe. Then I enter the hotel address into Google Maps on my phone, which gives me a sense of security as I follow the progress.

Shortly after 11:00, the taxi exits the airport onto the dimly lit eight-lane highway into the city. The traffic is immediately stop-and-go. Scooters and motorcycles buzz past my open window as the car traffic inches along. Although he doesn’t know I’m tracking our route, the driver follows the blue line on my maps app exactly, inching the taxi in the stuttering flow of late-night traffic into the city. Eventually, we enter downtown Bogotá and hit a stoplight. Beggars panhandle between the stopped cars, and prostitutes loiter at the curb. I roll up my window and double-check my door lock.

Tucker’s texted instructions are for me to text the hotel manager when I arrive so she can meet me on the street and unlock the security gate protecting the boutique hotel. I text the hotel, and on cue, the receptionist greets me on the nearly dark sidewalk. The young woman offers to take my duffel into the hotel. I decline the offer, preferring to keep it.

After checking in, I throw my things in my room. The hotel is nice, small, and clean, with a boutique vibe I enjoy. I head to the kitchen, where an array of fruit and pastry snacks is laid out for late-arriving guests. I hear the guys returning from dinner, bantering. They find me in the kitchen, we hang out and drink a beer while we discuss the plan for tomorrow.

The mood is light, given our circumstances, and Evan seems to be fitting in well with Tucker and Aaron. I’m relieved.

“Tucker, great find on the hotel!” I say, giving him a bear hug when he walks in.

“Thanks, man,” he replies, “so psyched you’re finally here!”

We talk about the customs delay and what it means for the trip, though none of us have any concrete information about when our bikes might arrive. A day, two, or five, we have no idea.

“Aaron, good job on finding some rentals,” I say.

“I went and checked them out today, they’re excellent bikes,” he replies.

“I think we are getting the run around from Veronica,” Evan says, slightly off-topic. “She has no idea what’s going on, and I feel like she is stalling.”

“Come on, I’m sure this kind of shit happens all the time,” I say. “The research I did on her, reading the Reddit posts on the Internet, was all positive.”

Tucker had gone to his room and returned. “Evan and I went to the flea market today,” he hands me a molded plastic figurine of the motorcycle cop from the Terminator movie. “This is Moto-Man, he’s yours to mount on your bike.”

“Did you guys get one too?” I ask.

“We each got something different,” he replied.

“That’s awesome! Thanks for thinking about me.”

Tucker and Evan were also donning fresh haircuts, another activity to pass the time on a Sunday in Bogotá.

“I bought a couple of pairs of hiking boots for riding, since I knew that ours were both packed with our bikes,” Aaron said. “A pair of 10’s and a pair of 11’s, I can wear either size; you decide which ones you want.”

I am relieved that Aaron recognized the need, and it felt good that he thought about it enough to buy a pair for me.

“What about you guys?” I ask, looking at Tucker and Evan.

“We each brought our gear with us,” Evan said. “But, I don’t have my helmet, it’s with the Ducati.”

“The guy at the rental place has some rental helmets he can rent,” Aaron informs us.

At about 1:00 we decide to wrap up our conversation and head to bed, agreeing to meet in the dining room at 8:00 for breakfast.

* * *

I’m there an hour early, mostly because I couldn’t sleep and was looking for a cup of coffee. A few people filter in and take seats at the closely spaced tables. Eventually, Aaron wanders in.

Still no new information from Veronica. We discuss our options: wait another day in Bogotá for our bikes to arrive, or rent the bikes he has located and go exploring.

“I’ve done some mapping on Gaia to make it interesting,” Aaron replies.

“Shoot me the tracks, I’d love to have a look,” I say.

The waitress, who is also the cook, stops by our table. I order two huevos fritos y jamón (fried eggs and ham) and a glass of orange juice.

“Mornin’ guys,” Tucker says, arriving a few minutes past 8:00. Then Evan.

“Mornin’,” Aaron and I reply to each.

“I slept like shit,” Evan says, “couldn’t shut the shades enough to block out the halogen lights.”

“Same here,” I reply. “Aaron and I are bouncing some ideas, I’d love your thoughts.”

“We can either spend another day in Bogotá to see if the bikes show up, or we can do the loop Tucker concocted, or something like it,” Aaron says.

“Do you think the bikes will get here tomorrow?” asks Tucker, directing the question at me.

“I hope so, but have no idea. You know what I know,” I reply.

“I vote for doing a loop,” Evan pipes in.

“I’ve already been here two days and want to ride,” Tucker votes.

“Excellent, we have a plan!” I say. “When can you nail down the bikes, Aaron?”

“I’ll text Jorge now to see when he can meet us,” he answers.

“We just need to be able to get back here as soon as our bikes are on the way,” Evan says.

“I agree. Let’s keep the loop to within a day’s ride of Bogotá,” I suggest.

“Do you think we are getting ripped off?” Evan asks, referring to Veronica.

“I don’t think so. This is her business,” Aaron replies.

“I think the problem is not in her control, U.S. Customs, the Thanksgiving holiday backlog, you know?” I reply, trying to address Evan’s agitation.

Veronica finally replies to the texts Aaron and I have sent her. No new news to report, the bikes are still waiting in the Miami queue. Veronica is quickly becoming an unpopular messenger of non-news.

I start a conversation with a young American couple to change the topic and find out they have been traveling in Colombia on their honeymoon. They suggest a few things to check out, most of which are on Tucker’s list. Aaron is having a separate conversation with a guy who is a racecar driver in Bogotá for a promotional event with his sponsor. The pace is relaxed, knowing that we can’t really get going until we hear back from Jorge.

* * *

Finally, at 9:00, Jorge replies to Aaron and agrees to meet us at his office ten blocks away at 10:00. After another cup of coffee, we head back to our rooms to pack up. We check out and call two taxis to take us with our bags to Jorge’s office.

The rental office is on the tenth floor of a 15-story building. The security guard at the ground-floor reception immediately recognizes us from our gear and appearance that we are here to rent motorcycles. He buzzes us in, then calls Jorge’s office. After a few words, he waves us to the cramped elevator, two at a time.

We find Jorge and his assistant crammed into a 10-foot-by-15-foot office with boxes of paperwork, helmets, and other random motorcycle gear stacked in corners; the door open, a small fan circulating stale air. After spending an hour filling out paperwork, paying up front for a two-day (optimistic) rental, and finding an ill-fitting helmet for Evan, Jorge takes us to the parking garage in the basement, where he assigns our motorcycles.

Aaron, Tucker, and I probe Jorge on the best way to our first destination in Latin America, a place called Florián. One route takes us out of the city, then onto a smaller road that eventually turns to dirt. His suggested route, the one Google Maps plotted, keeps us on pavement until the last 10 miles of the leg, about 3-4 hours. He has no estimate for how long it will take to get there on the more challenging route — I guess 5-6 hours. I know which one the group will pick without asking.

We spend the next hour in the dank, dimly lit parking garage two levels down. We strap our duffel bags to the luggage racks. I leave most of what I have in my top duffel since it’s waterproof and quick to unstrap at the end of a riding day. We use the generic phone mounts on the bikes to affix our smartphones to the handlebars for navigation. I see Aaron using zip ties to attach his dragon figurine to his left mirror.

“Can I steal one of those?” I ask. I spend more time messing with how to affix Moto Man to my bike than I do getting everything else ready.

Tucker, Aaron, and I manage to get our Cardo intercom systems working after several tries. Evan doesn’t have his since it’s attached to his helmet, which is crated with his Ducati.

I swap the running shoes I wore here with the cheap Chinese-branded hiking boots Aaron had given me. The flat insoles and stiff imitation Cordura uppers make the boots feel awkward on my feet. Lifesavers, but just barely more protection than the running shoes I arrived in.

While I wait for the others to finish packing and gear up, I take the elevator to the ground floor to get a signal so I can check in with Veronica one last time before we leave Bogotá. I try her, using WhatsApp voice. No answer, so I settle for another text, “any update?” I head back down. Everyone seems ready.

We finally head out; it is about 1:00 in the afternoon. Our excitement level and optimism are high. I’m hungry, but I don’t want to slow the forward progress down by suggesting lunch. Let’s just go.

“Watch out as you exit the garage, the turns are tight,” Jorge warns about the two tight turns up the ramp to the street. I go first. He’s right — the turns are very tight, steep, and slow, making it difficult to balance my bike as I ascend in the dark. Encountering a car coming in the opposite direction would pose a serious challenge.

The automatic gate senses my arrival, but not soon enough for it to be open when I arrive. I stop on the steep ramp and put my feet down to steady the bike while holding the front brake. Only the tips of my toes touch the somewhat slick concrete. The front tire can’t find traction, and the bike slowly begins to slide backward. I slip the clutch to hold us in place until the door opens wide. Halfway up, the light through the opening slams into my dilated eyes and blinds me. I’m afraid of tipping over here, before beginning anything. My toenails clench the inside of the cheap boots as I hold my breath. Meanwhile, I hear two bikes coming up behind me, then a third. I can’t tell who is who. I stay focused; if I tip over, they might also. I can’t cause more delay.

Gate almost up, eyes adjusted, I pull out onto the sidewalk. I wait for the others to assemble in the street. “Everyone ready?” I ask over the intercom.

“Check,” Tucker says.

“Yep,” from Aaron.

Evan can’t hear. I look at him and hold my thumb up. He nods. We are off!

Cocker doesn’t sing this song as a happy melody; rather, he puts soulful, deep vulnerability and insecurity out front. He slugs his way through it.

“What do you do when things go wrong?” Lennon and McCartney ask. “Lend me your ears, and I’ll sing you a song.”

The plan I’d spent months building was blown apart before even setting foot on the continent. Our motorcycles were stuck in a customs warehouse in Miami, along with most of our gear. The planning and control were gone before I touched the ground.

Tucker had already rebuilt the route by the time I cleared immigration. Aaron had found near-new KTM 890 Adventure bikes to rent while we waited for ours to show up. They even thought to buy me a pair of hiking boots to ride in.

What happens when the shit hits the fan on a plan you’ve architected, letting down those who followed you into the mess? Your real friends step up and move it forward without judgment, without criticism.

“Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends / Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends”

We didn’t get there because of my plan. I didn’t know it then, but we got there because of them.

Chapter 5 of Honest Miles drops on Sunday.

Riding a new bike out of the crate often uncovers things that were missed at the factory. Small defects in workmanship or loose fasteners. I also knew I needed more familiarity with the bike, its handling, and riding fully loaded on pavement and off-road.

With Betty gone and my work obligations under control, I spent a couple of days in the garage dismantling and reassembling the major components of the Tiger. A new bike feels great out of the crate, but the factories miss details that matter. Screws are improperly torqued or missing completely. Insufficient grease on bearing surfaces. I always find something.

Digging into the new Triumph revealed its British engineering, precision-machined components, and stainless-steel allen screw fasteners. The white tank was surrounded by a matching factory-installed crash bar, the one flimsy thing on the bike.

I installed aftermarket upgrades along the way. A high front fender, luggage rack, firm heated seat, and wiring for my phone charger, GPS, and heated jacket. I routed all of it from the auxiliary fuse under the seat, through the airbox compartment, under the tank, to the cockpit. This is work I wouldn’t trust to a shop mechanic. I didn’t like the slick Pirelli tires that came stock on the bike, street-oriented. The tires I chose were the Heidenau Rangers — I had ridden them on the 790 in Ecuador and liked their grip on slick surfaces.

The most important upgrade was the suspension. Manufacturers market these bikes as off-road capable. In reality, they know that 90% will never see a dirt road, consigned to be commuters. I invested in Touratech’s front-and-rear aftermarket suspension setup for my fully loaded bike, matched to my riding style and weight. I spent the better part of a day dismantling and rebuilding the bike’s front forks, installing new components and oil that would transform the handling from a street-oriented bike to one that could chew through rough roads. The rear shock was a much easier swap.

I mounted the luggage panniers to test the fit. They wanted to stick out like a toddler’s legs on a tricycle. I fabricated aluminum supports and bolted them to the subframe. The last thing I wanted on rough roads was bouncing luggage.

Sturdy black crash bars, aluminum hand guards, and protective tank stickers rounded out the build.

I mounted a mid-sized tank bag behind the bars, one that could be easily removed for security. In it, I kept items I’d want to access without dismounting — a small multi-tool with a knife, an allen wrench set for fast adjustments, an extra USB cord, a copy of the bike registration, and an insurance card. Almond butter packets and energy chews for the day. A small hydration bladder in the bottom compartment I could access while riding.

I laid everything out on my workbench — sleeping pad, tent, camp chair, JetBoil, tools, tire repair kit, spare parts, and first aid kit. Then I organized it into packing cubes, being careful to wrap sharp, hard items with softer goods to prevent rubbing and degradation on rough roads. I loaded the dry bags inserts for panniers with the heaviest items first, keeping the center of gravity low and balanced. I dedicated the smaller pouch on each pannier to items I’d need for quick access — tool roll and repair kit on one side, tire kit, sunscreen, wipes, and toilet paper on the other. I bought a waterproof document bag to keep in my top bag; it would hold the Triumph’s title, registration, and the temporary import permits for each country. This was a first cut, a dry run. A way to see what was missing before it mattered.

I loaded the bike and adjusted the front and rear suspension sag.

* * *

The weather forecast was for precipitation, lows in the 20’s, highs in the upper-30’s. Mix of rain and snow.

I created a route that would take me from Jackson to Flagg Ranch at the border of Yellowstone, then cut west on a US Forest Service road past Grassy Lake to Idaho. From there, remote USFS roads and two-track ATV trails north, to West Yellowstone, where I would rejoin the highway down the Gallatin River, past Big Sky, into Bozeman. A combination of two-lane highway, rough dirt roads, two-track trails, and twisty canyon highway. I spent three hours trying to load a GPX file from the Gaia app to my Garmin Zumo. The overly complex software was also buggy. An hour on the phone with tech support revealed outdated firmware on the brand-new GPS unit and an underlying flaw in the file system.

I loaded the bike as if I were off for the multi-month trip we were planning. Tools, tire repair kit, spare parts, camping gear, everything. Then I loaded my top pack with my work laptop, clothes, and overnight kit. The bike felt heavy, tippy.

I opened the garage door and fired the Triumph up. Betty was gone. I pulled out quietly, no particular reason to, just the instinct to leave without disturbing anything. The southern rock playlist drew me onto Highway 191 toward white lines that go forever.

I rode past Jackson Lake, cold, no boats on the water this late in the season, reminding me of the summer parties on the lake with Betty and friends. I arrived at the Flagg Ranch convenience store at 1:30. I parked in front of the grey-painted store and went inside to warm up. The Triumph looked small, sitting by itself in one of fifty empty RV spaces, each the size of a Greyhound bus.

The cafe was closed for the season, so I settled for what I could piece together in the c-store for lunch. A Red Bull, a bag of chips, and a microwave cup of soup. Before riding out, I pulled around to the Exxon behind the store to top off my tank.

The storm front had started to move in. It was a chilly fall day in the mountains, the grey of the sky contrasting with the few remaining bright yellow quaking aspen leaves.

I rode west on the Grassy Lake road as it began to rain. I stopped, put on my Gore-Tex rain pants and heated jacket, and took in the wet, peaty smell of the forest. I was already wearing my Gore-Tex ski gloves. The road, which had been built in 1911 to transport materials from Aston, Idaho, for the construction of the Jackson Lake dam, had not been bladed since opening in May. The washboards and potholes jarred the bike as I rode the 30 miles in standing position, passing only two vehicles.

I turned north onto a secondary dirt road just after crossing the border. After about a mile, I spotted giant Grizzly scat in the middle of the road. I did a U-turn to check it out. The claw marks in the fresh mud were still visible. I felt watched and continued on, the hairs on my neck alert.

Ten miles before West Yellowstone, I followed my GPS to an ATV trail that disappeared into the forest. There was a well-traveled three-foot mound bulldozed at the start of the trail to keep non-ATV vehicles out. I hit the mound in third gear as I would on a dirt bike. The rear of the bike rebounded off the top, sending me fully onto the front wheel. The rear of the laden bike swapped back and forth three or four times, tossing my feet off the pegs and slamming me to the seat. The Tiger settled as I eased on the throttle and stayed off the brakes. Manners.

The cold, wet pavement down the Gallatin River was slick. It felt foreign. I decided to slow my pace and make it to Bozeman in one piece.

I spent a couple of nights at my parents’ place helping my mom take care of overdue maintenance on their house. My dad’s decline was more pronounced this time. Lost thoughts in the middle of sentences, and the slow shuffling of his feet behind his walker. His brain had been scrambled when his head hit the concrete from a fall in his garage in 2019. A month after, he retired from ranching. The traumatic brain injury landed him in a neuro ICU for three weeks. His strong intellect was there with no way to get out. I missed being able to discuss philosophy, art and politics with him.

* * *

The weather was getting colder and the forecast was for snow in West Yellowstone. I decided to head back to beat the weather, retracing the route I had ridden to Bozeman.

The snow level had dropped significantly. By the time I got to West Yellowstone, four inches of wet snow had accumulated on the sides of the road. The roads were a combination of wet and slush, moving toward frozen. I could take the fast way home on the highway through Island Park and risk the traffic on freezing roads, or I could take the backroads I had ridden up and risk getting stuck solo in the woods in six inches of snow. I felt safer with the latter. I’d rather be self-reliant in the wilderness without worrying about big trucks or bad drivers pushing me off the road.

About ten miles south of West Yellowstone on the two-track, I stopped to down an energy bar and drink some water. I put my sidestand down and dismounted the bike. Before I could steady myself and the handlebars, the stand began to sink in the soft mud on the road. The bike tipped past a point where I could hold it up. It fell. The bike, with gear, weighed over 500 pounds. I grabbed the bar-end stuck in the mud with my left hand, and the subframe by my luggage with the right, squatted and tried to deadlift the machine to its wheels. The tires on the other side of the bike slid in the soft mud, preventing it from tilting up. My boots found no traction and I slipped to my knees. I tried again, this time leaning into the bike backward and leg pressing. It slid further into the mud.

The snow was now coming down at a rate of an inch an hour. I was breathing hard and my base layer was wet with sweat. The thought crossed my mind that I could be stranded out here without help. Not the best conditions to try out my tent and three-season sleeping bag. The chances of anyone coming down this trail today were slim.

I decided to dismount my gear as the bike lay on its side. This would relieve the bike of at least 75 pounds positioned up high. I tried the deadlift again and the bike slid. I needed to stop the wheels from sliding, so I found a large stick on the side of the road to dig tire-width trenches under each wheel, hoping they would find purchase as I tried to angle the Tiger back upright.

I was sweating under my layers. I removed my GoreTex riding jacket. I grabbed the bike again. It felt lighter as I rocked it up on the crash bars, wheels dipping into the small trenches. After three tries I was able to get the bike to a 45-degree position, my feet slipping but less than before. I held my breath and repositioned my feet in the mud. One last effort to get the bike to its wheels.

Now the only problem was that I could not let go of the bike. If I tried the sidestand it would surely sink again. I searched for anything within arm’s reach I could put under the stand. The stick. But it was on the opposite side of the bike. I inched my way around the bike, stepping over my sprawled luggage, being careful not to let the balanced bike tip. Balancing the bike with my left hand, I extended my right leg enough to hook the stick and inch it close enough to pick it up. I placed it under the sidestand. The unsteady Tiger teetered as I carefully remounted my panniers and top pack.

The steady snow was now accumulating on the road surface. My hair was wet and getting cold. I redressed myself, ate a couple of energy chews, and headed out. By the time I was off the two-track and on the forest roads there were four inches of untracked snow. The ABS and traction control earned their keep. So did the Heidenau tires.

I was cold and wet with another 60 miles before reaching Flagg Ranch, where I could warm myself. The heated jacket, seat, and handgrips worked but could not warm me enough to prevent shivering.

I knew that I had chosen the right companion for the LatAm.

* * *

I reached Flagg Ranch with burning cold fingers and cold to the core. I found a chair in the closed cafe and warmed myself with coffee and another microwave soup. The hour I spent there allowed the snow to stop and the clouds to begin lifting. On this side of the mountains, the pavement was clear of snow and cars. The crosswind blowing off the white caps of Jackson Lake penetrated the smallest of openings in my riding gear.

Riding into the driveway, the house was dark. I pulled close enough to the keypad on the garage door to enter the code without dismounting my bike. I pulled into the garage and shut the muddy Triumph off. I stripped my dirty boots and riding gear in the garage and grabbed my laptop, night kit, and dirty clothes from my top duffel. Everything else stayed.

The house was dark and quiet. Betty would not return for several days. It felt empty, and I was alone.

The acoustic guitar leads in like a man slipping out before anyone wakes up. The bass is the engine. The snare starts the motorcycle. Betty’s taxi pulls out of the driveway for a business trip. I open the garage door, fire up the Tiger, and start riding. Nobody to tell me no.

Riding away with the belief that “the road goes on forever.” Avoidance of mortality and current reality.

“I’ve got one more silver dollar.” The delusion. For me it was my motorcycle — my last token of absolute freedom. I had already told myself “I’m not going to let ‘em (her) catch me, no.”

The hypnotic rhythm drives the avoidance home. White line going by without destination. Moving endlessly away from the tension in the marriage, the tension in myself, the denial of what I couldn’t yet name. “And I don’t own the clothes I’m wearing.” Living a narrative that isn’t me. The persona undressed. Keep running.

Stopping would mean having to come to terms with my career, mortality, and the people I love.

“I’ve gone past the point of caring.”

Chapter 4 of Honest Miles drops on Sunday.

“Someday I’d like to run Romaniacs,” I said.

“Man, that would be fun,” Aaron replied. “Not sure how we could pull it off.”

When I got home the next day I downloaded the entry regulations for the longest hard enduro race in the world. Five days in Transylvania, Romania. I was far from being a pro rider, or even an expert, but could usually place in the top three of the Super Senior (over 50) class at regional enduro races. What I lacked in skill, I made up for in fitness and grit.

When registration opened in November, I found myself at my computer at 2:00 AM, clicking confirm on a $2,000 entry fee. The following eight months were all about training. Think it, plan it, do it.

I entered a class too high and couldn’t finish. A different year, a different class.

* * *

Almost immediately after finishing the Ecuador adventure, I started researching the LatAm. Bike shipping, routes, timelines, logistics, and import permits. Every topic related to planning a self-supported Andean motorcycle adventure.

Most of what I found was oriented toward riding the Pan-American highway, made famous by Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries. The route was now entirely paved, four lanes for most of the way, and heavily trafficked by trucks. Not the adventure we were looking for.

I kept searching for routes down the spine of the Andes. High up, two-lane, unpaved, two-track, remote. The bikepackers had the most useful information, but only for the popular areas — around Cusco, Chilean Patagonia. We wanted to see all that, and everything in between.

Joe told me about a woman vlogger who had done a solo south-to-north route during COVID on a Honda. Watching her narrate her every move, tip over, and map discussion made me feel sorry for her. It annoyed me that she was out there doing it, and I wasn’t. I watched two episodes and stopped.

There were still wild places in this hemisphere. I was drawn toward the unknown, the exploration, the rawness. I knew the satisfaction of figuring it out on our own would be half the payback.

* * *

I reached out to Tucker, who had ridden the Mexico adventures with Doug and me. Tucker was the fun, go-lucky kind of guy that most guys like to hang around. “Mother Tucker,” as we affectionately call him. On any given day, when asked if he wanted to ski, fish, bike, or go to the lake, the answer was always “yes, but I’ll be 30 minutes late.” He was a core part of the trip before I even approached him with the idea.

It was unlikely everyone would be able to commit to a trip of this scale and duration, so the invite list was longer than the ideal three- or four-person group. No assholes, only capable riders, and no whiners. Tucker was high on the list because I also knew there was a 90% chance he would blow off whatever he had going at home to make sure he didn’t miss it.

“Aaron and I are thinking about shipping some bikes to South America later this year and riding the continent. What do you think?” I asked. “Want to go?”

Without hesitation, “hell yeah! Who else is going?”

“My friend Joe might, and possibly my buddy Todd from Denver. I’m going to see if Rob wants to go.”

“What about Doug?” he asked.

“He’s out. I already asked him, and he didn’t want to do it.”

Soon after, Doug sold his dirt bike, then his 690, then his snowmobile. He was just done riding. And so ended my twelve-year riding relationship with my go-to riding buddy. We were already missing a core crew member.

* * *

Shipping motorcycles to Argentina, where Ushuaia is located, was virtually impossible due to customs restrictions that no one could fully explain. Santiago would work, but that was more than 3,000 miles from Ushuaia and 9,000 miles from Bogota. Starting in the middle of the continent wasn’t an option — we’d spend weeks backtracking if we wanted to do top-to-bottom. We needed to start at the top.

I found a freight forwarder in Bogota through an overlander chat, a woman named Veronica. I reached out to her on WhatsApp. She was back to me within hours with a detailed quote and a list of follow-up items she needed to start the customs paperwork. The bikes could be crated and flown from Miami to Bogotá for about $3,500 each. Shipping from Jackson to Miami, $850.

* * *

I love maps and navigation. When I was in the sixth grade, our PE teacher, Mr. Workman, introduced us to orienteering. A speed competition, usually in the mountains, that goes from point to point off-trail using only a compass and a map. I was the smallest kid in the class with no future in football or basketball. Finding my way with a map and compass while competing on foot helped build my confidence. What I lacked in athletic ability, I more than made up for with spot-on navigation.

For adventure riding, my planning process starts with Google Maps — city-to-city routing, basic mileage, and natural stopover points. Good for the big picture. Useless for finding the real adventure.

That’s what we use Gaia for. A topographic backcountry mapping app that finds roads and even towns that don’t appear on Google Maps. The real goods. Two-tracks, fire roads, unmarked stream crossings, slope angles. This mile-by-mile route plotting takes hours. Mapping immersion ignites my imagination.

I mapped the first leg — Bogotá to Quito. Shared a spreadsheet and a folder of GPS routes with Aaron, Joe, and Tucker. Nobody responded. I felt the silence equated to consent.

Tucker was already planning the sightseeing in Colombia. I appreciated that. I had a hard time with guidebooks. Someone else’s ratings of places I plan to judge for myself. Tucker read every entry, and he was good at it. He had a good idea of the main things to see in central Colombia and on our way to Ecuador. The problem was that my mapping and his site planning didn’t match up.

He and I got together for a dirt bike ride behind his place in August and met afterward for beer and to talk through specific sites in Colombia. He had already poured himself into the Lonely Planet guidebook and identified enough places to fill a summer’s worth of travel. I broke out the spreadsheet and Gaia on my laptop in his kitchen, our opportunity to reconcile the trip.

We worked together, linking places on the map, with him reading descriptions and me entering endpoints into a spreadsheet with mileages. Not knowing the terrain or road conditions, I was cautious on distances, trying to keep them under 150 miles per day.

“We need to be careful on mileage, I’m thinking 150 a day,” I said. “It will take us 10 riding days to get to Quito if we can keep to that.”

“I know, but I really want to see as many of these places as possible while we’re there,” he replied. “Some are north of Bogota, I think we should do a loop before heading south.”

I let it slide, knowing the calendar would be the constraint and would set the tempo once we sorted things out on the road.

I shared the spreadsheet with the group. Daily destinations, mileage, potential lodging, elevation gains. I wanted more input before locking the plan.

A few days passed, and nobody had commented. We went back and forth on potential dates and settled on late November for the trip from Colombia to Quito, right after Thanksgiving. I began nailing down shipping details with Veronica in Bogotá.

* * *

I knew which bike I wanted to bring with me, the Tiger I had appreciated so much in Ecuador. I did a little research on the dealer network in South America to feel confident in my ability to source parts or service when needed; every major city seemed to have a dealership.

I just needed to find one for sale online. I eventually found a new 2023 Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro, white, with a $3,500 end-of-year rebate at a dealer in Phoenix. Shipping included, I could have it sitting in my garage for about $14,500. I knew this was a lot of money to spend on a bike I was sending halfway around the world, but I wanted something I could trust. I was planning on selling my 690 and a snowmobile, which would cover most of the cost. I pulled the trigger and wired the cash to the dealership the same day.

I was determined to get the bike set up with the same gear and configuration I would be riding it in LatAm. Same phone and GPS mounts, luggage, and suspension tuned for my weight and offroad riding.

I built a packing list from my Mexico trip lists and expanded it for the LatAm. My goal was full self-sufficiency — tools, a tire repair kit, spare parts, camping gear, first aid, and a survival kit. We standardized where it mattered — tubeless tires, intercoms, and GPS units.

I wasn’t going to be reliant on anyone.

I shared my list of riding gear, tools, supplies, and camping gear on the WhatsApp group. Tucker replied with a few questions; the others were silent.

For luggage, I did what I always do — ordered everything, multiple brands and configurations, to see what would fit my gear and the bike. I settled on soft side panniers with dry-bag inserts and a dry-bag top duffel. Waterproof, durable, and a tight fit to the bike. Then I returned the rejects for refunds.

* * *

One hot day in early September, the last of the Summer, we were coming home from a day on the lake. Sun-baked and tired, we pulled into the driveway. There was a truck and an enclosed trailer parked in front of the house. Betty scarcely noticed it until the driver hopped out and approached me.

“Are you Shaun?” he asked.

Betty looked confused, “Who is this?”

“This is my bike I’m taking to South America.”

Her expression went from confusion to cold anger. No jaw drop, just clenched teeth. She rushed inside. The relaxation I brought home from the lake evaporated as the tension in my throat rose. I knew what was coming.

I helped unload the Triumph and rolled it into the garage. I signed the bill of lading receipt, and the driver was off. I rolled the bike to my workshop side of the garage, behind my workbench, futilely trying to conceal its existence as much as possible. I had been busted.

“What is that?” she asked, “When were you going to tell me?”

“I did tell you,” I responded defensively.

“That’s bullshit, we never talked about this in detail,” her anger rising, “how do you intend to pay for it?” The last part a jab, and a question I never had the chance to answer.

“We did talk about it,” at that point, knowing that I had been too afraid to explain the plan to her in detail.

She was pissed and didn’t speak to me the rest of the evening.

The next morning, over coffee, she broke it to me, “I’m not OK with you doing this South America trip.”

“What are you not OK with?” I asked.

“The whole thing. Your escapism, your neglecting our relationship, the danger. None of it,” she continued. “When were you planning to tell me?”

Again, I sucked myself back into defensiveness, “I thought we talked about it.”

She interrupted, “You mentioned it, but we never talked about it.” She was right.

I was already committed. I had three friends ready to go. Tucker and I were already planning stops and lodging. I had almost cracked the code on getting the bikes to South America. And, I had a brand new Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro sitting in my garage.

“I’m doing the trip, not sure how long it will take, but it’s important to me.”

“What about me, us?” she stated. “You think it’s OK to leave me for weeks at a time. What about your work?”

“Come on, you’re the one who is gone weeks at a time on business trips.”

“That’s bullshit,” she interrupts again,” I am the only one around here with a predictable income and health insurance, a real job.”

I had a real job. CEO of three medical imaging centers, a land development in Driggs, and Executive Chairman of a geospatial software company in Denver. I had jobs, three to be exact. But, no health insurance, no 401k, no fixed salary. Those were ours because of her job.

“Doing this trip won’t change any of what I am doing. I don’t see how it will affect us financially now or in the future.”

“That’s what you always think and look where it’s gotten us,” she accused. “More escapism, I’m tired of this rollercoaster you have put us on. You say you love me, you say you care about me, but you don’t include me in the decisions that affect us both.”

She left me to stew as I finished my cold coffee, while she got ready for work. She was right about more than I was willing to admit. I just didn’t see it yet.

© 2026 Major Dude Media LLC. All rights reserved.

The first: a man who takes the long way home because going home means facing something he’s not ready for. “And then your wife seem to think you’re part of the furniture...” then “...a catastrophe.”

The second: finding the place inside yourself where you actually feel at home. Rolling from “Why should you care, if you’re feeling good?” to “Does it feel that your life’s become a catastrophe? Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy.”

For me, it’s both. For many years, I was looking for ways to avoid finding home within myself. Taking the long way, avoiding addressing important things.

The LatAm was the epitome of the long way home. Plan a 12,000-mile motorcycle trip, isolate myself in the comfort of my helmet, plan, lead, plow ahead. The long way home in a literal sense.

But it was the long way home that led me to the second level of the song. It took me 12,000 miles to recognize that my life had become a catastrophe. And that is exactly when I started to grow.

I will be forever grateful to my wife, who stuck with me through the catastrophe. I love you, Betty.

Chapter 3 of Honest Miles drops on Sunday.

It’s about a man talking to another man who’s falling apart. Not fixing him. Not lecturing him. Just telling him: I’ve been there. It gets better. Trust me on this.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I’ve been looking for that conversation my entire adult life and didn’t know it. I rarely found it. Men don’t tend to talk that way — not honestly, not without persona, not without the armor we put on when we were teens and never took off.

This is my attempt to start it.

Chapter 1 of Honest Miles publishes Sunday. It ends in the dark, somewhere in Bolivia, after fourteen hours of riding and two words through an intercom that landed harder than the altitude ever had.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t fight back. I started my bike, made a slow U-turn, and followed the blue line on my GPS four miles back across the city.

That’s when I understood something I wouldn’t fully accept for many miles to come.

The freedom wasn’t in what happened next. It was in that U-turn. In choosing not to carry something that was never mine to carry.

I was already gone.

The chapter that starts this whole thing doesn’t begin with a plan. It begins in a geothermal bath at 12,900 feet in Ecuador with a broken crew — one man sent home with cracked ribs, another refusing to surrender on a grapefruit ankle, a third leaving in the morning.

I’m sitting in the steam with what’s left of us, finishing a beer, and the idea just arrives. Ship some bikes down here. Ride South America. Top to bottom.

My planning brain took over within hours. Google Maps. 5,904 miles. 200 miles a day. I even rounded it down to 5,000 to make it easier to sell to Betty.

But the idea itself didn’t come from the planning brain. It came from somewhere else. Something that doesn’t need a spreadsheet to know it’s on.

That’s what this song is about.

Chapter 2 of Honest Miles drops Sunday Morning.

In late 2022 I called my buddy Todd, the only high school friend I’ve steadily stayed in touch with.

“Hey Shaun, how’s it goin’?” He answered.

“It’s going well. How are you?”

We caught up the way we always did. Work successes and troubles, kids getting older. Us getting older.

Then we talked about our latest motorcycle riding adventures. I told him about the Copper Canyon trip earlier that year with Tucker, Doug, Rob, and me.; We rode KTM 690s through Sinaloa and Chihuahua. Cartel country.

At the top of an 8,600-foot pass on the Sinaloa border, armed men stepped out of the brush and blocked the road. Ten at least, more on the slope above. M-16s, AK-47s, and one leader with a missing hand who used the stump to slap his rifle while he interrogated us.

I pulled off my helmet so they could see my face. “No habla español,” (you don’t speak Spanish). The gang leader slapped his rifle again and repeated his questions in a language I did not understand.

When ordered, Doug refused to remove his helmet.

“It hurts my ears to take it off,” I heard him say on the intercom, more concerned about his ear pain than the AK-47 pointed at his face. It was too small a size and had been crushing his ears for hours. They didn’t understand, and wouldn’t have cared anyway.

A kid, maybe twelve, leaned over and said something to the leader. They all started laughing. The tension broke. They waved us through.

Tucker pulled up just as we were being released. The leader stopped and interrogated him, though I couldn’t hear his intercom. I saw him shrug before they waved him through.

We rode on. Scared shitless, but alive.

Todd’s riding adventures had been more frequent but less intense than mine. Weekend backroad rides in the Colorado Rockies. Short, but challenging. We both wanted more.

“I’ve been looking into Ecuador for a riding trip,” he said.

“Ecuador, what made you think of that?”

“I’ve read that it’s a good place to rent bikes and it’s pretty safe to travel.”

“I’d be into exploring it.”

A former Golden Gloves boxer and bodybuilder, Todd was the kind of friend I could always rely on. Steady and honest. Not afraid to tell me that I was full of shit even when I thought I was right.

Like me he had ridden dirt bikes as a kid, just for fun, in the outback of Wyoming. No marked trails, no maps, no rules. He also loved my father as much as I did, like a brother.

Three days later, he texted me a link to a rental shop in Quito. KTMs, BMWs, Suzuki DRs, and a Triumph, ranging from $110-150/day to rent. The same shop offered guided tours, but we knew this was not what we were after. We were confident in our riding, mechanical, and navigation abilities.

All of our trips had been self-guided, and we saw no reason why this would be any different. The rental shop helped us put together a loop that would never put us further than a day’s drive from Quito.

I reached out to my usual riding crew, Tucker, John Doug, Rob and Aaron. I included a new friend, Joe from D.C., whom I had met at a recent business conference in Barcelona. They all said they were interested; we just needed to set the dates.

We locked the trip for late February. Doug, Joe, Aaron, Todd, and me.

Todd did all the coordination with the rental shop. They outlined a rough itinerary, gave us some GPS routes, and made some initial hotel reservations.

* * *

Everyone arrived in Quito the night before we were supposed to check in to pick up our bikes at the rental shop. Aaron and I wasted an hour trying to get everyone’s helmet intercoms to connect; in the end, only his, mine, and Doug’s could communicate. Joe and Todd were on their own.

We changed into our riding gear, stashed our luggage at the rental shop, loaded our belongings into the panniers on the bikes, and headed out, two KTMs, two Suzuki DRs, and a Triumph Tiger 900. Aaron led the way out of town, weaving through the narrow colonial streets.

At the first stoplight, I forgot to shift from third to first and stalled the engine. I struggled to start the bike while Aaron and Todd sped past. The honking was immediate as three lanes of traffic wove past my stalled bike in the intersection. I was flustered and embarrassed, but the moment reminded me to take my time and learn gradually.

The 790 was the first big bike I had ridden, and now I was in the congested chaos of Quito traffic, trying to manhandle it. Within a half hour of leaving the rental shop, my arm pump was beginning to affect my braking and clutching. I needed to relax.

We approached the outskirts of town and took a hard turn west off the main highway onto a steep one-lane road that climbed us out of the city. I was challenged to find the right gear, lean, and speed at each curve. When the traction was good, I felt like the tires could catch and flip me on my side. When it was slick, I felt like the bike would slide from beneath me. There was no way I could keep pace with Aaron, Todd, or Joe. And Doug, with no road riding experience, outpaced me.

The tightness in my forearms from overgripping affected every input to the bike. I was late in each turn, missing the apex and going wide on almost every switchback. When we entered the cloud forest and started to descend, I could feel the hard tires slipping on the wet pavement. I was puckered.

On dirt, later in the trip, everything relaxed. Hard hits on rocks, sliding in loose gravel, and slithering through ruts put me right at home. I could ride a full gear higher on the dirt sections than I could on the paved. Completely the opposite of most riders, and certainly everyone else in our group.

* * *

By the time we reached Polylepis Lodge at 12,900 feet on the third evening of the trip, Todd was gone. On the outskirts of Cotacachi earlier that day, he had taken a paved curve with a sandy layer too fast and slid out. Doug, following too closely, barely missed him and also went down. Out of nowhere, a vacant cab pulled up and stopped. We put them both in it and sent them to the local hospital while Aaron, Joe, and I picked up the two DRs and shuttled them into town.

At the hospital, Doug learned the X-ray machine hadn’t worked in months. Todd probably had cracked ribs and maybe internal injuries, but there was no way to find out here. Later that day, Todd and his rental DR were loaded into a recovery truck and headed back to Quito.

Doug refused to surrender. He rode the rest of the day on an ankle the size of a grapefruit.

After dinner, we grabbed cocktails and headed to the volcanic geothermal baths in the spa. Steam rose off the water. The fog pressed against the walls outside. We sat in the heat, one man short.

“Fantastic day,” Doug said with no irony.

“I agree. Wish Todd was here,” I replied.

“This is incredible,” Joe added.

I was silent for a while.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “What if we shipped some bikes down here and rode South America? A couple of years. Fly home between legs, come back when we have time.”

“Sounds interesting,” Joe said. “Could be into that. How would it work?”

“Keep it flexible,” I continued. “Try to stay together, but ride on our own if the timing for everyone doesn’t match up.”

“Excellent idea,” Doug said.

“I’m game to figure it out,” Aaron replied.

A current of excitement ran through me as I finished my beer.

That night, lying in bed, I used Google Maps to see how far it would be to ride from Bogotá to Ushuaia. 5,904 miles. About 30 days, averaging 200 miles a day. The LatAm 5,000 was born.

The idea did not feel audacious or too big; selling it to Betty did. She was worried that my riding was a form of “escapism”. She wanted me home. Home, pursuing career aspirations. Home, by her side when she needed me. Home alone, even while she was off on multi-week business trips. Home inside, in winter, without the motivation to go skiing, something I had grown bored of.

Maybe I rounded the miles down because I naively assumed it would be an easier sell as a 5,000-mile trip. I could somehow manage to cover 5,000 miles with less impact than 5,900 miles. Nobody would notice I was gone if it were only 5,000 miles.

Before fading to sleep, a text pinged on my phone. Todd was back in Denver at the ER. Just a few cracked ribs.

* * *

At breakfast, Aaron announced that he needed to get home right away to negotiate a business partner issue back in Salt Lake. Now our crew was down to 60%. A solid crew, but not the one we started with.

Aaron offered to let me finish the trip on the near-new rental Triumph he had been riding. Before he left, we swapped bikes. I knelt next to the Tiger as I topped off its tire pressure and watched Aaron descend from the parking lot.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the 790, it just felt tired and loose. Aside from the 78,952 hard rental miles logged on its odometer, much of what held it together had come undone. Tight, precise Austrian engineering had given way to rough miles and maintenance neglect. Inexperienced renters crashing it on the often slick Ecuadorian roads. Riding it felt cruel.

The Tiger seemed fresh, more exotic, and ready to charge.

Two llamas grazing nearby in the parking lot watched as I strapped my gear to the Tiger’s rack, then swung my leg over. The cold, damp fog slipped through the trees and numbed my hands. I turned the bars and shifted the bike’s weight from its sidestand.

I took some time familiarizing myself with the dash and controls. Even before firing it up, the bike felt balanced beneath me. Planted. Comfortable.

I pushed the button. The triple roared to life smoothly. I let it warm up while I helped Doug and Joe finish loading their gear.

We headed down the steep dirt road away from the lodge. The first tap of the front brake on the loose surface confirmed the bike’s precision and balance. It stayed straight and settled automatically after each big hit, manners intact. On the pavement, it lit up. The suspension was newer and the frame geometry tighter than the KTM — I immediately felt more secure on the twenty miles of paved, twisty road to where our off-road day would begin.

As I got to know the Tiger on the rutted two-track, my confidence with the throttle improved. I began to trust the bike sooner than I had on other unfamiliar machines. The flow came faster and lasted. The arm pump never returned.

That afternoon, the final climb to Piman Lodge went from single-lane pavement to dirt about halfway up. Rounding a tight switchback, I was too aggressive on the throttle and spun out, dumping the bike onto its side on the dry, moon-dust surface. Joe was 60 seconds behind, intentionally spacing to allow the dust to settle. When he got to me, I was already on my feet, unscathed. He helped me right the 500-pound machine.

The three of us finished the day next to the pool with cold beers in hand.

© 2026 Major Dude Media LLC. All rights reserved.

It had been a long day. Too long.

Fourteen hours earlier we left Cochabamba under a hard, colorless sun. Now it is fully dark.

The quiet of the tires hitting the Carretera 5 pavement after 190 miles of dirt takes the edge off. I short shift the gears as my focus quickly narrows to whatever my headlights can reach. The tires now hum. Oncoming truck lights blind my dry, gritty, exhausted eyes. The lights of Sucre peek around the switchbacks in the valley below.

For the first time all day, my shoulders drop.

We have broken every rule. No riding at night. No passing gas. Always stay together. Rules we follow not for discipline, but for survival. By the time the city comes into full view, my hunger and thirst have stripped everything down to a single goal: reach the hotel and stop moving.

The hotel was Tucker’s find. A decent place, by Bolivian standards, he said. Old colonial center. I have the route locked in my GPS as always — entered earlier, during a brief stop.

As we enter the scantily lit city, the road widens into a four-lane intersection. I move to the right lane, follow the blue line on my screen toward downtown. Tucker pulls alongside me in the left lane and stops, left signal blinking.

Our intercoms died eight hours ago. I flip my visor open and yell, “We should be turning right here.”

No response. Just the Triumph’s warm idle.

“Where are you taking us?” I yell again.

“To the hotel,” he yells back.

“This isn’t the way.”

Nothing. I see him flip his visor back down. The light turns green.

Against what I knew, I follow him. Stay together, especially at night.

The streets narrow. The lights thin. We turn up a steep street. Then again. Soon we are riding through a residential neighborhood with no streetlights at all. A hunched elderly woman is walking alone on the sidewalk. Tucker spots her and pulls over.

I pull alongside him and lift my visor, turn the motor off. “We’re not in the right place,” I say. “I have the hotel locked. We should be downtown.”

He rides up next to her, lifts his visor. “Disculpe,” he asked, “¿podría indicarnos cómo llegar al hotel de Su Merced?” (where is the hotel de Su Merced?)

I see her shake her head.

I hear him say, “This is the right address, dammit!”

“There’s no way she knows where that hotel is,” I say. “There are no hotels here. Let’s go. I’ve got it in my GPS.”

A pause.

Then, flat and final: “Fuck off! Shut the fuck up!”

Inside my silent helmet, the tinnitus rings. My cotton mouth tastes sour.

I have no reply.

I start my bike, make a slow U-turn, and follow the blue line on my screen back across the city. At the next intersection, a headlight flickers in my mirror. Tucker follows.

The hotel he had picked is sold out. So is the next. Friday night in Sucre.

It takes another 30 minutes before we find a place with a vacancy. Atop a steep hill overlooking the city.

Arriving, I pull in close to the reception area and dismount. I unstrap my top duffel, grab my passport, and check in efficiently. I buy two bottles of water at the front desk and slam one on the spot.

I head past Tucker in the gravel parking area while he deals with his gear.

In my room, I down two almond butter packets for dinner and slam most of my second water bottle. The cool shower water hits my dirt-drenched skin and barely cuts through the grime. There is no shampoo; I use bar soap to scrub my hair and scalp. I know the film left behind will remind me tomorrow of the fucked-up evening I’ve just experienced.

Lying in the dark, listening to the city dogs barking through the open window, I understand something I wouldn’t fully accept for many miles to come.

It wasn’t the insult. The crack had been there for thousands of miles — his lateness, his detours, and my grip on the agenda.

It is the silence afterward — and how much lighter it feels.

I was already gone, and so was he.

© 2026 Major Dude Media LLC. All rights reserved.

It’s about a man talking to another man who’s falling apart. Not fixing him. Not lecturing him. Just telling him: I’ve been there. It gets better. Trust me on this.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I’ve been looking for that conversation my entire adult life, though I didn’t know it. I rarely found it. Men don’t tend to talk that way — not honestly, not without performance, not without sarcastic banter, not without the armor we put on somewhere around age fourteen and never figure out how to take off.

This is my attempt to start it. By showing what can be done if you commit to honesty, vulnerability, and conversation.

Here’s what I know about the men I’m writing for.

You’ve built things. Maybe a business, maybe a career, maybe a family, maybe all three. You followed the script — work hard, lead well, provide, achieve.

And somewhere along the way, probably when something went wrong that the script didn’t account for, you looked up and realized you had no idea who you actually were beneath all of it.

Maybe it was a firing. A divorce. A health scare. Another birthday with a zero on the end. Maybe it was nothing dramatic — just a slow, creeping sense that the life you built doesn’t fit the man you are.

We are not alone.

The WSJ ran a piece earlier this year about three new prestige TV shows — Rooster, Your Friends and Neighbors, DTF St. Louis — all built around the same character: accomplished men who are flailing, confused, unable to figure out what being a man actually means in 2026. The critic’s conclusion was that these men never figured it out in the first place.

I’d go further. Most of us were never given the tools. We were handed a script and told to perform it. When the script stopped working, we couldn’t find what was underneath.

This platform is about what’s underneath.

My version of the crisis

I’ve founded companies, led teams, raised capital, built things. I’m still CEO of one. But the one that let me go — that one I chaired — is what cracked me wide open.

I had spent 2023 planning a self-supported 14,000-mile motorcycle journey through the Andes — Colombia to Ushuaia, the full length of South America with a couple buddies. We had shipped our bikes to Bogotá and started riding.

We had flown home for the holidays. Our bikes stayed behind in Colombia.

The CEO of a company I had co-founded and funded took a hard strategic turn that I disagreed with. It was him or me, and I wasn’t going to drop all of my commitments to run a company in a different city. Fuck that, I’m Chairman, and he’s CEO. It was my decision, and it backfired.

Within weeks, I was voted off the board of the company I’d co-founded. A thirty-five-year friendship with one of our VCs cracked in the process. My wife was furious. My internal map — the one that had always told me who I was and where I was going — went dark. I couldn’t name one thing I liked about myself.

Then, I flew back to Colombia, where my bike was waiting. There was nowhere for us to go but south.

Any Major Dude Newsletter

This newsletter is where I’ll share it as it comes together — scenes from Honest Miles, reflections on what the road actually meant, and the larger conversation I think we need to be having about men, identity, and what it costs to live inside a script that was never really yours.

Honest Miles is the memoir I’m writing. This newsletter is where I’ll share it as it comes together — scenes, reflections, the parts of the story that are ready before the book is. This is where I chronicle the lead-up to my collapse, the reckoning, and the awakening I experienced. It’s not for everyone, but if you are a man who is struggling to figure this shit out, then maybe my story will at least show you a path that someone else has traveled.

All in 2026, where masculinity is being shamed and where society can’t even help us define what being a man means.

“No thanks, I’m fine”

Any Major Dude is for men who are done pretending they have it figured out.

Not men who are broken. Not men who are victims. It’s for men who are willing to look honestly at how they got here and what they want the next chapter to look like.

We’ll talk about the road. About career and what it costs when the thing you built your identity around is gone. About friendship — real friendship, the kind most of us stopped having somewhere in our forties. About marriage. Intimacy. About what it means to be a man right now, in 2026, when the old script is dead, and nobody has handed us a new one.

That last part is the one I keep coming back to.

I don’t have a system. I have 14,000 difficult miles and some things I learned the hard way.

Any major dude will tell you.

Subscribe if you want to be part of it, and if you’re done saying “no thanks, I’m fine.” Subscribe if you want a Major Dude to show you what it took for him to find what’s underneath and rebuild.

— Shaun

© 2026 Major Dude Media LLC. All rights reserved.