SOTW 1: Already Gone - Eagles (1974)

We live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key.

That line stopped me the first time I really heard 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.