There are a few events in life that upend your understanding of the world and your place in it. Last summer was one such event. As part of Texas 4000 for Cancer, my teammates and I embarked on the world’s longest annual charity bike ride--4000 miles in 70 days to raise money for cancer research. Over the course of 16 states, 6 National Parks, 20 campsites, and countless different church floors, basements, YMCAs, and homes, we saw a side of America that I wish everyone could see. Why did I do this? It started off as a way to honor my mom’s battle with cancer (you can read more about it here) but became something so much bigger. It’s been a year since the ride and articulating the enormity of this experience remains an impossible task. But it’s worth sharing some snippets and lessons.

How Can I Help?

“Most of us know how supportive it is merely to be in the presence of a mind that is open, quiet, playful, receptive, or reflective. These attributes are themselves helpful.”

- Ram Dass, How Can I Help?

Stanton, Missouri is a town so small that it has no population sign. But a cold call to the only church in town connected me with a lady named Jane who graciously offered to host my team in their church basement. What I didn’t anticipate was how hosting us would become a whole-of-town effort. For a place that gets few visitors, much less twenty college kids from Texas on bikes, this was a big deal. The (mostly elderly) residents of Stanton chipped in to bring us dinner, arrange snacks, craft little gifts for us, and prepare a special ceremony at church the next Sunday morning. Pastor Paul delivered a sermon in which he prayed for our safety and hoped we’d find God in our travels.

It was impossible to tell from the face of it, but this was a community facing immense pain. Pastor Paul told us about his previous life as a drug addict, fresh from the Vietnam War where he served as a deep sea diver. Drug addiction blew up his relationship with his first family and took five years from his life. He eventually found his way to God and somehow became a pastor. Today, he works at a rehab center as a counselor, helping those whose condition he appreciates more than anyone else. Pastor Paul’s scarring stories illustrated how the opioid crisis had slashed at the very fabric of his society. I met Lee, Jane’s 70 year old brother who had lost his wife to colon cancer due to inadequate healthcare just two weeks before we showed up. Jane said that he had become a shell of his former self, but found joy in telling us his stories. As we were leaving, Jane came up to me and thanked us for coming to their town. She said that there was a lot of pain and darkness in her community and that we had been a much-needed glimmer of light in their lives.

What an absolutely incredulous thing to hear.

The Ozarks route takes riders through the Deep South and Midwest–-areas that are relatively impoverished and have higher than average rates of cancer due to pollution, lack of healthcare, and countless other issues. How are a bunch of 20-something year olds on a bike supposed to fix any of them? We couldn’t. But somehow our presence had become a source of strength for these strangers. In undertaking this impossible journey, we were somehow spreading hope in the face of life’s countless miseries.

I met people like Dalton, a cashier at a Love’s gas station just outside of Pine Bluff, Arkansas who described his daughter’ s four year battle with cancer. She had just turned seven. The pain in his eyes has been impossible to forget. I met Nelson Kotiar, a character whose unlikely story was only possible in the US: as a young man, he had moved to America from India, found his wife, made Santa Rosa, New Mexico his home, and somehow ended up as this tiny town’s mayor. His mother in New Delhi had passed away the day we biked into Santa Rosa and despite the emotional turmoil in his life, he showed up to support us and make sure we were taken care of. His persistently joyous attitude and desire to serve others has also been impossible to forget.

What’s On Your Mind?

In our group of twenty, there was a formal leadership structure meant to provide guidance to our decision making process. The two Ride Directors at the top set the tone for how we functioned as a team. To this day, I look at their leadership style as a shining example of how to navigate difficult situations and build a strong, resilient culture amidst chaos and uncertainty.

At the end of each day, having weathered the brutal heat or the bumpy roads or the bike issues or the eternal calorie deficit or all of the above, we’d sit down for a chat. All anyone wanted was to shower, eat, and sleep, but we would make it a point to get together for a team debrief and discuss the events of the day. It was an open floor for anyone to address concerns, celebrate the small victories, point out areas of improvements, and share what was on their minds. More often than not, there was always something a rider needed to share. The repetitive practice of debriefing led to a 1% improvement each day: we became safer bikers, more empathetic teammates, and a stronger team by being able to candidly share our thoughts. Deliberately crafting this unstructured time played a critical role in building an open and responsive team culture that I am immensely grateful for.

What’s Next?

Ever morning on the ride began with a sacred Texas 4000 ritual: the ride dedication circle. The team would stand in a circle, hold pinkies, and talk about why we woke up that day at an ungodly hour, with a sore body and little sleep, and still chose to get on the bike. We would share stories of people we met and dedicate our ride to them. These countless stories of suffering, resilience, and hope had become a part of us and sharing them every morning propelled our bike ride by giving us a clear, simple, raison d’être.

In other words, each day on the ride was an exercise in intense purposeful existence. On Day 71, it seemed as if we were stripped of it all. In fact, “post-ride depression” is a well documented phenomenon for most riders who do Texas 4000. You’d expect young folks like us to come from this arduous journey invigorated, self-assured, and ready to take on the challenges of post-ride life. While this might be true in the long term, the immediate aftermath of the ride is a deep pit of self-doubt, reflection, and disorientation. The reason, of course, is a distinct lack of purpose. What could possibly compare to the physical, emotional, and mental stimulation of biking 70-100 miles each day, befriending strangers across America, and bonding as a team? As the end of the ride approached, I saw this bleak future looming. I promised myself that I would live the rest of my life with the same sense of purpose, grit, and empathy that had been the hallmark of those 4000 miles.

After nearly a year since the ride, I think I’ve found my next big adventure. More on that soon.