The Beginning

The beginning was actually three years ago. I was 19 years old and in college at the time. It was my sixth and final year at Baldwin-Wallace and I spent much of my time on school related stuff or working a part time job packaging boxes five hours a day at a podiatry supply company. The school stuff consisted of suffering through a differential equations class three times a week or trying to convince myself that the differential equations homework I had been assigned would be a good use of my time. Most every time I sat down to complete the homework I quickly became convinced that it was a waste of my time and so it became a great struggle for me. However, this class was the only class I was enrolled in during my final semester. I needed any grade better than a 'D' to graduate. I finished with a 'B'. Getting out of college proved to be a strong motivator, even when assigned the task of calculating the inverse LaPlace transform of the Dirac delta function. The purpose of which fails me to this day.

It was winter and sometime in between Dirac and my tape gun I came across an article about a young man who, alone, had recently rowed a boat across the Atlantic Ocean. As I read his journal of his days at sea I became fascinated. Stories of dodging Navy battleships, rowing in storms with crashing waves, the porpoises swimming alongside, the blisters, the loneliness, the sun, the moon, the stars, the thrill, the adventure, the unknown, the struggle, and ultimately the accomplishment held my speed reading eyes until it was time to go back to the packing popcorn and cardboard as I had every other weekday since summer.

What kind of life was I leading? School and my job were my ball and chain and there was no end in sight. I was even trying to find a full time job that I could make a career out of. What a terrible idea! Fortunately, I was denied by all that I applied to. Up until this point I had been going through life without knowing that people willingly row across the Atlantic Ocean by themselves. This is something I will not let my kids go their first 19 years without knowing. I felt I had been enlightened. This idea stirred something deep within me. A door was opened and a monster let out that has not gone away since. A monster that gets hungrier every day. At first it was content with dreaming about the day when I would go on my first adventure. That was not enough. I then fed it stories of other people's adventures. Stories like "Into the Wild", "Into the Air", and "The Royal Road to Romance". But now these are not enough. I am sick of reading about other people's adventures. I want adventure.

After deciding that rowing a boat across the Atlantic would be too expensive, I decided to ride my bike across the United States. Three years I have thought about this. In May 2010, I will begin my first adventure!