Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way
– “Born to be Wild”
lyrics by Steppenwolf
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The year was 1993.
I was a freshman at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
One cold winter weekend, my friend Jeremy and I rented the film Easy Rider.
It’s about two hippies who drive their motorcycles from Los Angeles to New Orleans.
After the film ended, we quickly decided on our summer plans.
We would work for two months, make some money, then buy motorcycles and drive cross-country for one month before school started again in the fall.
Our plan was working fine.
I got a job in construction.
Jeremy was waiting tables.
Then sometime in June or July, I told my parents about the plan.
That’s when they decided it would be a good time to buy me a car.
In English, that’s called “a bribe.”
Anyway, I accepted their offer.
The cross-country motorcycle adventure transformed into a cross-country Chevrolet Malibu adventure.
As the decades passed, the dream faded from my memory.
Until two weeks ago.
In Bangkok, I ran into a Kiwi friend.
He invited me to join him on a motorcycle trip through the mountains of northern Thailand.
It took me about two seconds before I told him, “Count me in.”
