Desert Tower — I Said I'd Never Ride Again

October 15, 2019 — Desert Tower, California

Fifteen days later, he sold the bike at a pawn shop and swore he'd never ride again.

October 15, 2019. Day 18 of the first ride. He'd rolled out of Henderson, Nevada on September 28 with everything he owned on a bicycle, and that evening he stood in a boulder garden above Jacumba Hot Springs, watching the sun go down behind a stone tower in the desert at Ocotillo — and that night he slept by a campfire under it.

Then the road east: three days at Slab City with a host called The Rabbit Hole, a band playing The Range under the desert stars. A day soaking in the Jacumba Hot Springs, trying to recover. Sand dunes. Cibola, Arizona, on the Colorado River. Blythe. Tonopah. And on October 30 — Buckeye, Arizona. The doorstep of Phoenix.

In Phoenix he did it. Sold the bike at a pawn shop. Sold the trailer at a pawn shop. Threw all his gear in the garbage. Said he was never riding a bike again in his lifetime — and flew home.

You already know the ending, because the man telling you this story has ridden 66,000+ documented miles since May 3, 2023. The quit was real. It just wasn't final.

That's the lesson this Vault entry carries: a man can quit a road. He can't quit his own life. "Never again" is sometimes just the sentence a tired man says when what he means is "I don't want to hurt anymore." The thing you quit is still sitting exactly where you left it — and so is the road back to it.

What happened in the desert before the quit, and in the months after it — that stays in the book. OUTGROW YESTERDAY, coming soon.

So now you: what did you pawn? Name it — just to yourself. That's not the shame talking. That's the map. That's where it starts again.

⚔️ Coach R.O.D.A. // The Road Code · From The Vault 006

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