Natchez Trace Parkway: Reflections, Conclusions and Lessons Learned

My Journey Cycling the Natchez Trace Parkway:

The Ups and Downs, the stories, the bumps in the road, and everything in between.

Reflections, Conclusions, and Lessons Learned

Takeaway #1: Life is a series of uphills and downhills.

One thing you do a lot of when cycling a 444-mile parkway is go up and down hills. The uphills suck—you put in a ton of work, you sweat a ton, and you move at like 5 miles per hour. There is nothing fun about pedaling uphill. Conversely, the downhills are awesome—you get to coast at faster speeds if you’d like, or move at incredibly fast speeds—like 35.9 mph—if you’re willing to put in a fraction of the work that you put in the uphills. Cycling downhill is super enjoyable.

I realized during my bike trip the key to dealing with these uphills and downhills: as long as you keep moving forward, there is ALWAYS a downhill coast at the top of an uphill challenge, and there likewise is always an uphill challenge at the bottom of a downhill coast.

Similarly, at the farther and longer you travel an uphill, the greater the likelihood that there’s a huge downhill waiting for you. The uphill is you putting the money in the bank, the downhill is you cashing in. The more you put in the bank, the more you can cash in later.

The concept of uphills and downhills can be applied to life at large. The uphills suck—they’re like your really shitty times in life. Maybe you just had a nasty breakup with the love of your life. Maybe a family member just passed away. Maybe you just lost your job or you are unemployed.

Whatever it is, by framing your struggles and challenges as temporary uphill battles, you will know that as long as you keep moving, the inflexion will eventually change, and you’ll get to that downhill reward you’ve been working for. Similar to when actually on a bike, in life the longer you’re in a shitty situation (the uphill), the greater likelihood of a huge enjoyable downhill cruise at the top of the hill once you get there.

For example, my past three-ish years haven’t been my favorite years. But putting these years in this perspective don’t make them sound that bad; I know a huge downhill is waiting for me soon. Hope you come along for the ride. Somewhat similarly…

Takeaway #2: The best stories happen when shit hits the fan.

Similar to the uphills and knowing that shit only hits the fan temporarily, as long as you get past the shit, you come away with some incredible stories.

If I had simply ridden my bicycle down the Trace with no weather issues, no mechanical issues, no strange meetings of people, would it have been a more enjoyable experience? In the moment, maybe. But would I have more interesting stories, stronger takeaways, more exciting memories to blog about? Almost certainly not.

A perfect example of this was when I went lazy river (beer) tubing with some friends in college. The trips when we simply went tubing and experienced no issues were great at the time. But the one that sparks the most memories was when we went to this small rural river on a farm, stupidly brought our beers in a cheap $5 foam cooler, went down some rapids directly into a bunch of branches which popped our tubes and the foam coolers, and the next thing you know a bunch of drunk college kids are chasing floating beers down a small river by foot while sharing half broken tubes. In retrospect, that memory was awesome at best, memorable at worst.

Takeaway #3: During my trip, my dependence on other people was incredibly ironic.

A big reason I chose a long distance solo bike trip following my graduation was because I wanted to learn to be more self-sufficient. I wanted to teach myself to not have to depend or rely on others to find success and joy in my own life, so I could have more control over my emotions.

While I spent most of my trip on my own, one thing I learned was that even the most solo of people rely on others to survive; I know I certainly did.* I needed CK’s company and stories to get me out of a rut. I needed the southern hospitality of my buddy Daniel and his family. I needed people to give me water when I ran out of water at Milepost 54. I needed Sonny to give me a ride and go well out of way to help me get back to Madison. I truly needed the little pick-me-ups along the way—the guy who helped me fix my pedal on the side of the road, the people who let me check the radar for storms, the NPS Ranger who helped me find a campground, the guy in the car who welcomed me to Natchez upon my arrival—to keep my spirits up.

*The details from these stories will be shared in a later post! But for the record, CK is a cyclist I befriended while en route who has bicycled the country full-time (with cats!) for the past couple of decades by choice, Daniel is a good friend from college, and Sonny was a guy who gave me a ride when I was hitchhiking.

It’s safe to say that without all of the help from others, I wouldn’t have made it. Which is ironic because help from others was what I tried to avoid, but it’s what I got, which leads me to my next takeaway…

Takeaway #4: Humans not only don’t mind helping those in need; we actually derive joy from helping others. Thus, you should never be afraid of asking for and accepting help when you need it. Believe in people!

This one may seem obvious to some, but took me until my bike trip to really get a grasp on.

I’ll be the first to say my family life isn’t the best. My mother passed away when I was entering 8^th grade, and my relationships with my father and brother(s) are, while not terrible, certainly fractured. As a result, since my teenage years, I’ve always sort of relied on others’—extended relatives, friends, families of friends, etc.—kindness to survive and get by.

Thus, over the past several years, I’ve been pretty timid asking people for favors—whether it was getting a ride from the airport, crashing on a couch for a night, or going out to an event with me—because I was afraid of getting in the way of people or feeling like I was some sort of burden on them, and I felt I had already taken too much from the world without giving enough back.

But this trip enabled me to see that not only were people willing to help me, they enjoyed helping me. Daniel’s mom must have wanted to make me a breakfast and a bagged lunch on the day I stopped by. (I mean, she made me meals but not ones for her own son!). The people who gave me water seemed to love that they were helping a needy biker. Sonny thanked me for my presence, despite the fact he was the one doing me a huge favor by picking me up and taking me well out of his way to where I needed to go when I was hitchhiking.

I’ll be more willing to ask for help and favors moving forward, and you should too.

Takeaway #5: Try not to generalize people or groups; try to instead evaluate them on an individual basis.

This lesson was particularly relevant twice during my trip. First, when I asked CK about which types of stores/regions/sectors were nicer to him when he was looking for work or food. He told me it was foolish to generalize, that it really depended on each individual general manager on how kind they were. Second, when Sonny was explaining to me his views on religion. He said that I shouldn’t judge religious folk or bunch them together – not all religious people don’t accept people of different religions. For example, while Sonny clearly believed in the Lord and wanted me to also, he gave me room and understood that it was a decision only I could make.

I guess the moral of the story here is to not judge people by their labels—you never really know about people until, you know, you actually get to know them.

Takeaway #6: Take what is given in the present; there’s no guarantee that it’ll still be there tomorrow.

Whenever I was biking, if there was a chance to take or do something there and then, I had to do it. Could I bike the extra twenty miles today? If so, I had to—who knows what the weather would bring tomorrow. Can you fill up water or take a poop now, even though you can make it to the next rest stop in 15 miles without any issues? You should fill up and take the poop—you never know if the next stop will have working or clean water and toilets.

This concept can definitely be applied to real life too. Have a neat job offer? Maybe you should take it. Have an opportunity to go to a cool restaurant tonight, but also potentially next week? Go for it tonight, you never know what might come up next Friday at the last minute. Have an opportunity to go on a crazy bike ride or awesome trip to the Canadian Rockies this summer? Gotta take them, you never know when or if you’ll ever get a good opportunity to do so again; things and schedules change and fill up so quickly.

Takeaway #7: Negative events can be blessings in disguise.

Moving back to dealing with adversity…

I think about all of the seemingly negative things that deceivingly fell into place for me to have the positive experience and adventure I had. A late minute scheduled work meeting that pushed my departure day back two days and forced me to rush some. A split tire stopped me by a rest stop, preventing me from cycling through a torrential downpour only minutes later. Rain slowed me down on a Saturday, and then the bike store was closed on Sunday (Mississippi!), which forced me to stay and enabled me to meet CK and then bike in incredibly nice weather. 

It really is crazy how things worked out the way they were supposed to, little to my knowledge at the time. Sometimes we should put greater trust in (negative) things as a piece to the puzzle and eventually working out the way they are supposed to, even if it seems like they suck at the time, which leads me to my next point…

Takeaway #8: We as humans focus on the negatives, and need to actively try to focus on the positives more.

When my phone (charger) started malfunctioning on the trip, I thought “Of course, this would happen to me while I’m on this trip. I need the phone charger probably more than any time ever.”

But luckily, at some point, I stopped myself. I realized that blaming dumb luck on this coincidence wasn’t exactly fair.

Take for example, getting in a minor car crash. We always think, “Oh, if I had just left a minute later I would have avoided this mess,” and we think we’re incredibly unlucky because of the strange coincidence, and we get angry about it.

Conversely, when we don’t get in car crashes, we’re never like “Oh I’m so fortunate I didn’t leave a minute earlier, or else I would have been in that mess” either because (a) we would never have known, or (b) we wouldn’t have thought with this mindset.

I think our brains just naturally focus on negatives. Maybe this is because the negatives are what stand out, whereas the positives are seen as status quo. We don’t give the positives the recognition they deserve. Just a thought. This is a decent segue into my final and perhaps my main point…

Takeaway #9: We take a lot things in life for granted.

I already knew that. But how can we combat our inevitable regression back into our everyday life bubble—the hamster wheel—where we can’t stop taking everything we have for granted?

In regards to my ride, I remember the day I crashed at Daniel’s place en route, the day I returned to Daniel’s place after finishing the Trace, and returning to my house in Nashville following my trip. I was so happy to have the simplest of things—air conditioning, not racing against daylight to set up camp, not having to bike for long hours, having direct access to a shower and being clean, the ability to eat a hot, homecooked meal… the list goes on. I would have been happy literally doing nothing, because for a split second there, I recognized I already had all of the basic things—food, water, shelter, etc.—that I needed, regardless of what happened next. The rest of my problems were issues that, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t really matter.

But as the days passed, and over the course of the last week since my return, I slowly started to realize myself getting frustrated at miniscule things—an annoying landlord, a bill transfer that was faulty, waiting for a few extra minutes for my roommate to pick him up from the airport, etc.

I’m not saying it’s not okay to complain or stress about these relatively minor things—it’s not natural for us to do so—but there has to be a way to combat it such that we are consistently more at peace, right?

But the issue is that it—regression back into taking things for granted—happens literally every time! I’ll have this experience or epiphany and believe/understand that I’m spoiled and become grateful of what I have, but then slowly I forget about it all and get frustrated at miniscule things. But seriously.  Just read my first blog post from five years ago. My message is eerily similar, some five years later! Yet I’ve been anxious and frustrated for years now. What happened?

Does my eventual reverting to spoiled brat mean I need to do one of these sorts of bike trips, or something that similarly deprives me of basic necessities—like traveling to a third world country or volunteering at a food bank—more often to be happy with what I have? Or is there a way to actively appreciate everything that we already have instead of focusing on the little imperfections that seemingly control our life and happiness?

Just a thought. I’m just trying to find happiness and joy, just like everyone else. Thanks for reading.

-JTF

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