Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Darrel and his grandsons cheered. I thought I surely earned their respect, their admira-
tion, but only minutes later, as I was getting on a horse for the first time, I could hear Seth
telling one of the kids, “He's like an eight-year-old cowboy, but he can learn.”
After making fun of me for hours, Darrel and the rest of his family finally decided it
was time to feed this bruised and humiliated Englishman some good ol' cowboy burgers.
Cheeseburgers? Now that, I'm good at.
As the sun set in the distance, the mirrored sky fading across the fields, I thanked this
amazing family for taking a day out of their life to show me theirs. We sat together in the
quiet of the evening, and I realized this was the real upside of cowboy life—the small mo-
ments that filled their lives. The big stuff, the grand moments, will always come and go.
But it's the little ones that have the real potential to change us.
I stayed that night with my cowboy friends and could feel the connection to life that
their work brought them. When I was a boy, we would go and visit a small island in Greece
called Chios, where my mother was from and where my grandmother still lives. Growing
up in the city, I found it exhilarating to be on an island where we felt safe and could go
and do whatever our little imaginations desired. We jumped off rocky cliffs and ran wild
through the villages. But it wasn't just hanging out with my fellow little people with funny
Greek accents that made me love those summers; it was the freedom of connecting with the
land. For Darrel, his family, and Seth, every day brought that connection. I could feel it in
them, and for the first time in a long time, I could feel it in me.
I left the farm the next morning and headed back to the big city—driving towards Ch-
icago. My heart was filled with love. I spent an evening in Chicago and, after struggling
through another breakdown with the bike, received some great news. The shipping com-
pany had sent an email confirming that I was all set for the ship to Europe! I would have to
be in New York in a few days so the bike could be crated for its journey across the Atlant-
ic Ocean. I was still 793 miles away from New York, though, and was suddenly in a race
against time.
I headed east, straight through the heart of Amish country. I thought the Amish would
be the easiest group to ask for help, but when I told a local shopkeeper about the camera
crew waiting outside, he replied, “The local folks, they're going to have issues with those
cameras.”
That's right. My trusty team of producers, who hovered ever so silently in the back-
ground, went against one of the main testaments of the Amish: no graven images. However,
cameras off, one Amish family helped me with a tank of gas, and I found a local pastor
