Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Fully becoming oneself is a lifelong process. We often think of it in terms of adding and building, whether it’s knowledge, wealth, or personal achievements. Graduation. Marriage. Parenthood. Promotions. Although all these milestones are significant life events and potentially rich learning experiences, there are those among us who find that the most fulfilling path on the journey to becoming involves an unbecoming. A stripping away. An unspooling. An undoing. This may come through silence and solitude, or it may come through grit and determination. It can be metaphysical or physical, intentional or coincidental. Dirt in the teeth or a quiet meditation. Either way, the ego is washed away, clearing space for something new.
Embarking On The Tour Divide
On June 14, 2024, Rob Maple, a 54-year-old Parsons GIS program manager for the Army, embarked on an experience that offered all of the above. On that day, he clipped his feet into his bike pedals and set forth on the adventure of a lifetime: the Tour Divide, a 2,745-mile race across six states and two Canadian provinces, from Banff, Canada, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico.
Rob had built himself up for this race his entire life. He was a football and baseball player when he was young. He took up rugby in the Army. He regularly competed in triathlons and ultra-endurance races. He was an avid camper. And for the last thirty years, he’d been cycling, both mountain biking and road biking. With a routine involving rising at five a.m. every day to strength train, in addition to cycling five days a week, Rob was made for this ultimate test of strength and endurance.
Alone for much of the 29 days it took him to complete the journey, Rob carried 65 pounds of gear on a custom bike without suspension up 4,000- to 5,000-foot climbs, each followed by harrowing six- to seven-mile descents. He cycled until one or two a.m. every day through rain and snow, and sometimes 32-degree temperatures, rogue camping 21 out of the 29 days he traveled, often with no other rider in sight in the surrounding wilderness.
Survival On The Trail
He gathered resources every two days, finding food in the mom-and-pop gas stations that supported the scattered one-horse towns along the route. He slept with one eye open, hoping the grizzlies would move past his one-man tent in search food elsewhere. He filtered water where he could. He stretched the few rations he’d brought with him—M&Ms and Pop Tarts—for days. He burned through four sets of brake pads. He wore the same pair of socks every day. He took only four in-town showers over the course of the month. And he rose every morning refreshed by only a few hours of sleep.
Once, Rob lost his tent poles on a particularly challenging descent near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, but he luckily had cell service and discovered the company that made his tent poles—Big Agnes—was headquartered there. Even more fortuitous, he ran into a Subaru Outback with the Big Agnes logo on its side. Rob flagged the car down, and the driver invited him to come to headquarters the next day at nine a.m., where he gave Rob all new gear, free of charge.
The day he completed the race, in Antelope Wells, New Mexico, was anticlimactic. A small border crossing monitored only a few hours a day, characterized by gates and barbed wire, it was all too easy to cycle through the stop without feeling much of the joy and exhilaration one might expect he would feel.
Reflecting On The Journey
Those feelings came later. “So I guess you could say my reaction to completing the Tour Divide was a retrospective one,” Rob says. Only once he had the chance to shower, rest, and eat a hearty meal did he stop to reflect.
And when he did, it was not all the hardships he contemplated. It was the wide-open vistas of Montana. The star-studded night sky, more dazzling than any night sky he’d seen before. It was the time he ran into another cyclist and was gifted a couple gallons of water. It was that he was one of only 50 percent of riders who completed the race. It was that he escaped without saddle sores and avoided equipment malfunctions. It was the rugged terrain underneath his tires, drowning out thought, keeping him locked in the present every mile, every day. It was gratitude for his strength and will, but also appreciation for his good fortune and a newfound perspective from the other side of the experience. “I realized, through all that empty space along which I traveled, that I was just a speck in this large, wonderful universe,” Rob reminisces.
He’d had the support of Parsons and his colleagues to take this 30-day leave of absence. He had the support of his friends and family. And he had an unwavering belief in himself that he could complete this wild adventure that would literally drag him through mud and deliver him to sunlit fields and glittering night skies.
The Transformative Outcome
The Tour Divide humbled Rob. It undid him in the best way. So often his body was cold and wet, his visibility low, his thirst and hunger intense. He rode through so much dangerous terrain. He missed the people he loved, and he had only himself to depend on to make it through each hard day and night. In the end, he was worn down, exhausted. And then also exhilarated. He understood his place in the cosmos. He’d had a life-changing and life-affirming experience.
Through unbecoming he became. He emerged more enlightened, a man with more clarity. The man Rob says he has always wanted to be. A man with a successful career. A healthy man. A man with deep, meaningful connections to his wife and son. And—ultimately—a man who is willing to do this all over again, he says, at the age of 60, because there has never been another experience more powerful, another experience more rewarding, another experience more transformative, another becoming more hard-won.
Learn More About Rob’s Journey
If you’d like to read more about Rob’s Tour Divide race, check out the articles below:
You can watch Rob’s documentary, Unbroken Inspiration, on his epic ride, here: