This is a story I often re-tell.

I drove from Cupertino to Portland for a 3-day trip. It was by far the longest I had ever driven. We stopped halfway to do a run in an abandoned reservoir. The landscape was nothing special but I felt isolated, eerie, and on a movie set of a thriller. There was no one and time stood still. I think about this now, but I hadn’t realized it felt so weird at the time. I guess the trip was always going to be a bit weird, but special.

The highway about an hour from Portland is beautiful. The freeway there is lined with a dense wall of tall, green, small-leaved trees. If I think deeply about the trip, I remember the park on the West side of Portland, as big as the city as itself, the kombucha cafe I visited, the house we stayed in, but the memory that always surfaces when I talk about sport, or about running, or about meeting good people, starts with Portland and the friends I made there.

These were strangers that were extremely welcoming. Although, from the moment of introduction, I never felt like they were strangers but friends.

The friend I had driven up with followed this bike racing apparel company called The Athletic so the only thing we had planned and were excited to do was to visit this shop. However, when we came up to the door of the shop, we saw people inside, but we realized the shop was closed. 

But then! The owner came out and greeted us. We had a short chat and he told us the shop was closed because they were preparing a party for their friends' grandfather who played for the NBA. He invited us :)

It was totally unexpected that we would be invited to a private event, in a city that was also strange to us, although I loved it before we had driven into the city, on that highway lined with the thin, small-leaved trees. 

I met a few really good people there. I vividly remember our conversations, the stance, the way we smiled - everything. It is strange because I have such a poor memory.  In all my travels though, it's not rare that I meet good, humble people. But I re-tell this story because they changed my perspective on what living a good life was. They were the kind of intelligent that you would describe as 'cerebral.' I imagine them having any career they wanted but they were themselves; comfortable with their jobs, happy in their life of ultra distance biking and bike racing. They weren't asking of anything more from life. I felt like this was the general sentiment there.

It was the first time I had seen such a below-the-surface passion in that there weren’t any big hand motions or a change of tone in their voice but it showed in the way their voice carried. I could see the the pure joy in their eyes like they were 5 years old and had first felt their legs pushing against the pedals of their training bicycles and flying straight down the cement sidewalk. These people were the most human, humans, that I felt, had ever met. This is why I re-tell this story and why it still impacts me today in my design aesthetic (another story).

To me a great adventure is sharing a unique experience with a stranger that becomes a friend, even if you never meet again.

We met up with one of the guys before dawn, at 6am, to get a run in before our 11 hour drive back to Cupertino. Again, it was strange - an isolated meeting - to find someone who without hesitation, agreed to join us before dawn in 30 degree weather to run. And it was a beautiful run through the fog on a tiny extinct volcano, now a reservoir and a park. We had a rare 360 degree view of the pink clouds over the low skyline of Portland, a comfortable silence, and just, an experience with good people.