Lessons from Hands Across the Water

500 kilometers.

Too many hills to count.

Burning legs.

Oppressive humidity.

Carrying one day’s pain into the next.

The Hands Across the Water ride asked a lot of us.

It pushed us physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Each day, we woke up with sore legs and aching bodies, knowing we still had hours in the saddle ahead. But the thing is, the ride was never about us.

It was about listening.

About reflecting.

About understanding the weight of what this ride represents.

But even more than that, it asked something deeper.

To slow down.

To open up.

To stop treating life like a tick-and-flick checklist.

Because when you strip away the schedules and distractions, when you’re tired, sunburnt, and running on your last reserve - something begins to shift.

The layers start to fall off. You get closer to the truth. To each other.

To yourself.

Of course, the physical challenge in and of itself was formidable.

During the day, out on the road, under heat and headwinds.

But that experience didn’t stand alone.

It was deepened by everything that followed.

Evenings became a kind of mirror.

A chance to slow down, share food, and reflect on what we were really doing out there.

The conversations took shape.

With fellow riders.

With locals along the way.

With Peter Baines - whose stories, shaped by decades of work, reminded us what this cause is really about.

And most powerfully; quietly; with ourselves.

Because somewhere between the long stretches of road and the stillness of the evening, we found space to sit with the parts of life we usually outrun.

The things we haven’t made peace with.

The pain we haven’t processed.

The questions we’ve been carrying, sometimes for years.

For me, that meant confronting moments I hadn’t fully reconciled: pain, loss, separation, changes I didn’t choose.

And somehow, riding under pressure made it safe to let those things surface.

The ride didn’t just test our bodies. It opened us up.

And in that openness, something extraordinary happened.

Not just connection with others - but clarity within ourselves.

The lessons didn’t come all at once.

They unfolded. In all honesty, some of them still are.

But every conversation, every pedal stroke, every silent stretch of road helped stitch those pieces together.

It would be reductive for me to pretend that I’d fully processed it all by now, wrapped up in a neat bow for my peers and followers.

So for now, here are the parts of those lessons that I’ve had time to process and reconcile.

The power of “how” over “why”

People talk about purpose. About the why behind what we do. It’s easy to believe that when things get hard, our sense of purpose will pull us through.

But when everything falls apart, when you’re exhausted, when the weight of it all feels unbearable - sometimes why isn’t enough.

Peter said something that stuck with me.

“When you’re really down in it, when you’re struggling, the why doesn’t always help. It’s the how. How do I take the next step? How do I keep moving when I feel like I can’t?”

He said that, in the toughest moments out on the road, he wasn’t thinking about the bigger picture. He wasn’t thinking about the kids in Thailand or the impact of the ride. He was thinking about how he was going to make it to the next stop.

Not the big vision.

Not the end goal.

Just the next step.

Because when life knocks you down, when grief or loss or exhaustion pull you under, it’s not the grand ideas that pull you back up.

It’s the smallest actions.

One foot in front of the other.

One deep breath at a time.

That’s what gets you through.

Impossible choices

During dinner, Peter told another story I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

A grandfather was running from the tsunami, holding both of his grandchildren. He reached a tree. If he could climb it, he might survive. But he couldn’t climb with both children.

He had to choose.

One grandchild went up the tree.

The other was lost to the water.

For the rest of his life, he asked himself the same questions.

Could I have run faster?

Could I have been stronger?

Could I have made a different decision?

There are choices in life no one should ever have to make.

Decisions that will never feel right, no matter how necessary they were.

He saved one life that day.

But it didn’t feel like saving.

Some losses stay with us. Some questions never find answers.

And some grief never fades. It just finds a quiet place to live inside us.

Wreckage left in the wake of the tsunami in Ban Nam Khem, Thailand, on Jan. 4, 2004. Francis Demange / Gamma-Rapho via NBC News

Our need for certainty

A mother stands on the beach.

She sees the wall of water coming.

She holds onto her children with everything she has.

And then the wave takes them.

Some parents survived the tsunami.

And their children didn’t.

Yet they couldn’t leave Thailand until they knew for certain.

They searched.

Hospitals.

Victim centers.

And when there was nowhere else to go, they searched the mortuaries.

Because how do you leave without knowing?

How do you step onto a plane and go home without the most precious thing in your life?

Every day, they hoped for a call that would never come.

Common sense told them their children were gone.

But common sense isn’t enough.

Because the human heart needs certainty.

We tell ourselves we can’t move forward until we have it.

But the hardest truth is, sometimes we have to.

You don’t always get over it

Some things in life don’t get easier.

The people of Thailand didn’t recover from the tsunami.

The families who lost their children, their parents, their entire communities - there is no complete healing from something like that.

They just learned to live with it.

Because you don’t get over losing the people you love.

Time doesn’t erase grief like that.

Sometimes it doesn’t even smooth out the edges.

It just teaches you how to hold it differently.

The world keeps moving forward, but some losses stay frozen in time.

Some wounds never close. 

And some grief - love, stretched out across time, looking for somewhere to go - isn’t meant to be fixed.

But it is meant to be remembered.

Trust can be decoupled from time

Seven days on the road.

Heat, exhaustion, discomfort.

And somehow, under all of that pressure, we didn’t push each other away.

We leaned in.

That’s what made this different.

Strangers became teammates.

Surface-level small talk turned into shared stories.

Care and vulnerability - usually slow to grow - showed up fast.

Because when people are real with you, when they show you who they are and what they’ve been through, trust doesn’t take years.

It just takes honesty.

And a willingness to show up.

We weren’t just riding.

We were shedding something.

And what remained was more human.

It was never just a ride

During one of our final dinners, Peter Baines spoke about what this ride really means.

It isn’t about endurance.

It isn’t about pushing yourself.

It’s about showing up.

It’s about carrying something bigger than yourself.

Because some communities don’t get to recover.

Some families will never be whole again.

But they learn to live. They find ways to keep going.

Being part of this ride isn’t just about what we give. 

It’s about what we learn.

And that’s something we carry with us long after the ride is over.

For Those We Lost.

For Those Who Carried On.

For Those Who Still Remember.

That’s what this ride was about.

And that’s why I’ll never forget it.

All imagery, unless otherwise referenced: Hands Across the Water 2025, Clint Ranse // My Video Producer