What My Great-Grandmother Taught Me about Adventure Motorcycling

My great-grandmother, Lucile Howenstine, was the matriarch of my family’s farm in Huntington, Indiana. She helped hold our family together through the difficult years of the Great Depression, and her optimism gave everyone around her the strength to keep going.

She also had a saying that has stayed with me: “Anticipation is greater than participation.”

She believed that preparing for something special could bring almost as much joy as the event itself. At Christmas, that meant inviting family, making gifts, planning meals, and decorating the house. The celebration began long before Christmas Day.

I think of her saying whenever I find myself getting excited about planning guided motorcycle tours and self-guided adventures for our riders.

Motorcycle travel works the same way. The adventure begins long before you get on the bike. It starts when you convince a friend to come along, study the route, book the flights, learn a few words of Spanish, and start wondering what is waiting around the next bend.

You pore over the tour description again and again. You trace the route on a map. You read about the places you’ll visit and start imagining the food, the roads, the mountains, and the people you’ll meet. By the time departure day finally arrives, the anticipation has been building for weeks or months.

That is part of the trip too.

Then comes the adventure itself. All that anticipation finally spills over into the real thing: riding somewhere new, exploring parts of the world you have never seen, and sharing the experience with people you care about.

You might eat fresh coconut shrimp in a small restaurant on Ecuador’s Pacific coast. You might float down the Napo River in the Amazon while birds call from the trees. You might hike through the rainforest to swim beneath a clear waterfall.

For a while, everyday routines disappear. The road, the people around you, and whatever comes next are enough.

And there is a third part of the journey that deserves just as much attention: remembering it afterward.

A good motorcycle trip keeps giving long after you return home. Photographs bring back places you had forgotten. A story from the road gets better every time you tell it. A friend mentions a river crossing, a mountain pass, or some ridiculous thing that happened over dinner, and suddenly you are back there again.

If Great Grandma Lucile were here today, I think she would understand all three parts perfectly: anticipating the journey, living it, and remembering it.

Anticipation Is the Antidote

Having something meaningful to look forward to changes the way we experience the time leading up to it. Planning a trip gives us something to study, talk about, prepare for, and imagine.

That anticipation can renew our sense of optimism and remind us how much possibility is still out there.

It also says something about resilience. Difficult periods come and go. Plans change. Roads close. Detours happen. But having the next adventure somewhere on the horizon gives us a reason to keep looking forward.

Anticipation is the antidote.

So start planning. Pitch the idea to the friend you have always wanted to ride with. Look at the routes. Decide what kind of motorcycle adventure you want. Give yourself something exciting to anticipate.

Because the next great trip does not begin when the engine starts.

It begins the moment you decide to go.

Explore our guided motorcycle tours and self-guided adventures and start planning your next ride through Ecuador.

Court Rand is the founder and co-owner of Ecuador Freedom. Today, Sylvain Gallea leads the design and organization of our premium motorcycle tours in Ecuador, with Court continuing to contribute his experience and knowledge gained from exploring the country by motorcycle since 2009.