Get Your Motor Runnin'

Fall 2025 
Interview by Jennifer Latson

You Are Here
My 18,000-Mile Motorcycle Ride in Search of Awe
Larry Geller '86
BookBaby, 2024

In 2015, Larry Goeller took a solo motorcycle trip from Key West to the Canadian Arctic on a quest for moments of awe — the types he had previously experienced on backpacking trips as a young adult. Goeller, a now-retired government analyst who earned his Ph.D. in physics from Rice in 1986, considered the context in which the intense, ephemeral experience was most likely to strike, concluding that the right conditions “typically include a vast investment of time and effort; a lot of solitude; novel and out-of-one’s-comfort-zone environments; and a letting go of ego.” He discovered these conditions on the road and wrote about his journey in “You Are Here: My 18,000-Mile Motorcycle Ride in Search of Awe.” We spoke to him about the joys and the perils he encountered along the way. 

You were 57 when you embarked on this trip, working full time, with a wife and grown children. What made you decide to do it, and why at that particular time?

In my early 20s, long before I was married and had kids, I had done some hiking on the Appalachian Trail and a motorcycle ride from San Francisco to Houston. I was introduced to awe as an adult on those trips. Then life came along. I got my PhD, had kids, got a job, and you can’t take summers off to go do these weird adventurous things when you have three weeks’ vacation a year. When I got to the point where my kids were college age and I was in my mid-50s, I started planning this trip.

I had thought of doing it as a retirement project, but I could feel that I wouldn’t have the energy to do it if I waited that long. I was working for a company that would give you a leave of absence; I didn’t get paid for the three months that I was gone, but I got to come back. So a bunch of stars aligned.
 

It was a window that opened, and I said if I’m going to do something like this, I’ve got to do it now.

I wanted to experience the kinds of intense emotional experiences that I had in my youth, because now it was all just memories. My question was: Was it just youth that made me feel that way, or was it nature pressing upon me in a very visceral way? My fear was that I’d get to these places and not feel anything — I’d just feel tired. It worked — I did feel awe — and I’m glad it worked. But I felt this was my first and last chance. It was a window that opened, and I said if I’m going to do something like this, I’ve got to do it now.

Describe one of your encounters with awe on the road.

By the time I got to the Yukon River, I had been riding for about a week on these unpaved roads that are really treacherous. It was stunningly gorgeous, but also very stressful. There’s something about extended periods of stress that make you feel very alive and grateful to still be alive. I reached the top of a flood plain and found myself on this bluff overlooking a valley, and I could see there was a river down there. I looked down and said, “I am standing here, looking down at the Yukon River.” I was just blown away by that. If I had flown out there and seen the same river, I wouldn’t have had that same experience. 

What challenges did you face? 

I spent six days on the Dempster Highway, a 450-mile stretch from Dawson City, Yukon, to the Arctic Ocean. On my way back, it rained, and it turned the road into this muck that was extremely slick. The bike was sliding all over the place. Finally, I just said, “I can’t do this.” I ended up having to pull off to the side of the road about 50 miles from the halfway point, in this little village called Eagle Plains. I waited 45 minutes for the first vehicle to pass, a long-haul trucker, and he stopped. I knew he’d stop; it’s such a remote area, everyone kind of looked out for each other. He took me back to Eagle Plains, where there’s kind of a truck stop with a hotel, restaurant and bar, and I spent the night there. I met another motorcyclist, and he said, “Let’s go back tomorrow and get your bike and we’ll ride out together.” But it was still raining. It rained all night and all the next day. We went back and the roads were no better than they had been, but I gave it a shot. It’s not like I magically became a better rider, but the fact that we were doing it together helped. I was sliding all over the place. I was absolutely terrified. But we made it. That was the most challenging moment of my trip.

How can people infuse more awe into their own lives? Is a cross-country road trip necessary?

Absolutely not. There are people who feel awe when they watch a sunrise. I’ve felt smaller dashes of awe just in day to day life — just surprising moments of inspiration, where you say “Wow, that’s pretty remarkable.” But generally speaking, to feel awe it helps to put in a lot of time and a lot of effort into something you think is worthwhile. The more you do that, the more open you are to when awe comes knocking on the door. Feeling awe is a gift; it’s not something you can expect; it’s not something you can schedule. If all the stars come together just right, you might be touched by the muse. Or you might not. It helps to be exhausted. You have to wear down this armor that we wear all the time, to protect ourselves, so you can let the awe in.

I still have the motorcycle, but I haven’t ridden in a long time. I’m 67 now, and my bones don’t heal the way they used to. I’m active in other ways. I’m learning to play a musical instrument in retirement; I’m a bass player in an adult student band. I keep trying to do new things, but nothing that requires the physical level of exertion of the ride. It was the trip of a lifetime, and I don’t feel the need to do it again. What I wanted to accomplish, I accomplished. Now I can watch ball games without feeling guilty.