How did I get here?

Fifty years ago, I graduated from Archbishop O'Hara High School. In the years since, there have been plenty of moments when I've asked myself, How did I get here? More recently, there have been a few moments when I've asked a different question: What am I thinking taking on this project?!

In a few weeks, a small group of us will set off to ride nearly 750 miles across Iceland. We'll cross the Highlands, push and carry our bicycles through the Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls trails, and finish by launching a high-altitude research balloon during the total solar eclipse in the Westfjords. Before that, I'll spend a week with twenty University of Iowa students testing the balloon payloads they designed and built for those eclipse launches. It is part expedition, part research project, part field course, and part bicycle journey.

This will be my third Iceland crossing in five years. Somewhere along the way, the boundaries between teaching, research, design, endurance riding, expedition travel, and mentoring simply disappeared. They now strengthen one another. This expedition may be the clearest expression of what my life has gradually become.

Looking back, the trajectory seems almost inevitable. Living forward, it never felt that way. Everything unfolded through coincidence and consequence. I simply kept following the things that demanded my attention. Adventure. Making things. Learning. Teaching. Research. One opportunity led to another until they became one way of being.

If you had told the eighteen-year-old graduating from O'Hara that he would one day earn a Ph.D., teach at the University of Iowa for nearly forty years, build bicycles by hand, ride one of them across the Iditarod Trail a week before the sled dogs, help rebuild an art school after devastating floods, mentor doctoral students who now lead departments across the country, have more than 350 students fabricate handmade bicycles, or take art, engineering, and physics students to Iceland to launch scientific research during a total solar eclipse, I would have laughed. Yet somehow, here we are.

Along the way there were moments that still surprise me. On three occasions I received medals from three different Iowa governors—for pulling someone from the Iowa River, leading Johnson County's flood recovery fundraising campaign, and completing the Iditarod Trail Invitational. I was fortunate to design and build a bicycle that was recognized internationally, to set a national 24-hour cycling record, and to spend a career helping students discover what they were capable of. But when I think about it they are simply chapters in a much larger story.

My family—Lore, Daniel, Chris, my daughter-in-law Renee, and my grandson Brooks are my base.

So how did this happen?

The answer begins long before graduate school or the University of Iowa. It begins at Archbishop O'Hara.

What made my Catholic school education so enduring was the conviction that education was about forming a whole person. Intellectual growth mattered, but so did character, responsibility, compassion, and the understanding that one's life should be lived in service to something larger than oneself.

There was a shared sense of purpose. Teachers expected us to work hard because they believed we were capable of more than we believed ourselves. Thank you, Sister Leslie. Expectations for effort, respect, and personal responsibility were clear every day. Thank you, Dave Rabori. And maybe most important, my art teacher, Mr. Coughlin. Families, teachers, priests, nuns, the Christian Brothers, and the broader community all understood that educating young people was a shared responsibility.

But the greatest influence was the friends I had there. We challenged one another, laughed together, got into trouble, and quietly raised each other's expectations. Looking back fifty years later, I realize how much Dennis, Tim, Shawn, Dave, Bob, Steve, Bob, Karen shaped me without ever knowing it.

I also came to appreciate something that seemed ordinary at the time. Literature, philosophy, science, mathematics, theology, and the arts were ways of understanding the world. Education was preparation for a life.

Years later, graduate study in philosophy deepened that lesson. I came to believe that we are responsible for the refrains by which we live—the ideas we return to over and over until they quietly become our character. For me, those refrains have been simple: nothing will ever bridge the gap between the person who stayed and the person who went; catch only what you've thrown yourself and all is mere skill and little gain; and perhaps most importantly, we become our attentions. That is, what we choose to notice, to wonder about, and to pursue ultimately makes and remakes who we are.

As I prepare to leave for Iceland once again, I find myself asking, What am I thinking taking on this project?! There is still a mile-long to-do list. Then I remember the eighteen-year-old who graduated from Archbishop O'Hara fifty years ago. I didn't know where the road would lead. Hell, I didn’t even know what a road was. I simply started walking forward.

I leave for Iceland on Wednesday and return on August 17. I'll see many of you at the reunion in September, and I look forward to sharing a few more stories then.

Until then, thank you for being part of where this journey began.

Below: A photo of me an Mr. Coffman, my art teacher. I reached out to him when I completed my PhD to thank him and let him know how important he was for me.