Donnie and Modesta – Picture by Donnie’s sister
So, I learned on Tuesday that an American biker and his recent Mexican wife, Donnie and Modesta, died the day before in a motorcycle crash in Honduras. I didn’t know them personally, but had recently been in touch. Donnie, 62, was a long-time and experienced biker and had crossed North America, Mexico, and Central America many times. He was currently on a round trip from Mississippi to Panama, to show Central America to his new wife. We had agreed to meet in Antigua Guatemala, on their way back, on the last day of January, but life took a different turn and the meeting eventually won’t happen. Sadly, a tractor-trailer in Honduras lost control on a hill, fell over on the road, and cut the way to Donnie and his passenger. Modesta died immediately and Donnie was brought to a hospital but didn’t make it. This is sad news for their family and everyone who knew them.
This brought Sapna and I to reflect on that incident and we agreed upon the fact that, even though that would be a sad day for everyone and the end of our story, if something similar happened to us, we would die happy. We are currently living the dream, we love each other, we are having fun, we joke most of the time, and even more importantly, we do what we love: discovering new countries, meeting new people, making new friends with different cultures, travelling. Conditions are not always perfect, sometimes it’s too hot, sometimes it’s getting cold, sometimes we wish we hadn’t all the gear and stuff to carry around, sometimes we’re glad we can go to places where most people don’t or can’t go because they don’t have a vehicle, they don’t want to take the risk of travelling in an unsafe public bus driven by a guy with no driver license. We go where we want to go, and today it’s on a motorcycle, tomorrow it will be something else, who cares? We’re having fun and fill our eyes with amazing views, amazing cultures. We are definitely living the dream. Living OUR dream.
We take all the care we possibly can, but nobody controls their own fate. So, if ever anything bad happened to us, we’d rather have it happen while we do the things we love, than while sitting behind a desk working 8 to 5 to pay our debts, a house, a car, trying to look the same as all the people around us. We are DIFFERENT. We are UNIQUE. And we love our difference a way that makes this trip and the next ones OUR NORMALITY.
Moral of the story is, if anything happened to us, don’t be sad, we would definitely die happy. And, obviously, we’ll do our best to stay alive 🙂
Donnie – Picture by Bob L.
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We would like to remind our readers that this blog is the platform where we share our stories, thoughts, and opinions. Our intention has never been and will never be to hurt or offend anyone; however, at the end of the day, we realize we won’t make everyone happy. If you don’t like what we have to say, we suggest to not read or follow us. Thank you for your understanding.
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The point of this post was to share how the tragedy that befell a fellow adventure traveller got us thinking about the transiency of life and our own mortality. We just wanted our friends and family to know that we are living a life that makes us happy if we ever happened to suffer a similar fate. There is no mention in the post of there being anything wrong with choosing a normal life; only that it’s just not a life that would make US happy and that we would rather die doing something that fulfills US.
When we said that we are different and unique, we looked at it from a statistical standpoint – the number of people that quit their regular jobs to travel the world on a motorcycle are very rare. We’re not judging anyone or saying that we are better than anybody else. In fact, if there is one thing that traveling has taught us, it is that we all are more similar to one another than we are different and that we are not superior to anybody.
Thank you for the well wishes! 🙂