Michael Slot
I came up with this idea to ride my bike across the country nine years ago but I never pursued it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but I’ve just never done it. The idea was simple. Ride my bike to places known for a specific adventure activity, do the thing, film the whole process, then ride onto the next location. I’ve always had a passion for film and I’ve always been a big outdoor adventure enthusiast.
The reasons I never pursued it vary. I never felt like I was ready or capable. I told myself I didn’t have the money or I didn’t have the time. I thought I wasn’t experienced enough in film to pull it off. I believed I had too much responsibility. All these things. All these excuses. In reality I didn’t have the money because I was spending it on things I didn’t need. I didn’t have the time because I was working to afford the things I was spending money on. My responsibilities were choices I was making that were taking me in a direction I thought I was supposed to go. Not the direction I truly felt called to go.
Jackie Slot
“I don’t know where I am going but I know exactly how to get there” Boyd Varty.
This quote deeply resonates with me and feels like a good summary of my life. One step then the next. Never sure the outcome but trusting that each step is leading me to the next right thing. Have I always understood each step or loved each step? No! Have I always been aware that I’m moving forward? Not at all.
But, I had a great companion walk alongside me for the last five years. He devoted so much energy to slowing me down and teaching me to pay attention. He showed me the beauty of looking around and enjoying the journey, instead of always just moving to the next destination. He taught me that each step might have something worth stopping and paying attention to.
As a result I’ve been working on moving through this life with more awareness. Instead of constantly striving to move forward and only focusing on the end goal, I have begun breathing and enjoying everything in this moment. I am learning to pause and know the next moment will come and have everything I need then. I don’t need to know what my next 10 steps, or even my next two are. Just the next first step. I never know where these steps will lead but so far I’ve covered some truly beautiful ground. Looking back I see every step, no matter the difficultly or ease of the step, has lead me to now. They’ve all added up to a life full of ebbs and flows. But that fluidity has painted the most breath taking life that I get to call mine.
My biggest passion in life is health. Health for the physical, mental and spiritual body all at the same time. To single these aspects of ourselves out and try to treat them separately, to me, is the foundation of our insanity. So like my former companion, who walked with me until I learned to slow down and love this moment, I too want to walk along side others, holding a mirror so they can experience the beauty of who they are now, in this moment. I want to help them experience the liberation that comes with realizing all we need is here right now. I want to teach the beauty of stopping and looking around and taking it all in. I want to encourage people to take the next step they know in their heart is right, even if they don’t have a clue where it will lead. I believe it’s those steps, those steps our heart begs us to take and our mind is scared to death to follow, those steps that leave us feeling a fire building inside, it is those steps that bring us face to face with our healthiest most authentic self. The self created to experience this journey.
Amy Ramsay
My name is Amy Ramsay and I am a wanderer, an adventurer, a seeker, and a healer. I have traveled and looked, I have wandered and searched, and I am beginning to see, what I was looking for all along, was me.
My life has been a series of moves and shifts. I was born and raised in Michigan and moved to Arizona when I was sixteen. I graduated at eighteen from high school and hair school with my Cosmetology license.
I knew deep within and yet unconsciously that I wanted to bring life and beauty with me everywhere I went. I started working in a salon and soon realized that was not my passion, so I set out to find what set my soul on fire. After living, exploring, and working in many places, countries, and at a variety of jobs. In the Spring of 2020 I was forced to slow down. To stop doing, and start being.
As many of our “awakening” stories start, mine started, or perhaps became more conscious in Nature. Sitting by a creek I had a profound moment of connection and interaction with Nature. It made me question what I was working so hard for. In that moment I felt so full, so alive, so vibrant, and I was not doing anything. Coming back from that trip I quit my job and signed up for a Yoga Teacher Training. I had always wanted to pursue yoga and become a teacher, but in the past something was always in the way or the timing was not “right."
I have now been teaching yoga for a year and I love the way it enables me to facilitate an experience, a place where each person can move their body, connect to their breath, and find the teacher, the guide, and the stillness that is inside. I am currently transitioning into holding and creating sacred rituals and spaces, centered around energy and the earth and universal elements.
One of my favorite things in the world is to cook. To create healing and nourishing food filled with life, intention, and beauty. I love food and the way it creates an intimate space for conversation and community and allows us to support our lives and our desires to our fullest capacities.
I am so excited to be a part of this trip, this deep dive into a life of color and vibrancy. I am excited to show that life does not have to be hard. That following your flow and what you love to do will always bring you right where you need to be. What I love, and what I love to create, is healing spaces through ritual, movement, time in nature, and food. I will be preparing nourishing food with love and intention and creating sacred spaces where each person will feel held and safe to go deep into themselves. Through yoga, dance, and breath you will be guided deeper into yourself, into joy, freedom and your authentic expression. Let’s enjoy the Ride!
Eddie Moinet
Hi, I’m Eddie. I’d say I’m a bit of a nerd, a wanderer, a warrior, an explorer, a lover and a weirdo. Though I don’t believe words can really describe the incredible magic and beauty of what any of us truly are. I suppose a more accurate description would be to say I love life. I love being out in nature and feeling the wonder of life’s intensity surround me. I love hiking, camping, roadtripping, surfing, floating, paddling, snowboarding, and especially trying new things. I love learning new things and digging into the gritty details of things related to my passions. I love making and drinking coffee and having great conversations with friends while doing so.
While I can honestly say I love life, I have also spent my fair share of time in that grey wasteland that certainly isn’t death but is almost a refusal to live. Back in 2011, while on a deployment to Afghanistan with the Army, I managed to get myself blown up by stepping on an IED.
I ended up losing the lower part of my right leg and getting medically retired from the Army. I spent much of the following years wandering all over the country and the world searching for something but feeling utterly lost. I was locked inside all the “should’s” I’d learned to place on myself. I often found myself in a dreary, depressing and numb place where I could only feel the slightest hints of life and occasionally make out the faintest suggestion of color. All the wonder of nature, the connection of relationship, and magic of all it is to be alive was hidden behind a fog of productivity, efficiency, and security.
Fortunately I hit a breaking point where I could no longer stand pretending to live. Living only to check the “should” boxes of some external standard to determine how “good” life was, or how worthy I was to live it. I wanted the real thing. I wanted to feel the overwhelming awe when I watched a brilliant sunset, be swept away by the thrill of riding down a river of white water, walk through an old forest and hear the trees whispering to my soul. To feel the connection of a relationship and not just play a role. I desperately wanted to be vibrantly alive.
Well, seek and you shall find. I became deeply interested in pretty much anything that could help me change my world from the prison I had created into the wide open land of possibility and wonder I’d heard was possible. I discovered the power of developing awareness, asking “why?” and pointing that awareness inside myself to the only person who held the keys to my prison. I slowly began to stop doing things just because I “should” and started following things that made me feel alive.
Currently I’m diving into breath-work by working through an instructor program with Soma Breath. I've found breath-work to be intensely empowering and a great way to shift from the victim of my life to the creator. I’m also deeply interested in Shadow work and digging into the parts of myself I hide or the power I give away, allowing me to bring more of myself into each moment and experience life more fully and authentically as myself.
I am ridiculously excited for this trip! It brings together so many things that I love and we’re doing it on purpose. Following passions, leaning into joy, pursuing adventure, consciously choosing to connect to life. Daring to let go of the grey and step out into a brilliant world of color.
Matthew Gordon
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" A question all too often left unanswered until up we've grown. It took me far too many years to realize that I had my answer all along.
I've spent the past decade in high-pressure sales roles; a career with extreme potential rewards, and usually, equal or greater costs. This was the result of a general lack of focus and direction, despite above-average grades, a degree from a Big Ten university, a supportive family, and a privileged white middle-class upbringing. With the economic downturn in 2008, I found myself in a post-graduate minimum-wage line cook position with my $30k student loan payments starting in a matter of months.
Desperate for anything new, I flew out to Denver, CO, where I was put up by family for fully two years before I could afford a place of my own, and that was made possible by my setting aside my true passion to focus on commission checks.
My dad almost certainly still has the footage of me as a toddler jumping in front of his then state-of-the-art video camera, chanting, "I SEE TV! I SEE TV!" Seemingly enthralled by the concept of capturing the images of a moment. If only I was in tune enough through all the retellings of that story to commit early on... but even in my high school TV Studio classes, from which I earned multiple awards including 'Best Anchorman' from the Michigan Association of Broadcasters, and a regional Emmy for a group-produced short PSA on 'School Violence,' I still hadn't figured out content creation might be my calling. Maybe I viewed it as too low-brow at a time when I would soon enter Michigan State where the world was supposed to become my oyster.
Toward the end of my Freshman year at MSU, I landed my still-to-this-date favorite job ever, working in multiple roles for the university-run sports broadcasting company, Spartan Vision. Each semester until graduation, I had an all-access pass to the stadiums and control room on the ground floor of the Breslin Center. Some of the best roles I worked into were the camera operator under the backboard for men and women basketball live broadcasts on the Jumbotron and live instant replay operator for 75,000 sets of eyes on the big screen for football. I worked in some capacity or another, from gopher to Director in almost every sport on campus, and I truly loved every minute of it.
Why, then, would I stand by and watch one coworker go on to operate steadicam for ESPN, another to on-camera correspondent for FS1 Detroit, and another to the Orlando Magic? Why did I settle for frying chicken? How was I ever proud of myself for being promoted to Assistant Sales Manager in a phone store?
I joined Restoration Ride before it had a name. The moment Mike called me to pitch this idea, I knew I would follow it to its end, be it bitter, sweet, or both. We were on conference calls as often as we could manage, him being on the road, and me constantly trying to meet sales quotas, at that point selling Business Phone Solutions to owners and C-level executives -- another proud promotion for me! The concept for this project started as a videography pipe-dream for me, but Mike, Jackie, and our consultants felt a strong pull to attach a cause. Some time went by after brainstorming potential matches when Mike called me and gave me the best possible 'WHY' I think he could have chosen: Mental Health Awareness.
My wife and I are unbelievably blessed by the presence of our two-going-on-ten-year-old son, Silas. However, parenthood has proven to be the hardest job either of us has ever, or will ever do. Through this invaluable challenge, amidst the exposure of depression and anxiety at large in society; most recently the result of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have begun my personally journey of exploring my own mental 'dis-ease,' its causes, and what must be done to fix. For me to take this leap of faith, I had to leave my family behind, hoping they will be there somewhat how I left them when the mission is completed. I've set out to lose myself, find him again, and bring home the new version of me that my wife, child and friends need me to be. Then, and only then, can I hope that somebody out there sees our message of love and support.