TTurning the key again
MinT Photography
Vici Amanti
Turning
the Key Again
Stories from the Road
by Rick Hood
There was a time when the road wasn’t just a place I traveled it was a place I wrote about. Back when I rode motorcycles, my adventures became stories, and those stories became a little magazine I called Stories from the Road.
I wasn’t writing alone.
Even though my wife, Susan, didn’t often ride with me on the bike, she was always with me in the words. She’d proofread every story, cheer me on, and remind me I was a better writer than I believed. When I lost her in 2020, I didn’t just lose my wife I lost my writing partner, my encourager, the voice who told me my stories mattered.
And so, for five years, the words went silent.
But silence has a way of making you listen.
In those quiet years, I traveled miles of roads sometimes on purpose, sometimes to outrun the ache and somewhere along the way, I learned to sit with the reflections that came. The miles helped me make the decision that changed everything: to sell my home, my things, and begin a new chapter as a state park volunteer. I lived in a motorhome, moving from one park to another, serving, exploring, and healing in the slow, steady way only nature can offer.
Five years of that life shaped me. It gave me space to breathe again.
And now, I find myself entering yet another chapter trading my motorhome for a smaller fifth wheel, settling into a more stable pace, and still volunteering when I can with God’s Pit Crew.
I may not be the same man who wrote those early road stories. But maybe that’s the point.
Today, I’m turning the key again not just to drive another mile, but to write another story. Not because the grief is gone, but because life keeps unfolding, and the road still has things to teach me.
Part 1 — The Road to Louisville
It had been two months since Susan passed.
Two months of walking through a big, lonely house where every room echoed with pieces of our life — the good memories, the hard ones, and the silence that rang the loudest. Grief has a sound, and in that house it bounced off every wall.
One July morning, I reached a point where I couldn’t sit in the quiet anymore.
So I loaded up my Street Glide and pointed it toward Louisville, Kentucky. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I needed miles under me something steady, something loud, something that wasn’t the inside of my own thoughts.
A mist hung in the air, so I pulled on a vinyl rainsuit. It didn’t take long before the suit started shredding in the wind. An hour up the road the legs were already tearing apart, flapping wildly like the loose canvas on the backs of semi-trucks roaring past on I -40. By the time I rolled into the rest area in the Smokies, I had to peel off what was left of that poor suit and toss it.
Still, the ride went on.
Riding through Knoxville is always exciting in a car but on a motorcycle, it’ll make you keep your head on a swivel. Traffic darting, lanes merging, people in a hurry to get somewhere. I was just trying to stay upright and get through. Leaving Knoxville felt like finally taking a breath as the road began to climb into cooler air.
But even as the wind cooled my face, my mind wasn’t settled.
I had mixed feelings about heading to Louisville. Protests were happening everywhere at the time, and the last thing I wanted was to ride a motorcycle into the middle of chaos. Still, I kept going. The anticipation sat heavy in my chest part nerves, part uncertainty, part the simple need to move.
I didn’t know what I’d find in Louisville.
I just knew I couldn’t stay where I was.
Part
Faces
By late afternoon I finally reached the eastern suburbs of Louisville. I knew better than to go anywhere near downtown — not with the protests, not with the noise, not with the heaviness that seemed to hang over the city in those days. So I took the long route, the back way I’d memorized from years past, weaving through quieter neighborhoods toward Mark and Karen’s house.
Pulling into their driveway felt like exhaling for the first time all day.
The moment I saw them Mark standing there with that grin he always had, and Karen waving before I’d even gotten both feet on the ground the entire ten-hour ride suddenly felt worth every mile. I didn’t have to explain anything; they could see it on my face. And in that way only old friends can do, they welcomed me in like I had just come home from a long journey.
A warm meal. A familiar couch.
The soft comfort of people who don’t expect you to be “okay.”
It was exactly what I needed.
That night, I slept deeper than I had since Susan passed. No echoes, no empty rooms, no memories chasing each other around the house. Just rest.
By morning, the road was calling
again.
Saint Louis was the next stop another long ride, another stretch of miles to sort through the thoughts I hadn’t yet put into words. But after a night under Mark and Karen’s roof, I felt just steady enough to keep going.
