What happens when life puts you on a road you didn’t fully plan for? On Mind Over Matter, hosted by Archita, author Teri M. Brown shares the powerful story behind riding a tandem bicycle across the United States with her husband—and the life lessons that emerged along the way.

This episode is for anyone navigating a long, difficult journey—whether in relationships, personal growth, or chasing a dream. Through honest reflections, Teri reveals how teamwork, mindset, and small daily decisions can carry us through the hardest stretches of life.

About the Guest:

Teri M. Brown is an author and storyteller who rode a tandem bicycle across the United States with her husband in 2020. The journey inspired her book Ten Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure and deep reflections on resilience, partnership, and perseverance.

Episode Chapters:

00:00 Why small moments shape resilience

03:15 The realization that changed Teri’s life

07:20 Misconceptions about big adventures

11:05 What tandem riding teaches about relationships

16:30 Learning trust after past control

20:40 The day they almost quit in Montana

25:10 The rule: Never quit on a bad day

Key Takeaways:

1. Don’t quit on a bad day—hard moments rarely tell the full story.
2. Big goals become possible when broken into small, daily wins.
3. Real teamwork means supporting each other when energy shifts.
4. Communication and humility strengthen both adventures and relationships.
5. Mindset often matters more than physical strength.

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Website: https://www.terimbrown.com

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00:00:06 Archita: Have you ever noticed how life doesn't usually break us with one big moment? It wears us down in tiny, repetitive ways. One hill, one disagreement, one. Are we seriously doing this again? And sometimes the most powerful mindset. Lessons don't come from a therapist's office. They come from a two seat bicycle. Moving forward, even when you're not in control of the steering. Today's episode is about resilience, teamwork, and the very human art of not quitting. Right? Welcome

00:00:40 Archita: back to Mind Over Matter, the show where we talk about real resilience, not the Instagram version. I'm Archie and today I am joined by Terry M.brown, an author and storyteller who in twenty twenty rode a tandem bicycle across the United States with her husband Bruce, raising money for toys for tots and collecting some hard earned life lessons along the way. We are talking about her book, Ten Little Rules for a Double Budget Adventure, and what a cross country tandem ride can teach us about grit, mindset, relationships and staying steady when the road gets unpredictable. If you have been navigating a season that feels uphill, this one's for you. So Teri, welcome to Mind Over Matter. It's so great to have you here today.

00:01:32 Teri M Brown: Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

00:01:37 Archita: And I am very excited to know about your little adventure and your book. I'm sure our listeners are feeling the same way. So without wasting any time, let's dive into it. Teri, before we get into the rules, I'm curious, what was the moment on that ride when you realized, oh, this isn't just a bike trip, this is going to change how I live.

00:02:00 Teri M Brown: You know, I think that it was like never one big moment. It was over time. I recognized I was changing, but it was at the very end, the last day, the last few moments we were coming up, we stopped in Washington, D.C., at the Marine Corps Memorial. My husband said, do you see that flag? I said, yes. He said, that's where we're stopping. It was about a half a mile away, and all of a sudden I realized I could do anything. I just rode across the United States on a bicycle, and I'm not an athletic woman. When when he and I made the decision to go on this ride, I had not been on a bicycle in forty years. So this was huge for me and I thought, I can do anything I put my mind to. It's not a matter of can I do it, but what is it that I want to do? And so I asked myself that question, what do I want to do? And I wanted to be an author. And so fourteen months later, my first novel came out. So I think it was right there at the end when it just kind of solidified that I had done this amazing thing, and now the world was open to me. I could do whatever I put my mind to.

00:03:11 Archita: That's so great. And I love that for you. I love that you had that realization. And it's indeed true. Sometimes we do believe that. Oh, it's so difficult. But then we do certain things and which we thought were not possible. And then we're like, if I could do this, I can do anything. So I really. Yeah.

00:03:31 Teri M Brown: No, I was going to say I think it has a lot to do with your mindset. Like if you really, really want something when stumbling blocks jump in the way, you find a way over them, around them, or through them. But if if you don't really want it, those stumbling blocks will get you every single time. And I wanted to make it across the United States and realized that when you want something, you can get it.

00:03:59 Archita: Yeah. And you know, that's such a real turning point because it's really the big start that transforms us. It's the first time reality taps us on the shoulder and says, okay, now let's see who you become. So it's really Yeah, it's the little things. And that brings me to the question. A lot of people hear cross country, right? And imagine motivation, scenery, inspiring moments, the highlight reel. So what's the biggest misconception people have about doing something that intense, especially on a tandem?

00:04:35 Teri M Brown: I think, well, here's something that I thought. I thought that I could plan it before I left and that I could know what every day was going to be like, and that we would ride a certain number of miles every day, and that that's just the way you did it, that you you planned beforehand, you trained beforehand, and now it just was going to go exactly as you had planned. And that's not the way an adventure works. Um, things would crop up. We would have a bad night's sleep, we would have bad weather. Um, we would have a bad mood where we just weren't, weren't able to do what we normally would do. Our bicycle would have a flat tire or two or three in one day. There were all of those things that combined to make it so that every day was a new challenge. It. It wasn't like as soon as as soon as you got over the Rocky Mountains, it was all going to be easy because that's not true. Yes, the Rocky Mountains were hard to get over, but there were a lot of hard things after that as well. And so I think that's one of the big misconceptions then, is this idea that you can know what you're getting into and you can train for it, and that it's just going to be easy if you've done all the correct training beforehand. And the answer is, it's going to be hard and there are going to be things that crop up that you weren't expecting, and you have to be able to kind of change direction and flip and, and come up with a new idea constantly so that you can keep moving forward.

00:06:09 Archita: Exactly. And I think the biggest misconception, um, comes from a place of watching too many movies. So when you hear something. Uh, when you hear something so intense, like an adventure, especially on a bicycle, they imagine, you know, uh, what happens in the movies or books, but the reality is harsher than that. It's, it's not always sunshine and rainbows. So thank you for sharing that. But, uh, when that misconception breaks, when it's not romantic, when it's messy, what usually becomes the real battle? The body, the relationship or the mind?

00:06:49 Teri M Brown: You know, I think for me, the first the first day I recognized that this was not going to be what I had imagined. Um, but I still wanted it. And so it was, it was my mind that kept me moving forward. But the relationship I had with my husband also kept me moving forward because He seemed to always be up on days that I was not. And I was up on days that he was not. It was almost like we took each other's temperature in the morning, and when I could see he was struggling, I knew that was not my day to struggle, that I needed to be there to be his support. And it was the same for me when I was struggling. He was the cheerleader and he was letting me know. You know, I could do it and that he believed in me and those kinds of things. Um, when it's messy like that, you have to have a goal in mind. You have to know what it is that you're really trying to achieve because each day doesn't necessarily look like the goal. You know, some days are just really ugly and, and you think, well, this isn't getting me where I'm going, but you have to have that overall goal in mind and be looking forward enough that you know what you're trying to achieve on the other end. And I think I think those things are the things that help you when things aren't the way you thought they were going to be.

00:08:14 Archita: I love that distinction because so many adventures are actually emotional endurance tests. Yeah. And, uh, tandems make it impossible to pretend you're doing life alone. So it's it's great. Yeah.

00:08:32 Teri M Brown: Absolutely. We had to do everything together. We were out on the road for a little over three months and every day was together. We were never more, excuse me, we were never more than about five feet apart. We rode together. We slept in the same tent together. On those few occasions that we had a motel room, we were, you know, in that tiny motel room together. We. We cooked together. Everything we did was together. And we could not make it across the United States without both of us making it across the United States. And so it took a lot of teamwork, and we feel like we got about twenty years of marriage in three months of time in a really good way, where we we learned about each other, we learned how to communicate our needs. We learned how to forgive one another quickly. We learned how to take care of issues. You know, issues would crop up and instead of sweeping them under the rug or holding on to a grudge, you can't do that and ride a tandem. It's not any fun that way. And so we just really learned how to work together as a team, and we came out of it with an immensely strong relationship.

00:09:46 Archita: I love that for you, and I think a lot of us need to learn so much from you. So let's go deeper into the tandem part because it's such a metaphor. Two people, one direction, not equal control at every moment like you just described. So what did the tandem reveal about your patterns like control, trust, Communication or even pride.

00:10:10 Teri M Brown: So I had been in an abusive relationship for fourteen years prior to meeting Bruce, and I had someone in my life who had been very controlling. And it was it's difficult for me now to give up control to anyone else, because I know what can happen when you give up control to the wrong person. And so that was a little scary for me. But Bruce was an avid cyclist. He, he knew how to do this and I did not. So I had to learn very much to kind of take the back seat in terms of how we're going to make it across the United States. It's not that I didn't do a job because I definitely did a job. He couldn't have made it across without me writing too. Um, but yeah, you have to be able to adjust. You have to be willing to not be selfish when you're riding a tandem bicycle. Both of you have to pedal at the same speed. My husband prefers to pedal very quickly with what's called a light pedal load, so that when you spin the around, it spins very lightly and very quickly. I prefer a slower with a heavier load where I'm really pushing more on the pedals. It feels more comfortable for me. Well, we had to find something that both of us could agree with. We. He could not ride his way completely because I would have been uncomfortable the entire time. And the same for my way. He would have been uncomfortable. So we had to learn and find a space that we both could be okay in. We had to learn to talk to one another. I had to be able to tell him, I'm wearing out, I need a break. And that's hard to do because there's that pride thing. He was. He's definitely the athlete and I'm not. And I didn't want to be the one holding us back. And so on those first few days, I would work and work and work and work and work until I had nearly exhausted myself without asking for a break because I was too prideful. I didn't want to say to him, I'm weaker than you or, or I need something that you don't need. And you know, part of that is fear. You know, like, can I trust him with this? Or is he going to use this against me? And he's, he's a wonderful man. He never used it against me. And I learned throughout this ride that I could trust him implicitly, that if I needed a break, that if I needed something that I could ask and that he would do everything in his power to make sure that I was getting what I needed. Just like I would do everything in my power to give him everything that he needed.

00:12:52 Archita: That sounds wonderful, but, um, also scary because it must have turned out as a test to a relationship, but also with a lot of lessons. I'm sure it has taught you both a lot of things about love relationship and absolutely.

00:13:10 Teri M Brown: Absolutely. You know, it was interesting one of the first days, it may have even been on the first day we were going over a mountain, um, which was very different. We live on the coast of North Carolina, which is very flat. Um, and so we didn't do a lot of mountain riding when we were training and we're going over this mountain and it was cold and it was raining. And as we started going down and when you go down on a tandem, you can go pretty fast. We were probably pushing forty miles an hour going down this hill, and he normally would keep the pedals flat, but this time he had a leg cramp, so he was spinning the pedals slowly, which made me not have a solid place to have my feet, and I felt I was terrified. I felt like we were just careening down the hill and at any moment we're going to crash. And we got down to the bottom and he asked me. He said, what is the matter? Like he could feel how tense I was. And I told him that I felt like we were creating down the hill. And he told me, he said, well, first of all, we were never out of control. And I said, you were not out of control. I felt out of control. And by being able to tell him that he recognized, well, maybe we need to go down the hill a little slower. Maybe I need to give her, you know, that flat pedal so that she has something solid to keep her feet on, so that I felt more comfortable. So we had to learn one another. Like what? What made me nervous? What made him nervous? Um, how are we going to work through that? Because sometimes you have to do things that make you nervous when you're on an adventure like this. But how are we going to work through that and support one another? It was just very beautiful.

00:14:50 Archita: That's real teamwork right there. And that hurts because, you know, resilience isn't just push harder. Sometimes resilience is humility and sometimes it's letting go of the need to be right so you can keep going. So.

00:15:06 Teri M Brown: Exactly.

00:15:07 Archita: Yeah. But now, um, Terry, I want to ask this directly. Were there moments where you thought we might not finish? Not because of the route, but because emotionally it felt too heavy?

00:15:22 Teri M Brown: Absolutely. There was one point, especially we were in Montana. It was a day that we had to go seventy miles. There was no alternative because the town we had stayed in. And the next town were seventy miles apart, and there was just no way that we had to. We had to make it. So it was a physically challenging day. But on that day, we also had three, three flat tires. The wind was blowing the wrong direction, so it was blowing at us, which made everything we did harder. It was very, very hot. Um, and I cried several times that day and didn't think we were going to make it. We finally make it into town. We are both so exhausted we can barely move. And I thought, this is not fun. I'm not having fun anymore. This. I don't even know why I'm doing this anymore. I think I think we should quit. I'm. I'm done. And we had decided before we started the ride that either one of us could say we're done and that we would. We would be done. That we understood that it took both of us. Um, so I kept a blog the whole way across the United States. And on that day before we went and got ourselves something to eat, I put out on the blog that I thought we might be done. And I had a friend reach out to me and she said, you know, what you've done so far is amazing. You've made it over the Rocky Mountains on a tandem bicycle. You've ridden over a thousand miles. If you stopped today, you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. However, I recommend that you don't quit on a bad day because if you quit on a bad day, you'll always wonder if you could have made it. You'll always wonder if, perhaps if you had stuck with it a little longer. So why don't you give yourself a break? Maybe make tomorrow a short day or a rest day. Think about it a while. Take a step back and then make a decision. And the next day was a short day. We. It was a beautiful day. Everything worked beautifully that day. And I realized that my desire to quit wasn't about the ride over all. It was about that day that that day was just hard. Hard, emotionally hard. Physically hard. Just hard. And after the next day that went so well, I realized that we could complete it. And we didn't quit. And we did make it all the way across. So that's one of the rules that ended up in my book is don't quit on a bad day.

00:17:47 Archita: Thank you for naming that honestly, because people listening might not be biking across America, but they are doing a long road with someone, marriage, caregiving, building a business, recovering from burnout and those we might not finish moments. They're more common than people admit. But like you just said, don't quit on hard days because they are the most important ones.

00:18:13 Teri M Brown: So, well, you need the hard days are days. You know where you need to take a step back. Did you get enough to eat? Did you get enough sleep? You know, you never. I tell people, it's not that you don't want to quit, because sometimes quitting is exactly what you need to do. You know, like me getting out of that emotionally abusive relationship, it was definitely something that I needed to do. But you don't want to do it on a day that you had a big blow up. You know, what you want to do is you want to have been able to stop and think, use your logic. And when you're having a bad day, your logic is the last thing you're using. You're just using your emotional. So yeah, don't quit on a bad day. And yeah, we all have bad days. They're they're there. And when you go and do something big and hard, whether it's riding across the United States on a tandem bicycle or deciding that you want to change jobs or learning to play the piano as an adult, anything that you're doing that's outside of your box, there are going to be hard days. And then you have to know, what are you going to do with those? Are you going to let those be the controller or are you going to make decisions around them?

00:19:22 Archita: Exactly. And with the right person, I think the bad days are worth fighting over. So definitely.

00:19:29 Teri M Brown: Absolutely.

00:19:30 Archita: So yeah, let's let's make this useful for listeners. If someone is in a season that feels like a long distance ride, where progress is slow and energy is inconsistent, what's one little rule that actually helps on the hard days?

00:19:49 Teri M Brown: You know, I think the focusing on the right now When we were riding across the United States, our goal was to get to Washington, D.C. but Bruce would tell people, they would ask us all the time, where are you headed? Because we were obviously not out for a day ride. I mean, you know, we had the packs and all of the other things and he would say to Washington, D.C., but not today, because, you know, we might be in the middle of Montana. Washington, D.C. is several thousand miles away. We're not going to get there today. And that's one of the things I think you need to keep in mind when you're doing something that's really, really, really big. You have to chunk it up into smaller, smaller bites that you can handle. And sometimes for us, it was the day and sometimes it might be to the top of that hill. You know, that's that's it. We're going to get to the top of that hill. And then we're going to reevaluate and see what we do next. And so on. Bad days. Chunk it up even smaller. Look for some small win that you can make. Something that you can Look at and say, if I can do up to that today. I'll call today a win. So on a hard day, that might be something like, I'm going to make two phone calls today. And when I'm done with those two, I can say that I've won today. So it it's chunking it up into smaller bites where you can have a win even in a difficult time.

00:21:17 Archita: That's such great advice and such grounded wisdom because I hear a theme here. Don't wait for the perfect mindset, but create small agreements that protect the relationship and the goal that's real. Mind over matter. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And it's honestly, truly amazing how you set on that adventure and actually finished it and learn so many things, uh, throughout the journey. And today you have shared all of that with us. And that's, that's really great. I have learned a lot and I'm sure our listeners have too. So, uh, Teri, uh, for listeners who want to read ten little rules for a double budget adventure and explore more of your work, where's the best place to find you?

00:22:05 Teri M Brown: The best place is to go to my website, which is my name, Terry M Brown dot com, and that's Terry with one R, so T e r. I'm brown like the color dot com. And there you can find all of my books. So I have my ten little rules for double Butted adventure. But I'm also a novelist, so I have those books there as well. Um, I have a podcast where I talk with other authors called online for authors. You can listen to that. Um, I, you can sign up for my newsletter. Um, you can also just reach out with a contact me page. So all of those, and if you wanted to read the blog that I kept the whole way across, you can find it on my website as well.

00:22:46 Archita: Perfect. And we'll make sure all of that in the show notes so that our listeners can freely reach out to you whenever they want. And sometimes resilience isn't a big speech. It's a small rule. You choose again and again until the road finally changes. So if today's conversation gave you language for something you have been living, share it with someone who's on a long road too. And if you want more episodes that feel like a steady hand on your shoulder, follow mind over matter. Not for motivation quotes, but for real stories of resilience you can actually use. Take a breath. Take the next step. And if today is an uphill day, go gently. I am and I'll see you in the next episode.