MEET THE WRITER

Adam W. Keen

“I aim that my passion is obvious in everything I do” – Keen

Hey, my name is Adam. I’m a small guy surrounded by big people and a quiet observer in a complicated world, and I am trying to figure things out. I have limited time, resources, health, and capabilities, like us all, but I’m trying to do my best to maximize what I have. Born into a loving middle-class Christian family in Derby, Kansas, USA, I’ve had what people across the world can only dream about, loving and financially well-off parents and over 18 years of exceptional education. I do not earn these things based on my own merits (i.e. birth-parents, birthplace, nationality, race, ect.) and for that I am lucky. Now, it is my responsibility to make something of myself, to take all that I’ve been given and excel.

Since Birth

Adam is in a unique position with a unique set of life experiences. He started pulling up his pants [literally] at age 15. He got a part-time job, took college classes in high school, and started investing in the stock market. After graduation, he got a job as a summer camp counselor but was later fired. Then, things changed a lot. His dad accepted an engineering job in Japan and Adam went with him. He lived with his dad in Nagoya for about a year, where he found a manual-labor job working one-on-one with his employer who coincidentally owned a gym. He taught him things like every tool has its purpose and you’ll save yourself time, effort, and headache if you use the right tool. Anyways, Adam needed to do something with his life because the stock-market thing wasn’t working. So, he went to university in Tokyo and studied economics. But, his experience there was unique.

Homelessness and Cycling

There, he chose to be homeless for 550 days while going to school and working over 28-hour weeks. After graduating with a bachelor’s he returned to his mom’s house in Indiana. He stayed there for a few months before one day he decided to go to his birthplace where he still had family and friends. So he got on his road bike with an old boxy hiking backpack and road 790 miles, across 13 days, to Kansas… he did not return to Indiana on his bike.

Business Venture

A month later, he started living with his dad in Valparaiso, Indiana. There, he started his own resale business called “Keenville & Company” which specialized in the resale of an assortment of returned and liquidized merchandise. He’d go to a distribution center 150 miles away and return with a U-Haul trailer full of inventory that he bought in auctions.

The Pilgrimage

Then, he got an idea to bike to Argentina. So, he sold what remained in his inventory in a garage sale, and here he is nearly halfway to Argentina.