Recently, I was having issues with “remote YU printing” and decided to bring my laptop to Tony. Tony is one of the unsung heroes of this year’s freshmen orientation. Orientation is a pressing time for all, but everyone knows that one of the most stressful points is the dreaded Wired@YU session, a session where students typically leave more confused than when they arrived. This year, Tony, a new member of the ITS team, gave the session an extreme makeover and every student guide looked on with awe as flawless sessions were run under Tony’s watchful eye.
While trying to maneuver both myself and my laptop into the cramped cubicle that functions as the ITS office, Tony’s computer screen caught my eye. On it was a beautiful lake with snow topped mountains in the background. And there, seemingly out of place in the otherwise undisturbed landscape, was a motorcycle.
Sima: That picture is stunning!
Tony Lucente: Thanks, it’s from my Arctic Adventure – when I rode across the U.S. and then to the Arctic Circle in Alaska.
Sima: What?
Yep. That’s right. And the Arctic Circle is just one of the many locations that Tony and his bike have traveled to, usually in order to raise money and awareness for a good cause. And best of all, he has the pictures to prove it.
Tony: I started riding when I was eight years old. Growing up, my next-door neighbor was the AMA (American Motorcycle Associate) Hillclimb Champion (1962-1963) and we would ride his motorcycles around our fields. I also rode my brother’s motorcycle, sometimes unbeknownst to him on a few times. [And] when I turned sixteen I bought my own motorcycle.
Tony has always had the motorcycle “bug”, wanting to ride further and go on adventures. When dreaming of an adventure, Tony said he would ask his friends to go with him, and while many showed interest, none of them followed through. He soon realized that if he wanted to go on motorcycle expeditions, he would have to do it solo. With that knowledge, he left for California and rode across the country for the first time, seeing Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Meteor Crater and the Mojave Desert. Since then, Tony has rode across the Pacific Coast Highway, traveled to the Arctic Circle in Finland and Alaska and rode the highest memorable road in the world (18,380 ft.) in the Himalayas.
Tony: Traveling via motorcycle is an experience that cannot be replicated by any other form of transportation. Without the safety of car you are exposed, you are OUT THERE, in the elements. Whether it is hot or cold, crowded and uncrowded, the smells…you are experiencing it rather than driving through it. You are part of the culture rather than an observer of it. People seem to feel you are more approachable, and always come up and start talking to you. You have an immediate connection with the people and culture that you don’t get when traveling by car. It’s like the difference between a person reading a book and the person the book is written about…. Does that make sense?
Sima: Now I am sure I am going to ask a question that a lot of people are thinking and that is, how did a free spirit who doesn’t like to be contained by walls decide to pursue a career in computers, an office job?
Tony: It just happened. I was pre-med at UPenn and did not like it. Rather than reading the assignments, I would play with computers. One thing led to another, and that’s how I got into computers. Now do not get me wrong, even though I’m here in my office, I’m dreaming of my next adventure.
Indirectly, it was Tony’s love for riding that attracted him to Stern College in the first place.
Tony: A lot of the rides I do are to raise money and awareness for women’s issues, whether it is for domestic violence or education. And to work at a women’s university, I thought, could be interesting and rewarding.
Tony’s decision to ride for women’s issues was not made lightly. On his first ride across the U.S. from Philadelphia to California and back, he ended up traveling through some extremely poor and almost completely abandoned towns.
Tony: After seeing that I felt a little…guilty. Here I had a nice house, a beautiful wife, a good education, good job, a beautiful motorcycle and I felt like I was not contributing back or making a difference! Something did not sit right with me and I almost felt like I should sell my motorcycle. When I decided to ride to the Arctic Circle I knew that I had to do it for a cause…So I started thinking about where I was riding. I would be riding across former Native American lands and then one morning it hit me, that I should raise money for Native Americans! That day I enlisted a friend who works to raise money and we found a non-profit called the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, which specifically helps Native American women and their children who are in bad situations. Did you know that Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or experience sexual abuse than any other ethnicity in the U.S.? So I got in touch with them and raised about $10,000 over the two rides.
While Tony would love to be riding around the world right now, he finds that helping students resolve their technology problems can also be rewarding.
S: This is your first year at Yeshiva University. What are do you hope to bring to the ITS office here on the Beren Campus?
Tony: Make orientation even better, it can be improved a lot more. [Another] issue we have is that there are a number of little things that students can do themselves but they traditionally come to us. I would like to somehow remove some of the fear and stigma of technology and get students to no longer be afraid of connecting their phones and computers to Wi-Fi. This would free us up to proactively work on other issues so that classroom computers and projectors might run smoother and more reliably.
S: No plans to start a motorcycle club at Stern?
Tony: That would be awesome! But we’d need a good name. If the interest was there, I am a motorcycle instructor for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and I teach all levels of motorcycle safety. So if anyone at Stern has questions about motorcycles or riding I would be happy to share my experience.
S: Do you have a message that you would like to leave with the student body?
Tony: Helping people is beautiful and experiencing nature is beautiful. It’s all very moving. Seeing the struggles of people motivates me to ask myself, “What more can I do more?” People don’t realize that to do something awesome takes so little effort. Traveling, adventuring, helping others and seeing the world changes you.
So far Tony has traveled over 34,000 miles by motorcycle on his solo expeditions to make a difference.
To see some pictures from Tony’s Himalayan expedition please click here.