“You’re probably going to have to throw your clothes away after this.” Someone is offering this warning in a van on the way from Guadalajara to Arandas, deep in the heart of Mexico’s Jalisco region. We’re preparing to ride ATVs through the agave fields, where the raw product for tequila is harvested. Apparently, it’s going to be so muddy that everything we’re wearing will end up in the garbage. But it turns out that the dirt is mostly hard-packed, so roaring through the remote fields at 20 miles per hour is as clean as it could theoretically be.

But it’s cold — unseasonably cold for Mexico in the spring. My hands, gripping the handles that rev the gas and pull the break, begin to turn an actual shade of blue. The grey sky threatens a storm. Dogs, presumably there to guard the scattered farms, bark and lunge at our ATVs as we roll by. All feeling leaves my fingers. It’s alarmingly uncomfortable, frigid, and unfamiliar, the sort of situation that sends signals to your brain urging you to stop. But what if you don’t stop? What if you continue riding the ATV through the fields despite any discomfort or resistance? What if you whisper to yourself, Brain, I hear you, but I’m going to do this anyway?

That day in Mexico, as my hands froze to the handlebars, it began to hail (later that night, it snowed; the first time there in at least 20 years). We holed up in a small store in the middle of the fields to wait out the weather and watched a mangy cat gulp down a hot dog whole. There, I saw an aspect of Mexico that would be impossible to see on the usual tourist circuit and I had an experience that would be impossible to plan for. I spent the entire van ride back through the fields considering how miraculous the uncertain can become.

In the past few years, I’ve pushed myself into more and more of these experiences, something that my work as a travel writer has made possible. I drove an Aston Martin 100 miles per hour around a circular track with my hands in my lap (physics!). I got into the ocean with stingrays the size of dogs in Grand Cayman. I went to live in London for five weeks without a real plan. I drag-raced a car in Abu Dhabi. I went into a fancy bar, ordered a drink, and sat alone. I went into a hotel room with a man I barely knew. I climbed a tree in the middle of the Hawaiian jungle. I flew a small plane. I ate shark. I asked for directions to a late-night Paris eatery in questionable French. I said yes when I wanted to say no. I was uncomfortable, in varying degrees, but I did these things anyway.