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Life According to Andrew Dordal: Adventure is Ageless & Outdoor Friends are the Best

Andrew Dordal, 63, is an all-weather adventurer of all sorts of undertakings.

Rain and shine, day and night, he seeks thrills outdoors, not to test his limits, but to live a life of limitless fun and deep connection.

“I broke my wrist the first and only time I ever went snowboarding with my daughter when she was in middle school. Some people asked, ‘Why are you snowboarding at age 40?’ and other people said, ‘It’s pretty cool you that you snowboard at age 40.’ So, I learned a quote from George Bernard Shaw: ‘We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

Dordal grew up on Chicago’s South Side, and outings with his family of six often set out in search of nature to hike and camp. That stuck with him.

The forecast calls for South Mountain

These days, he’s a regular on the rocky Alpine Street Trails at South Mountain Preserve, running it, hiking it, snowshoeing it, all geared up for the forecast, of course, which Dordal jokes might be because of his paternal Norwegian background.

There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing

Norwegian Language Lesson

His active pastimes also include gravel and mountain biking and road cycling, winter camping (in a tent), cross-country skiing, and bikepacking, to name a few more.

South Mountain and Lehigh Parkway are his go-to retreats for slowing down and de-stressing when he’s not traveling for work.  But even then, Dordal makes plans to play, bringing a bike when he can or finding trails to run.

“I have an intense job where I travel a lot, and I just want to get outside when I’ve been inside all day. It frees my mind to think about my life and what I’m doing with my teams the next day,” says Dordal.

He practices situational awareness to stay safe and experiences pure joy from unexpected surprises, like icy trails and night owls and streams mounded with mushroom-shaped snow. 

Dordal says, “Beautiful things catch my eye all the time! I take photos, but they never do justice by any stretch.”

The strength to survive lives outside

Physical strength and endurance come with being active outdoors, and for Dordal it’s been a critical source of mental strength and endurance, too.  Nature has helped him find active and close-knit communities (read as: cycling friends = group therapy), as well as the courage to weather a difficult passage with grief.

In December 2022, Dordal lost the love of his life; his late wife of nearly 38 years, Anne, passed from metastasized breast cancer.

“We both enjoyed the outdoors. She liked to camp. She never liked to bike, but she loved to cross-country ski. So that’s probably why it’s one of my favorites—because it connects me to her a lot,” says Dordal. “I just think of her when I’m walking in the woods.”

In the spirit of sharing and inspiring and connecting, Dordal posts his adventures on Instagram. It helps him open new conversations about grieving and finding his breath—outside.

A fellow gravel rider, amid a fresh loss, messaged Dordal to ask, “How do you grieve alone?”

“This just opened a whole new connection. We made plans to support a group ride by being the sweeps and we’re just going to talk about grief. We’ll talk about joy as well, like fun bike ride stuff, but we’re going to be open and talk about the sadness that’s inside us.”

For Dordal, the thrill of surviving the elements and the found refuge of the outdoors are one and the same. It’s how he’s doing life today, and for the foreseeable future out here.

“I just want to share with other people to see what I’m experiencing and maybe it encourages them,” says Dordal.

 “Another good therapy ride. It is fascinating that when I talk about what I’m feeling that others share their stories. And we all experience healing.”

A caption from one of Dordal’s Instagram posts in the days that followed his wife’s passing.

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