Along for the Ride: Matt DiNote’s Brother will be with Him in Spirit on Cross-Country Bike Trip for Autism
Matt DiNote (in the hat, naturally) with brothers Michael, Chris and Nick.
Lenny DiNote believes his son Matt is “like the wind, he comes and goes. If you catch him, you are lucky.”
Matt brings bursts of energy to endeavors, leaves a mark and then goes somewhere else. His father hopes the wind is at Matt’s back for the next couple of months, guiding his cross-country bike ride for philanthropy.
One morning in late August, Matt planned to dip his bicycle in the Pacific Ocean in San Diego, ride east for the next couple of months, and finish in Sea Isle City before Christmas. Taking the southern route, avoiding mountains and highways, he might journey more than 4,000 miles.
Matt performs the gesture to benefit the Eden Autism Services Foundation. He had raised more than $7,600 of his $10,000 goal before even starting, as donations poured into his website.
Why Sea Isle City? This is the second home for the DiNote family, based in Voorhees. It’s where Lenny and his wife Patti have brought their four sons for about 30 summers. It’s the home of Kix, owned by Sea Isle City mayor Leonard Desiderio, where sons Matt, Chris, Michael and Nick have bartended. So has their father, who jokes about being called “Lenny D,” as though he’s a mayor, too.
Sea Isle City also is the home to Mike’s Seafood, which conducts its own highly successful Polar Bear Run/Walk for Autism every February. Lenny DiNote helps with the event, bringing sponsors like Wawa, and now Matt’s quest is being aided by the contacts of Mike Monichetti, the owner of Mike’s Seafood.
Why the hat? It’s a signature ensemble piece, the plaid fedora Matt has worn for as long as he can remember. It’s such a stylistic breakthrough that Desiderio granted him an exception to wear one on the premises. He went so far as to dub DiNote “Matt the Hat,” a moniker that now energizes the website. Matt the Travelin’ Hat, cycling to a location near you.
And now, with hat, bicycle, guitar and a song in his heart, he will pedal cross-country for others. It’s the perfect journey for someone who has spent the last several years working for AmeriCorps, building homes for other people.
“This is one of the things that makes me so proud of him,” says his father, who built a considerable portfolio in the kitchen construction business. “He doesn’t want things. The feeling is like, ‘Don’t judge me by the things I have, but instead by who I have surrounded myself with and who wants to surround themselves with me.’
“Matt wants to enjoy the moment, be around people and help others.”
This time, the “others” carries special significance. Matt, who sold a car to purchase a nice bike, rides not only to help scores of autism patients.
This journey honors his brother.
Michael DiNote was born with Down syndrome and autism. His father says Michael is doing well and works at a Wawa near Berlin, but efforts like Matt’s have brought attention and funding to autism in the last couple of decades.
For Matt, his brother represents something else.
“He has helped shape the person I am,” Matt says. “He doesn’t say a whole lot, but if you are in the room with him, that room just feels a lot brighter and lighter. It feels like a positive place. He can just be sitting there and start laughing on his own for no reason. He is in his own little world. Just seeing that helped me to realize, ‘Why can’t we all be that happy, why can’t we just enjoy life?’ The simplest of things really matter.”
Viewing the world in a different light also appealed to Matt’s brothers, Chris and Nicholas. All three took a “Semester at Sea” course during college, learning material that can’t be placed in textbooks. Matt did it through Stockton University, Nick via the University of Delaware, and Chris, who discovered the program, attended Arizona State.
“We call him Columbus,” their father says of Chris. “The kids went everywhere, you name it. China, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, South Africa, the whole world in a sense. They were on their own, they learned the cultures and all about the people.”
Over the years, Lenny joined them at different places. He marveled at seeing Matt literally take the Phillies shirt off his back in Cuba and handing it to a kid who asked for it. Matt would later place his energy into AmeriCorps, building houses for months at a time, and returning to Sea Isle City in the summer.
A special problem arrived this year. The COVID-19 pandemic cancelled any hopes Matt had of traveling abroad in the fall. There also is uncertainty about that in the United States. You fly, you quarantine, and that might put a damper on job aspirations.
In early August, at Kix, he was supposed to announce what his project for the next few months would be. With the pandemic shutting off most options, Matt opted to realize a longtime goal of cycling across the United States. This time, in a figurative and spiritual sense, he brings Michael.
The website defines Matt’s values. Scores of his original songs are up there. So is Matt holding a paper with a quote attributed to many people, including John Lennon.
“When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up,” it reads. “I wrote down ‘Happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
Matt’s understanding is love where you live.
“The main thing I’ve discovered from traveling is that people seem to focus on the negative things that happen, which is a shame because it forces other people not to travel,” he says. “In reality, there is more good out there than bad. You meet a lot of friendly people even if you don’t speak the language. Smiling is a language in itself. It makes you feel comfortable even if you don’t know what people are saying. There is a lot of good in the world that doesn’t get shown as much as it should.”
Matt recalls a stranger in Japan walking him 30 minutes to a train, realizing he didn’t know his way.
If there is one thing he likes as much as kindheartedness, it’s improvisation.
When the Eagles played in the Super Bowl three years ago in Minneapolis, Lenny, a season-ticket holder, snagged two tickets. After landing, he took a journey of about four hours to Hibbing, Minn., the birthplace of Bob Dylan. Matt was doing AmeriCorps work in Seattle, and his father kept him apprised of the development.
“He kind of told me, ‘You’ll get here someday,’ ” Matt recalls, “but what wasn’t known is that he had told me earlier about this. I flew to Hibbing. So, when he texted me, I was in a bar right in town.”
Says Lenny: “The next thing you know, we get to Bob Dylan’s house, it feels like about 40 degrees below zero, and who do we see on the front steps? It’s Matt.”
He’d blown in. Just like the wind.
A similar impromptu decision guided the bicycle tour. Unlike the Hibbard trip, however, Matt the Hat can be tracked every step of the way.
Donations can be made to support Matt DiNote by visiting whereismattthehat.com/donate.
