-
The bike
A recumbent bike seemed a foreign but enticing choice. The Self-Propelled Lazyboy is a road-burning throne of comfort. It is outfitted with huge Jandd panniers on the back, dynamo headlight, bumble-bee noisemaker, cadence computer, Andre the Giant sticker, and all sorts of doo-dads. My only concern so far is that it is too tail-heavy, but…
-
The route
I want to do a big tour, see a lot of the country, and a lot of my well-dispersed family and friends. Poring over road atlases, I found I had hundreds of little roads to choose from, with no idea how good they would be for cycling. I was about to give up, figuring I’d…
-
Book: Winding Trails / Amy Greaves-Sudermann-Enss
The autobiography of my great grandmother. Covers her two marriages in Russia and escape from Germany to America in 1911 with seven children. Unpublished.
-
Why circle the country on a bicycle?
I want to explore. The desire for the ever new and ever different, the wildness and thrill of going where I haven’t been, lands me in situations where I don’t know how to behave. It gives me tales to tell and unkown terrain to point my life towards. Life becomes a land of tests that…
-
Book: The Jungle / Upton Sinclair
Sinclair’s portrayal of Capitalism is quite similar to Rand’s portrayal of Socialism. The two books together say a lot about rhetorical fiction.
-
Book: The Prince / Niccolo Macciavelli
A great peek into the political map of the early 16th century, and a practical guide to conquering and reigning over your own principality.
-
Book: Why People Believe Weird Things / Michael Shermer
How do you face this odd world if you want to live by reason? Here is one skeptic’s entertaining attempt.
-
Book: Atlas Shrugged / Ayn Rand
A vision of industrialist gods and socialist monsters.
-
Book: Lost in Place / Mark Salzman
An autobiography of teenage years lived in throes of both passionate discipline and innocent impressionability.
-
Book: The Life and Times of King Henry VIII / Robert Lacey
Monarchs are like a box of chocolates… and this one takes the cake. Keep in mind that all this really happened. Amazon inventory