Biking the bricks...and the asphalt, gravel, river crossings...

The Road Headed West:
A 6,1000 Mile Cycling Odyssey Through North America
by Leon McCarron

Spinningly good adventure told by an Irishman cycling across America. Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out things the natives overlook or ignore out of habit, and Mr. Mccaron was just outsider enough to do the job. Great job!

Other than an oddness about the ending, which I'll be considerate and not reveal to you here, I enjoyed every single page. Personalities abound--old friends, trail friends, traveling and stationary friends--they all make their appearances and enliven the journey. It's occasionally hilarious.  I highly recommend it for anyone who loves to travel and happens to be stuck in place for a while.

Is biking really the best way to experience a country?  He thinks so--or at least he thought so at the time. But his rather excellent blog https://www.leonmccarron.com/journal talks about walking a lot, so maybe he changed his mind. In this book he's comparing biking to driving, and biking, of course, wins. He gets to experience the rolling hills, the rain, the heat, the look and feel of the country in a way that an automobile traveler never can. There's a lot of difference between cruising with rolled-up windows at seventy miles per hour and pedaling all day over broken terrain. Seventy miles is a whole day--and a fast day at that. But what about walking? Or running, or horseback riding?

On a bike you're restricted to paved roads or at least have a strong preference for them. (Excepting the occasional river crossing when the bridge is out--exciting scene!) On a bike you spend a lot of time looking straight ahead or down at the road, watching for rocks, gravel, and misplaced curbs. When you're breezing along at ten miles per hour, are you going to freeze in place when a fox is glimpsed in the forest edge? Are you even going to glimpse of the fox? What about the bugs and lizards and odd arrangements of limbs of a dead oak tree in the field?

Don't get me wrong--I'd love to bike across the country. But there's a lot to be said for walking.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day reading his blog. But I might take a walk first.