No, they do not all speak English in France, especially in the rural areas, so yes, I spoke French to get around, and to have conversations with the locals. I prepared by reading L'Estranger (The Stranger) in the original French and studying a French dictionary like mad. Sounds crazy, but it worked!

Trip 9: This was my trip through New Zealand, May 2004. I took seventeen days, with a day or two additional on each end to gear up and wind down, and travelled about 650 miles from Queenstown, at the southern end of the South Island, to Wellington, and from Palmerston North to Napier, on the North Island. It was late fall in the southern hemisphere, and cold--on the South Island, temperatures rarely rose above fifty degrees. It also got dark early, about 5:30 pm, since New Zealand is so far south. I took a "city bike" with fatter tires this time, and these are slower, so I had to use daylight efficiently to get in the miles I needed to cover. There were no language barriers in New Zealand, of course, but it is still a very different culture. The most difficult part, they all drive on the left :)

Trip 10: This was my trip around the Big Island of Hawai'i, July 2008. I took ten days, and travelled about 250 miles in a giant loop beginning, and ending, in Hilo. You are basically circumnavigating a set of giant volcanoes, navigating between beach and desert, sea level and the clouds, resort towns and rural villages. The windward (NE) section of the island is lush rain forest; the leeward (SW) desolate lava fields bordering on fantastic beaches. Connecting the two, on the east of the island, is the active volcano Kiluaea, which you climb up (for twenty miles) and down.

That last trip made it all fifty states (though not all by bicycle).

Trip 11: This 100 mile trip went around Prince Edward Island with my son Sheridan, then 16, for 3 days in July 2009. PEI isn't that large, and it is pretty remote and bucolic, so it was a great place for a father-son trip. We got to take in almost all of the island--north and south, east and west. My wife and daughter had some special time together while we biked and picked us up afterwards, and we continued our family tour of the northeast.

Trip 12: This trip went from Boise, Idaho, to Boudler, Colorado, 1000 miles over 23 days in July and August of 2012. Leaving Boise on an uncommonly windy way, I segued across hot, dry, sagebrush-laden southern Idaho, stopping for a day at Craters of the Moon National Monument, where ancient lava is everywhere. I then worked my way through the southeastern corner of Idaho, northwestern corner of Utah, and southwestern corner of Wyoming, working my way through the remote and beautiful Uintah Mountains. One time in Wyoming, a pronghorn antelope raced me along a fence for several hundred yards before darting off.

From Vernal, UT, I then headed east more or less all the way to Boulder, a lot of high scrub in western Colorado, giving way to mountains as you get toward the middle of the state. I stopped in Dinosaur National Monument and Steamboat Springs for a day each, and ended up at the south entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park at the appointed time. The plan was for my family, which was driving up to the park, to pick me up and carry me across the continental divide, but they were running a day late. So on my last day I crossed the divide, at 12,300 ft., and had a *very fast* downhill more or less all the way to Boulder!

It was a remote and rigorous trip, but the rugged scenery and light traffic made it especially pleasant. I learned a lot about Mormonism, which is prevalent in the parts of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming that I went through, and being in high scrub and high desert and lonely small towns in the far West. Mid-summer is fair season up there, and I visited fairs in Idaho and Utah on both weekends en route, which was also a lot of fun.

Trip 13: This trip, from Baltimore to Burlington, Vermont, took 11 days, covered 550 miles, as part of a working vacation in June, 2016. I flew into Baltimore and immediately headed towards Philadelphia, almost becoming derailed by a major problem with my freewheel right off the bat. I managed to keep going on the freewheel until I finally made it to a bike shop near Philadelphia, and got it fixed. Then, in Philadelphia, I attended a professional conference (!) for three days before heading out again to the northeast.

From there I travelled along the towpaths bordering an old canal along the Delaware River; in the 1800s, mules would tow rafts laden with goods along these paths. I then worked my way through northwestern New Jersey--very rural--and comfortably around New York City to Poughkeepsie, where I crossed the Hudson River on a giant pedestrian bridge. Working my way to the eastern edge of New York State, I headed more or less directly north until I arrived in Burlington, where I camped for a week and worked on the book I was writing.

Bicycling in the northeast is a very different kind of biking: much more traffic, narrow shoulders, poorer roads, towns at more frequent intervals. It is more convenient, in the sense that you are rarely far from food or services, but also not nearly as peaceful. I have done so many bicycle trips in the West and Midwest because the South and Northeast just are not as conducive to bike travel. Still, having done this trip, I have travelled through all major regions of the country, which was definitely worth doing.

Trip 14: This trip, from Louisville to Pittsburgh, took 16 days and covered 600 miles. I delayed it from my usual four-year interval because of Covid. My timing was fortunate. Covid was light in this area when I traveled through it, but then began raging just a few weeks later. My route largely followed the Ohio River upstream, cutting across Northern Kentucky to save some distance. I hadn't realized it going into the trip, but the Ohio River valley has huge bluffs typically on one side or the other, which is pretty but makes biking more complicated! Sometimes one heavily traveled route is all you have. The terrain was often hilly but rarely very hilly, except for the bluffs near the river. Things started to get really hilly when I got into Pennsylvania, but fortunately there were two long trails along railroad grades, and a third along the river, that took me from West Virginia right into downtown Pittsburgh with hardly any climbing at all.

This part of the country had been ravaged by the opioid epidemic. You could see evidence of that and, in some places, of a bitterness I hadn't seen elsewhere. At the same time, I met people in Portsmouth, OH (opioid ground zero) that were working hard to resurrect their town after the worst had passed. They were doing what it took to meet the moment.

This was the theme of the trip. At the beginning of my trip, I saw the building of the Women's Club of Louisville, which was organized in 1890 to "confront some of the social challenges" of that time, such as women's rights, improved schools, and public health. Then, towards the end of my trip, I saw the building that became first West Virginia's first state capital in 1863. Both were monuments to courage and principle.