Bicycling Beyond the Divide--#23 finished

Book #23 for the year is finished.  It was Bicycling Beyond the Divide by Daryl Farmer.  It is about a man who at 20 went on a bike trip from his home in Colorado to Washington/Canada border and down to San Francisco and across Nevada & back home.  Now 20 years later at age 39 is redoing this bike trip.  The first time through it was a kind of self-discovery trip that made memories that lasted ever since.  The 2nd time is an attempt to recreate almost recapture part of his youth.  Of course the other reason is the opportunity to gain enough info/journal entries to write a book.

Overall a good book, does a nice job of mixing in memories from the first trip and contrasting it with what is happening on 2nd.  You get an idea of how hard the trip is effort wise as well as locating camping sites or motels.  It sounded like the 1st trip was more camping on roadside type though.  

A couple of thoughts that I had from reading the book are:  (1) cities and towns growing away from the old centers of town and (2)some of the stranger people he meets compared to the homeless people he encounters in San Francisco.  First on the cities, he mentioned this a few times in the book where cities grew since he was there last or more strip malls on outsides of the town or new home developments.  It is kind of sad to think about this because I am guessing the population of the city may have stayed the same but rather than rebuilding the downtown or older neighborhoods people and businesses are looking to move out.  On a small scale in small town America maybe not as big a deal, but certainly a big deal in large cities.  Just an attitude that seems too prevalent in this country.

Second, was the few kind of mobile/not attached type people he met on his trip, usually at camping sites.  People that seemed forever on the move and kind of lived off the land types.  Real kind of free spirits that decided to live an completely non-traditional lifestyle, almost living off their wits.  Compared these people to the many homeless people he encountered in his days in San Francisco that seemed to barely function beyond shaking a cup, begging for change.  While the obvious answer is drugs is a very probable cause for the homeless and/or a mental illness, it kind of hit me about how close both sets of people really are.  I have no great insight into solving the homeless situation but just wish a little of the free spirit the travelers had could be given to the homeless.

Like I said a good book, not outstanding but certainly good.  It makes you want to get on your bike and start seeing the country.  While biking is not my thing, it has kind of inspired me to up my running and try to focus in on some running goals for this Fall, Winter and Spring.

This was book #23 read this year.  My goal from back in January was to read 2 a month or 24 for the year.  It looks like this is one goal that I will accomplish.  I still have around 270 pages to go in the McCain book--not sure if I will get it done by election day or not--hopefully I will.  I will probably take a few minutes tonight and look for that next book as well.