We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
Once Upon a Time on a Bicycle: A self-propelled two-wheeled journey of necessity
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Once Upon A Time On A Bicycle: A Self-propelled
Product Description It was not the first time he had pedaled toward a horizon thousands of miles away, but never before had there been no horizon. Under the cloud of an abandoned promise, Michael Renati relinquished every possession unable to fit in bicycle panniers with only one goal in mind: to become a stranger navigating strange lands under his own power. Headwinds and climbs, tailwinds and descents, exploration, introspection, distance, vision, resolve, saying goodbye and starting over poignantly blend with exotic-locale photography to tell the story of a man on an all-or-nothing journey to reintegrate body and soul. For devotees and aspirants, Once Upon a Time on a Bicycle includes a "Notes from the Road" appendix detailing the author's expedition inventory, bicycle-build specifications, and equipment evaluations. Review "This is a compelling story of a long bicycle ride, from the American Southwest to Central America. It is an interweaving of two journeys: one geographic and the other, interior and ethical. As we explore these pages we see a great adventure, planned and executed with a realistic grasp of the dangers and beauties awaiting the traveler. The gifted author's story is absorbing, perceptive, and evocative. From the seat of a touring bicycle we see country and people close-up. We sense trouble as it arrives, magic when smiles greet the rider, and comfort in villages, cities, and landscapes. This is an elegant book brimming with photographs, wisely kept to black and white, offering a visual dessert. " Once Upon a Time on a Bicycle is too large to compress into genre and far more than an adventure. It is a love story." Novelist Richard S. Wheeler, six-time Spur Award winner and recipient of the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement From the Author Author's Preface When I decided to ride, only the ride mattered. I was not inclined to take photographs or keep a journal, push for hundred-mile days or settle for twenty, climb such-and-such a pass or employ so-and-so's equipment or be the first whoever to do whatever. But since I could permit myself no unfulfilled responsibilities it took almost two years to finally be riding, and during that seemingly endless preparatory period - while contemplating my journey as a "once upon a time" endeavor and addressing my bicycle by the appellation that, because of my thirty-year relationship with Miguel de Cervantes' masterwork so naturally became it - I discovered that I wanted to keep a record. But not as a travelogue or how-to guide. My manner of coming at life has manifestly been shaped by characters in fiction whose qualities I admire. Virtuous acts proceeding from just principles have inspired me since I was a child, although I could probably not have articulated why until I was in my late teens. Correspondingly, I have long considered the obligatory grownup-to-young-person question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" as essentially meaningless except as a postscript to: " Who do you want to be?" I was four months from starting my ride, returning by rail to Montana from Pennsylvania, gazing across the predawn plains of North Dakota while listening to Jonathan Hogan narrate Richard Wheeler's Flint's Gift, when I grasped that what I wanted - however and whenever my ride ended - was to someday experience my story the same way I was experiencing Sam Flint's. I resolved to pen Once Upon a Time on a Bicycle in the third person, and, for the línea de demarcación I believed my ride would represent, I traded my fifty-six-year-old surname for a new one. About a million pedal revolutions later, over afternoon coffee at a restaurant in Poptún, El Petén, a Guatemalan gentleman referred to me, no doubt complimentarily, as an adventurer. "No, I'm not," I countered with surprising defensiveness. When he replied, "But you are having some big adventure, no?" I politely conceded his observation and, while riding the next day, pondered the motive
