"In 1909, Vic McDaniel and Ray Francisco, just out of high school, set out from Santa Rosa, California, on second-hand bikes, bound for the great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle. With excitement in their hearts and a good luck billiken in their bedroll, they pedaled, pushed, and walked a thousand miles north for fifty-four days. Camp was wherever, whenever the sun was gone; food was an occasional meal from a kindly farm wife and what they could fish, hunt, or glean.". "Evelyn Gibb, daughter of one of the cyclists, has drawn on her father's recollections to tell this incredible story in his voice. Readers of all ages will find themselves pulled into the resolute push to complete the trek. Two Wheels North is an account of a journey that today we can only dream about - one that finds two boys on the road not only to Seattle, but also to manhood."--BOOK JACKET.
TRAVELS IN A STRANGE STATE is a personal memoir of an improbable journey, revealing the United States as it is rarely seen - from the seat of a bicycle. On her eight-month journey Josie experienced it all; race riots in Los Angeles, impossible heat in Death Valley, Sexual Tantric Seminars in Hawaii. From Utah to the Great Lakes, via improbable places like Zzyzx and Squaw Tit, her two-wheeled odyssey brought her into contact with all the wonders and worries of this larger-than-life country.
**The True Wild West of New Mexico and California** The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie is the Odyssey of western America. In June of 1824 James Ohio Pattie, then in his early 20's, left Kentucky with his father, Sylvester, and headed west. They reached Taos, New Mexico, traveled down the Rio Grande, fought with Indians, rescued two white women who had been captured by Comanches, crossed over the Mogollon Mountains (they had to eat one of their horses; later they had to eat their dogs also), and for a while ran a mine and fought more Indians for the Mexicans near Silver City. In southern New Mexico, a party of French trappers, against Pattie's advice, consorted with the wrong Indians and they were massacred, their body parts strewn around the Indian village. The Patties and thirty others joined together "under a genuine American leader, who could be entirely relied on" to take revenge on the village: > Two of our men were then ordered to the show themselves on the top of the bank. They were immediately discovered by the Indians, who considered them, I imagine, a couple of the Frenchmen that they had failed to kill. They raised the yell, and ran towards the two persons, who instantly dropped down under the bank. There must have been 200 in pursuit...We allowed them to approach within 20 yards, when we gave them our fire. They commenced a precipitate retreat, we loading and firing as fast as was in our power...In less than ten minutes, the village was so completely evacuated, that not a human being was to be found, save one poor old blind and deaf Indian, who sat eating his mush as unconcernedly as if all had been tranquil in the village. We did not molest him. After the battle and some similar adventures, the Patties resumed trapping and followed the Gila west to Yuma, trapping beaver and fighting with more Indians, and then crossed the California desert, reaching San Diego in March of 1828. In San Diego, the Patties and their American companions were promptly arrested by Governor Echeandia, who confiscated their fortune in furs and threw the men in jail. There they languished, and the elder Pattie died. Ever resourceful, young James struck up a romance with a woman of high station. He recuperated under her care, and began working part-time from jail as a translator for the governor. Finally, news reached the governor of a smallpox epidemic in the north. Rather fortuitously (ahem), Pattie had a quantity of smallpox vaccine with him. He made a deal with the governor: his own and his companions' freedom in exchange for vaccinating the populace. During his six month trip up the coast from San Diego to Fort Ross, just north of today's San Francisco, Pattie claims to have vaccinated nearly 22,000 Mexicans, missionaries, Indians, and settlers. Pattie found it hard to stay out of trouble, however. In Monterey he joined a revolt against the governor, but then switched sides again. The governor (either grateful or just hoping to get rid of him) finally gave Pattie a passport to Mexico City, where Pattie met with officials and tried to obtain restitution for his jail time and lost furs. In 1830 Pattie sailed for New Orleans, arriving home again in August, six years after he and his father had headed West. He dictated his story to newspaperman Timothy Flint, and the book came out a year later. History loses track of Pattie after that. He probably died in a cholera epidemic that began near Augusta, Kentucky, in June 1833. But we will always have The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie. -
"From New York to Los Angeles, Chicago to San Antonio, inner city to penthouse row, pristine park to post-industrial wasteland, the author cycles the streets and paths of fifty of America's largest urban outposts. Part bike-travelogue, part journey through urban history, Biking Through the 'Hoods provides a panoramic, yet ground level, picture of urban America, past and present. You don't need to be an urban cyclist to appreciate Biking Through the 'Hoods, but if you are one, you'll recognize the trials and travails, and occasional triumphs, of navigating the nation's car-dominated cityscapes on two wheels."--P. [4] of cover.
The author shocked both herself and her husband when she refused to follow him to an out-of-state job. She chose instead to seek refuge in a cottage on Cape Cod ... a seaside saga in which she learned many lessons.
Two wheels north by Evelyn McDaniel Gibb | Literally Just Books
