Introduction

The route cycled

In the town where he was not born lives a man who rides bicycles. He finds that this activity, more than many others, can be both very exhilarating as well as very frustrating, but never boring. Moreover, a solist like him finds it really nice that this activity needs very little - if any - assistance, as well as annoyance, from other people.

The man in question - let's call him Mr. Iik - has made several rides in the world (where exactly can be seen here) and last year he published a journal with a title "Dushanbe to Delhi", even though he never rode to Delhi but stopped at Amritsar, which is shorter for a whole 500 km. From this latter fact we can learn not to believe everything he writes! In the epilogue of that journal Mr. Iik expresses his doubts about the whole concept of bike touring and states that he will never do that again. And then, a year later, he forgets the promise and starts another tour, yet the longest of them all, a trans-continental tour of North America from the Pacific at Vancouver to Atlantic at the New York City. You really can't trust this man, can you? To avoid further truth-bending it's better that he doesn't speak for himself. We can safely assume that, having his diary and photos from the trip at hand, we can recreate his trip and make story-telling more objective and insightful then he would. A good side effect would also be the total absence of the word "I" in the journal - a rare case in english bicycle prose.

So, if you are interested what happened on this continental ride or what it has to do with Yellow submarine, get a pack of beer, a big bag of popcorn, lay back in your sofa and continue reading. On the second thought, make it a crate of beer: just in case the lack of hair-rising adventures on this trip starts to bore you a bit.