Acknowledgments
Scott Moyers, my agent at the Wylie Agency,
suggested some time ago that there might be a book here, with the
thread of my bike explorations of various cities as a linking
device. His reference was W. G. Sebald, specifically his book
The Rings of Saturn, which uses a rambling walk in the
English countryside as a means of connecting a lot of thoughts,
musings, and anecdotes. I can’t pretend to have come anywhere close
to Sebald as a writer, but setting the bar that high gave me
something to shoot for. I may also have mentioned to Scott
Tropical Truth, Caetano Veloso’s account of the Tropicália
years in Brazil, in which he uses his memory of that time as a
springboard to discuss a host of issues and events. Both books go
off on a lot of tangents, which, for them at least, works fine. I
could see that it was possible to make the form work.
Though I’d been keeping a travel and tour diary
for decades, Danielle Spencer in my studio helped encourage and
facilitate moving that online. Blogging it’s called. I’m still
finding my way to where I fit in the blogosphere—I realized early
that I didn’t want to produce either an exclusively metablog (a
series of links to interesting things seen or read online) or an
exclusively personal diary—I don’t think my personal life is very
interesting or unique. However, I did find that the journal/blog
was a great way of trying to express and articulate thoughts,
feelings, and ideas—many of which occurred to me while traveling,
which often meant biking around various towns. And the blog allows
links, photos, videos, audio, and all sorts of things to be part of
the reading experience—an experience I hope digital readers will be
able to render eventually.
Thanks to editors Paul Slovak and Walter Donohue
for notes and comments—we all realized that a blog is not a book.
Thanks to my girlfriend, Cindy, for comments and companionship on
some of these rides. And thanks to Emma and Tom, my parents, for
getting me my first bike.