Two Wheels North:
Bicycling the West Coast in 1909

It's an ordinary and yet a heroic journey too, and beautifully told by the daughter of one of the men, Vic McDaniel, who made the trip with his friend, Ray Francisco. Little wonder that the book won the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Non-fiction Book Award. Evelyn Gibb has crafted the tale from her father's recollections, the postcards they sent home, and the accounts of the trip that the boys managed to send back to their hometown newspaper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

On their journey they encountered bears, snakes, pickpockets and beautiful girls, and when their route took them through a train tunnel they didn't allow for what would happen when a train came along at the same time. Now that made scary reading! As did the meeting with a snake that resulted in a snake-bite.

The author's skill is in catching the right conversational tone, so you feel as if you're hearing the story of this bicycling odyssey straight from the guys who did it. 'The road was straight as a pole, with swells so gentle you couldn't say for sure where up started and down quit.' It's also far more than the story of a marathon bike ride. It's a story of adolescence, of boys growing into men, and of the ups and downs of friendship as well as of the haunting west coast landscape.

If you're planning on cycling the Pacific Coast Highway then Two Wheels North will give you no helpful practical information whatsoever. What it will do is make you long for a time when such a journey was even more of an adventure than it is today.

Two Wheels North: Bicycling the West Coast in 1909
By Evelyn McDaniel Gibb
(Oregon State University Press, 2000)
Available on Amazon USA, at Amazon UK, in bookstores, and at other online booksellers.

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