Travels In A Strange State: Cycling Across the USA

by Josie Dew (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $3.25

  From the author of the highly acclaimed The Wind In My Wheels comes an extraordinary look at the United States of America. By most people's standards, Josie Dew is hugely adventurous. By American standards, she is completely insane. For Americans drive everywhere: they can drive through cinemas, restaurants, theatres, banks, mortuaries, post offices, dry cleaners, trees, and in Hawaii even into a volcano. But driving past Josie as she cycled across the breadth of the United States was a new and alarming experience. Not that everyone drove straight past. Some stopped to flash at her; others nearly ran her over; a gang of Hell's Angels waved merrily at her - and a great many people stopped, smiled, and asked her to stay with them. And everyone told her to have a nice day - mostly out of habit, partly because they suspected it would be her last. For this is the country where 135,000 children bring their guns to school every day, where murder, like McDonald's is part of everyday life, and where lone female cyclists are easy prey. But it is also a country of boundless hospitality, of huge meals and huge people, and of infinite variety. On her eight-month journey Josie experienced it all: in California she saw racial disharmony first hand during the Los Angeles riots; in Death Valley she nearly expired from the heat; in Hawaii she cycled up the world's largest dormant volcano, avoided the Sexual Tantric Seminars of the '60s flower children, saw wili-wili trees, hump-back whales and the Phallic Rock. She pedalled through the canyons of Utah and Arizona, into places called Devil's Hole Hills, Squaw Tit and Zzyzx, across the never-ending prairies of the Mid-West during the worst summer storms for a century and, finally, to the Canadian border and the staggering beauty of the Great Lakes. A personal memoir of an improbable journey, it reveals the United States as it is rarely seen - from the seat of a bicycle.

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $3.25

  Following The Wind in My Wheels , Josie Dew recounts more of her travels by bicycle. This time she describes a journey across America and Hawaii, on which she met a variety of unusual characters and experienced incidents which aroused a wide range of emotions. During her eight months on the road she saw race riots in Los Angeles, suffered intense heat in Death Valley, and witnessed sexual tantric seminars in Hawaii. From Utah to the Great Lakes, via improbable places such as Zzyzx and Squaw Tit, she offers a personal memoir of the United States as seen from the seat of a bicycle.

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $19.72

  By most people's standards, Josie Dew is hugely adventurous. By American standards, she is completely insane. For Americans drive everywhere: through cinemas, restaurants, banks, even trees. But driving past Josie as she pedalled across America was a new and alarming experience. 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. Highly entertaining, richly informative, 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.