TransAm:
the Book
Writing a book is not easy. I should have known that before I started. I’m still not sure which challenge was the hardest — riding 4,264 miles across the US on the TransAmerica Trail, or writing TRANSAM, the book. Both were an uphill struggle, but if I had to choose, I’d say the book. It has certainly taken me longer to complete — 12 years compared to two and a half months!
Mike Evans, who we met in Kansas, said writing his book, HANGRY, detailing his TransAm ride, was far harder than co-founding the multimillion-dollar food ordering giant, Grubhub.
As I said — writing a book is not easy!
But both the ride and the book do have one thing in common — they both started out as seemingly insurmountable challenges, but with clear goals at the end. So how do you get there? It’s that old adage — how do you eat an elephant? The answer of course is one piece at a time — although you really shouldn’t be eating elephants either whole, or in pieces. They are lovely creatures.
Much like the ride, writing the book meant endless hours of research, putting in the miles on the laptop and accepting lots of help and support along the way. Eventually, like clocking off the distances on those long American roads, you get there — one page at a time.
I do hope you enjoy reading TRANSAM and if you do, I’d be delighted if you could leave a review on the platform where you bought it — the algorithms really dig reviews and will flag the book to more people like you who might like to take a look. I’d also love you to join my mailing list. This means I can keep you up to date with more cycling news as well as developments on my next book ‘Southern Tier’. Let’s just hope that one doesn’t take another 12 years.
Oh, and if you want to know what TRANSAM has in store for you then the blurb from the back of the book probably does it best:
The TransAmerica Trail is the coast to coast bicycle route the US loved first. Opened in 1976 to celebrate the country’s Bicentennial, by any account it’s epic. Spanning 4,264 miles, it connects Virginia on the Atlantic coast to Oregon on the Pacific. Along the way it traverses ten states, crosses the Great Plains and climbs four mountain ranges including the Appalachians and the mighty Rockies.
As the TransAm celebrates its 50th anniversary, join self-confessed Mr Bean on a bike, Paul Dunt and cycling guru Terry Wooller, as they saddle up and follow the wagon wheel ruts of history from east coast to west. In a transformational journey across the backroads of America, the unlikely pair explore parts of the country very few of its citizens even visit — the so-called fly-over states.
In an inspiring and often hilarious adventure, they outsmart chasing dogs, escape forest fires, dodge tornadoes and try, unsuccessfully, to outrun the police. Along the way they rub shoulders with uber-athletes taking part in the inaugural TransAm cycle race, team up with dot com entrepreneurs, and gate-crash a wedding in a desperate search for food.
But most of all, they discover the reason for creating the Trail half a century ago — to unite the country — lives on in the incredible hospitality they are shown from the valleys of Kentucky to the High Plains of Colorado.