"Bicycling beyond the Divide: Two Journeys into the West" by Daryl L. Farmer (Repost)

The book isn’t just bicycle talk. Author gives us some historical background of the towns and places he visits. He also shares his personal life and his feelings, such as loneliness, anger and moments of happiness. All in all, it’s a good read for anyone contemplating a long-distance bicycle journey or some other adventure.

On a journey begun twenty years earlier, Daryl Farmer, a twenty-year-old two-time college dropout, did what lost men have so often done in this country: he headed west. Twenty years later and seventy pounds heavier, with the yellowing journals from that transformative five-thousand-mile bicycle trek in his pack, Farmer set out to retrace his path. This is his story of pursuing that distant summer and that distant dream of home, where home is endless space, a roof of big sky, and a bed of dry earth.

Just as the years altered the man, so, too, have they altered the West, and Farmer’s second journey affords a unique perspective on these changes—as well as on what lasts. Whether caught in a Colorado snowstorm or braving a Yellowstone herd of bison, kayaking with orcas in Puget Sound, trading Ninja moves with a homeless man in San Francisco, or getting the lowdown on aliens on Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway, Farmer charts a moving landscape of people and places. This is the West where the natural world and personal character are inextricably linked, and where one man’s ride into the past and present takes us to the heart of that ever-evolving connection

Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Colorado
Departure
On How Not to Begin
Florissant to Fairplay
Hoosier Summit
Below Freezing
A Colorado Cow Patch South of Baggs
Wyoming
Outlaws, Antelope, Prairie Dogs, and Sage
Night at the Antelope Saloon
To Jackson
Elkfest
Signal Mountain Lodge
How to Bicycle through a Buffalo Herd
Richard I
Montana
Another Log on the Fire
Paradise Valley to Ennis
Virginia City to Opportunity
Anaconda to Missoula
Face-planting on Highway 2
Glacier National Park
Kalispell Again
Libby to Troy
Idaho
Karaoke Night in Bonners Ferry
Washington
Fire Trucks and Rodeo Queens
Okanagan to Friday Harbor
The San Juan Islands
Anacortes to Port Angeles
A Side Trip to Victoria
Port Angeles to Shoalwater Bay
Winnefred
Oregon
Astoria to Newport
On a Sunday Morning
A Coming to Peace
At the North Bend Airport
Intermission: San Francisco
Like a Haggard Ghost
City of Hills
Return to Oregon
North Bend to Gold Beach
California
To Eureka
From Modesto to Yosemite and Mammoth Lakes
From Mammoth Lakes to Mono Lake
Nevada
Tonopah
The Extraterrestrial Highway
Utah and Arizona
Modena to Kanab
At Jacob Lake