Pedaling the Ends of the Earth

Rating:
Summary: good account of hardships incurred while biking the earth
Review: David Duncan gives his detailed account of cycling around the earth. He pays special attention to the third-world areas that seemed to have affected him the most.

Rating:
Summary: Cycling World Tour from 20 Years in the Past
Review: I liked this book. The author and three partners tackled the World Tour for Hope (medical charity organization) back in the early '80s. Although it's a fairly brief account of the 380-day bicycle expedition, he does give you a good picture of the poverty and extreme living conditions in Africa and Asia, and some insight into the tribulations of riding a bike for that long. I got a kick out of the problems they dealt with that would probably not be the case today with cel phones & laptop PCs. The whirlwind wrap-up of the San Francisco-to-D.C. leg of the trip was a bit of a letdown, but all in all an enjoyable story.

Rating:
Summary: A worthwhile book
Review: This book graphically depicts the conditions of life in the third world, written by someone who has experienced the difficulties of everyday life and survival. It exposes our human frailties and the will it takes to keep your humanity in adverse conditions.

Rating:
Summary: Seeing the World for the First Time
Review: This book tells the story of a young man who had a dream of cycling around the world. In 1982, David Duncan had recently finished college. He had an urge to see, smell, touch, feel and taste other cultures in exotic far-away lands, and a bike trip seemed to him the best way to accomplish these aims. A practical person, he felt that it would be unsafe to cycle around the world solo, but then putting together a team effort for a year-long trip would be prohibitively expensive. A friend of the family's suggested that it might be possible to get sponsors for the trip if they organized the ride as a charity fundraiser. It seemed like a good idea at the time- -Duncan would get his bike trip around the world, he would have companions to travel with him, and they'd get to make the trip with little or no costs to themselves, all while raising money for a worthy cause. Unfortunately, some of these factors would later turn out to be liabilities rather than boons.

This is very much a coming of age story. From the very beginning of the trip, Duncan is very organized and professional. However, he's got very little experience with foreign travel, and no idea of the dangers and hardships that await them on the road. Within a few months, he has to come to terms with illnesses and injuries, tense political situations, wars, group dynamics, and his own ambition. Quite a few of the problems are brought on by the need to fulfill prior agreements for their fundraising activities. Rather than go with the flow of the road, taking delays in stride or hitching when they just didn't feel like biking, Duncan felt beholden to the Plan, and occasionally drove his team beyond their limits.

Conditions on the road and misadventures soon did away with the youthful naivete of the team. By the end of the book, Duncan would say about average well-meaning Americans, "they blithely believed that their goodwill could wipe away any evil in the world. I understood this sort of thinking because I had been raised to believe in it myself. But after all I had seen, I knew it was a lie." Having traveled in some of the same countries myself, I understand and agree with his assessment. It's a very complex world out there, and a lot of people don't share our eternal Western optimism about others or the future. On the other hand, in reading other accounts of long-haul cycling trips (such as Barbara Savage's Miles from Nowhere), I found many more stories of personal connections that the cyclists made with people along the road that served to temper the cultural rough spots. Perhaps because of the size of the team, which made impromptu stays with local hosts unwieldy, as well as the need for speed, the cyclists on this trip didn't have as many opportunities to enjoy some of the more wacky and positive aspects of travel. In any case, the writing of the book is engaging, and Duncan includes some interesting observations that make for thoughtful reading.