ALMOST ROADKILL: Cycling Across America and the Male/Female Relationship

ALMOST ROADKILL: Cycling Across America and the Male/Female Relationship

Almost Roadkill opens the experience of cycling cross-country with a support vehicle to anybody of any age and reasonable level of fitness. Part how-to, part adventure travel memoir, part relationship odyssey, it is a two-wheeled, hip and humorous successor to Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods . Almost Roadkill works on three levels: as a how-to for the cyclist of below-average athletic ability; as a rolling battle of the sexes, waged in Punch and Judy sagwagon driver-cyclist exchanges about everything from map reading to channel flipping, laundry, and proper hydration; and as a portrait of America’s Southern Tier—its geography, people, customs, and food. Unlike other cycling memoirs, this one takes the unique worms-eye vantage of the lowly sagwagon driver. To cross the country alone or with a group, the cyclist must be an accomplished athlete. That universe of superachievers is small. The universe of superunderachievers—of potatoes wishing to get off the couch, of Baby Boomers reaching retirement age—is vast. As Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong once said during a visit to Tucson, AZ: “Everybody has a bicycle in the garage. Get out and ride it.” Almost Roadkill could have been subtitled Cycle by Day--Eavesdrop on Relationship Angst by Night . Bikeman and Support-and-Gear Sagwoman compare daily dangers (his) and delights (hers). They kvetch, they argue, they dream about murder. o Can he survive? o Can she survive? o Can the relationship survive? And, given climate, immigration, and other disruptions they witnessed, o Can the country survive? Maureen Mylander co-authored Gesundheit! (Inner Traditions, 1993, 1998) with Patch Adams, and authored three non-fiction books about healthy lifestyles (Little, Brown, 1987; Ticknor & Fields, 1982; McGraw-Hill, 1978), and The Generals: Making It, Military-Style (Dial Press, 1974). She recently turned to fiction with Brass Ceiling: #ME-ilitary Too (KDP, 2019), a reality-based novel informed by The Generals . The sequel to Brass Ceiling, NEXT: A Woman's War on Washington , soon will be available on Amazon KDP.