France on Two Wheels PDF Download

Author: Adam Ruck
Publisher: Short Books
ISBN: 9781907595721
Category : Bicycle touring
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
For Adam Ruck, France and cycling go together like a rich Camembert and a heady glass of Bordeaux.

Author: Adam Ruck
Publisher: Short Books
ISBN: 1780720580
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Both a practical companion and a story of exploration and rediscovery, France on Two Wheels offers detailed descriptions of useful routes, stop-off points and watering-holes, along with detours into subjects as varied as wine, windmills, Wodehouse, and beer. It is vivid proof that the only way to experience the French countryside is on a bike. Adding insight to anecdote, this book is packed with practical tips: on rail travel with a bicycle, mending a puncture in French, and the best stopovers along the route - small hotels, B&Bs and chateaux, every one "a cultural treasure worth celebrating".

Author: Jody Rosen
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0804141517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
A panoramic revisionist portrait of the nineteenth-century invention that is transforming the twenty-first-century world “Excellent . . . calls to mind Bill Bryson, John McPhee, Rebecca Solnit.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker The bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly at odds with our age of smartphones and ride-sharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on a bicycle planet. Across the world, more people travel by bicycle than any other form of transportation. Almost anyone can learn to ride a bike—and nearly everyone does. In Two Wheels Good, journalist and critic Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous machine, an ever-present force in humanity’s life and dream life—and a flash point in culture wars—for more than two hundred years. Combining history, reportage, travelogue, and memoir, Rosen’s book sweeps across centuries and around the globe, unfolding the bicycle’s saga from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a “green machine,” an emblem of sustainability in a world afflicted by pandemic and climate change. Readers meet unforgettable characters: feminist rebels who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a prospector who pedaled across the frozen Yukon to join the Klondike gold rush, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, a cycle-rickshaw driver who navigates the seething streets of the world’s fastest-growing megacity, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity aboard the International Space Station. Two Wheels Good examines the bicycle’s past and peers into its future, challenging myths and clichés while uncovering cycling’s connection to colonial conquest and the gentrification of cities. But the book is also a love letter: a reflection on the sensual and spiritual pleasures of bike riding and an ode to an engineering marvel—a wondrous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine.

Author: Amy Snyder
Publisher: Triumph Books
ISBN: 1617495190
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Contestants have died, been maimed, and spiraled down into the nightmarish realm of madness. Half of them don't finish--in fact, only 200 racers have ever made it to the end. "Outside" magazine calls it "the toughest test of endurance in the world." RAAM (the Race Across America) is a bicycle race like no other. This epic race is the most brutal organized sporting event you've never heard of and one of the best-kept secrets in the sports world. Author Amy Snyder follows a handful of athletes before, during, and after the 2009 event, the closest and most controversial in history. "Hell on Two Wheels" is a thrilling and remarkably detailed account of their ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies. By experiencing the race from the perspective of the racers themselves, "Hell on Two Wheels" breaks new ground in helping us appreciate how such a grueling effort can be so cleansing and self-revelatory. This is more than just a race; it's a monster, a crucible, an unforgettable allegory about the human experience of pain and joy and self-discovery.

Author: Hannah Reynolds
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780957157347
Category : Bicycle touring
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In this beautifully illustrated guide to travelling across France by bike you will discover hidden lanes, stunning gorges, amazing places to eat and stay, plus the best of French cycling culture.

Author: Michael Hutchinson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472925610
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
'As if Bill Bryson had taken to two wheels' - FT Somewhere in a German forest 200 years ago, during the darkest, wettest summer for centuries, the story of cycling began. The calls to ban it were more or less immediate. Re:Cyclists is the tale of the following two centuries. It tells how cycling became a kinky vaudeville act for Parisians, how it was the basis of an American business empire to rival Henry Ford's, and how it found a unique home in the British Isles. The Victorian love of cycling started with penny-farthing riders, who explored lonely roads that had been left abandoned by the coming of the railways. Then high-society took to it - in the 1980s the glittering parties of the London Season featured bicycles dancing in the ballroom, and every member of the House of Lords rode a bike. Twentieth-century cycling was very different, and even more popular. It became the sport and the pastime of millions of ordinary people who wanted to escape the city smog, or to experience the excitement of a weekend's racing. Cycling offered adventure and independence in the good times, and consolation during the war years and the Great Depression. Re:Cyclists tells the story of cycling's glories and also of its despairs, of how it only just avoided extinction in the motoring boom of the 1960s. And finally, at the dawn of the 21st century, it celebrates how cycling rose again - a little different, a lot more fashionable, but still about the same simple pleasures that it always has been: the wind in your face and the thrill of two-wheeled freedom.

Author: Hannah Ross
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593083601
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
A history and celebration of women's cycling—beginning with its origins as a political statement, beloved pastime, and early feminist act—that shares the stories of notable cyclists and groups around the world More than a century after they first entered the mainstream, bicycles and the culture around them are as accessible as ever—but for women, that progress has always been a struggle to achieve, and even now the culture remains overwhelmingly male. In Revolutions, author Hannah Ross highlights the stories of extraordinary women cyclists and all-female cycling groups over time and around the world, and demonstrates both the feminist power of cycling and its present-day issues. A cyclist herself, Ross puts a spotlight on the many incredible women and girls on bicycles from then to now—many of whom had to endure great opposition to do so, beginning in the 1880s, when the first women began setting distance records, racing competitively, and using bicycles to spread the word about women’s suffrage. Revolutions also celebrates women setting records and demanding equality in competitive cycling, as well as cyclists in countries including Afghanistan, India, and Saudi Arabia who are inspiring women to take up space on the road, trails, and elsewhere. Both a history of women's cycling and an impassioned manifesto, Revolutions challenges a male-dominated narrative that has long prevailed in cycling and celebrates the excellence of women in the culture.

Author: Jonathan Vaughters
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143134140
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The new memoir tracing story of cycling since the 1980s, through the eyes of Jonathan Vaughters, founder of team Education First and one of the sport's most towering figures. Jonathan Vaughters' story is the story of modern cycling. From his early years as a keen cyclist in his hometown in Colorado to his unflinching rite of passage as a professional rider with US Postal to his elevation as one of cycling's most resilient, ethical and intelligent team bosses, the highs and lows of his career have mirrored those of the sport itself. Vaughters has had a front-row seat for most of the major events in cycling over the past three decades. He was both a former teammate of Lance and a leading witness against him. And he went on to renounce doping and start the first pro cycling team to dedicate itself to clean riding, which has grown into one of the most successful teams competing today and started a movement that has swept across the sport. This is also not simply a story of races won and lost: Vaughters shows readers how he navigated the complex, international business of building Slipstream into a world-class cycling team. Over the past decade, he has led the sport out of the scandal-plagued Armstrong era. By presenting the world with a team made of talented racers built around a rigorous approach to clean racing, he set a new standard within cycling that has since spread across the peloton. Written from the unique perspective of both a racer and a team manager, One-Way Ticket gives the complete story of what it takes to build a winning team and repair the reputation of a sport.

Author: David V. Herlihy
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547487177
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This “fascinating” story of a nineteenth-century mystery “should appeal to most lovers of history, as well as to bicycling enthusiasts. Strongly recommended” (Library Journal). In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized “safety-bicycle” with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover twenty thousand miles over three continents as a correspondent for Outing magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg. Lenz never made it. His mysterious disappearance in eastern Turkey sparked an international outcry and compelled Outing to send William Sachtleben, another larger-than-life cyclist, on Lenz’s trail. Bringing to light a wealth of information, David Herlihy’s gripping narrative captures the soaring joys and constant dangers accompanying the bicycle adventurer in the days before paved roads and automobiles. This untold story culminates with Sachtleben’s heroic effort to bring Lenz’s accused murderers to justice, even as troubled Turkey teetered on the edge of collapse.

Author: Robert Penn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608195767
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Robert Penn has saddled up nearly every day of his adult life. In his late twenties, he pedaled 25,000 miles around the world. Today he rides to get to work, sometimes for work, to bathe in air and sunshine, to travel, to go shopping, to stay sane, and to skip bath time with his kids. He's no Sunday pedal pusher. So when the time came for a new bike, he decided to pull out all the stops. He would build his dream bike, the bike he would ride for the rest of his life; a customized machine that reflects the joy of cycling. It's All About the Bike follows Penn's journey, but this book is more than the story of his hunt for two-wheel perfection. En route, Penn brilliantly explores the culture, science, and history of the bicycle. From artisanal frame shops in the United Kingdom to California, where he finds the perfect wheels, via Portland, Milan, and points in between, his trek follows the serpentine path of our love affair with cycling. It explains why we ride. It's All About the Bike is, like Penn's dream bike, a tale greater than the sum of its parts. An enthusiastic and charming tour guide, Penn uses each component of the bike as a starting point for illuminating excursions into the rich history of cycling. Just like a long ride on a lovely day, It's All About the Bike is pure joy- enriching, exhilarating, and unforgettable.