As almost everyone figures out at one point or another, it’s easier to follow society’s rules than to break them. Break them, and you can...

Normandy’s impenetrable hedgerows were a curse for advancing soldiers on both sides of WWII, but today they merely tease the curious...

It doesn’t take armed conflict to produce danger and hardship. Just get on a bike and pedal. War will come to you. That’s what happened...

Is riding a bicycle around the backroads of France a good thing or bad? That depends on who’s doing the riding and when you ask them....

Social life in a Norman fishing village is no sitcom. First, there aren’t many people on hand. Second, two-thirds of those who are live...

At a dinner party in Paris a year or so ago, Roman friend Daniele Fano mentioned that he was planning to ride his bike along the Via...

I’d have written this entry long ago if the only thing involved were a travelog about Kyrgyzstan. But that’s the last thing on my list....

There I’d been all worried about not finding a cycling partner because good ones are like haystack needles, when suddenly I had two. The...

So Ann Henriksen and I struck a deal, and now there was much to do to prepare for the big Kyrgyz adventure. For weeks we’ve been...

To find a suitable cycling partner is no cakewalk. One might think the promise of exotic adventure irresistible to any number of working...

If nobody ever told you, it rains in Paris, and rains. And when it ain’t raining, it’s gray. Residents take this state of affairs as...

You needn’t travel far from Paris to see how the country towns and smaller cities of France are shrinking, their economies strangled by...

One can’t speak. The other never stops. One is beautiful and functions perfectly. The other drinks too much and spews food while eating....

Now that I think about it, one doesn’t tend to associate Sicilians with outdoor activities such as hiking, camping or mountaineering....

We live in a world of contrasts—a truth that shows its face in stark fashion when you get on a bike in a foreign land. Here in France,...

The idea that I might refer to a remote peninsula in northwestern France as “home” is puzzling to me. The place is 7,000 miles away from...

On a bike it can happen that you arrive in places you don’t quite know how you found, and from which access back to those you do know...

Logic would have it that the greatest satisfaction comes from setting oneself gargantuan goals that somehow one manages to achieve—the...

If I reach back past the brambles of adult life to the tender simplicities of my teens, I get a choppy film, practically in black and...

I received a typically minimalist message the other day from bike pal Robert, a man of few words but some determination. The email...

There’s not much of a story in it, really. But it is interesting to sniff around this world and compare the daily concerns, styles and...

I’ve got two excellent bikes—three if you count the tandem. The first and oldest found me on a backstreet in Hong Kong, in a cluttered...

You know what it’s like at the end of a long ride. Your head feels like a cannonball, your hands go numb and crotch surgery seems...

Ten years ago I was walking through a town in Normandy when I came across a vide grenier, which is the French term for “garage sale” (the...

Fly in to Paris from any direction and you’d swear the terrain below offers no significant vertical challenges for pedal-powered road...

Think of Paris as a wheel. It’s not hard to do since it’s pretty round, its border defined by the “périphérique” ring road that pulses...