Sunday, March 23, 2014

Obit Writer Muses About Life, Love And Death


New York Times obituary writer Bruce Weber has published "Life Is a Wheel: Love Death, Etc., and a Bike Ride Across America," a new travelogue The Associated Press described as both "delightful" and "fascinating."

The book focuses on Weber and his decision at 57 to reprise the coast-to-coast bike ride he took 18 years earlier. The 4,122-mile adventure takes him more than 100 days to complete, with just a few days off for a wedding in New Orleans and a funeral in Los Angeles.

[Weber's] book is more than a chronicle of his two-wheel journey across endless prairie and farm fields and through countless small towns and suburbs. One of the most fascinating sections recalls the author's 1995 bike trip in Vietnam, a more gripping adventure than anything he encounters on his latest ride. He is arrested while riding alone in the jungle, then stranded without food or water, an episode he can now fondly look back on as "one of the great moments of my life."

For more information, click here.