Article 2 - REVIEW OF "Miles From Nowhere" April 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    Sometimes people come up with a crazy idea, like quitting their jobs to write a novel, or go live in the country off the land, but the idea sounds so nuts that they put it aside so that they can live sensibly and practically. Barbara Savage and her husband, Larry, came up with a crazy idea as well: to bike around the entire world. Except, in their case, sensibility lost and adventure won: the Savages circumvented the world on two-wheelers in just under two years.

    "Miles From Nowhere" is the story of this unique adventure. It takes the reader from the couple's home in Santa Barbara, through the continental United States and Canada, through Europe, Egypt, the Himalayas, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and Tahiti. All total, the Savages trekked through twenty-five countries and 23,000 miles, a testament of determination and will commemorated in this book. This feat is all the more remarkable, considering that neither person had been an expert cyclist at the onset of the adventure. The whole trip was just a product of a "crazy idea" realized, a realization of doing it "while you still can".

    Barbara Savage recounts not only the paths that she takes, but the people that she and her husband meet along the way. She writes about the supporters at home, and those who thought the two were completely nuts for doing such a crazy thing as riding a bike along the world. The characters that the couple encounter are recalled with colorful and memorable detail, very much added spice to an undertaking as grueling as this one. With frank but not overdone prose, she also talks about what it is like to travel with one's spouse for two years and never be apart from him or her, and how this can change a person as well as the accomplishment of the adventure itself.

    Throughout the book, Savage describes the physical struggles that she, her husband, and other cycling companions endured during day after day of riding a hundred miles a day, through icy rain, steep gradient, and miserable health conditions like dysentery, with rodents as sleeping companions. None of this serves to dampen the resolve of the author, and most of these misadventures are recounted in the narrative with a touch of humor that makes it entertaining for the reader, if miserable for the author while she experienced them.

    One of the themes that appears in the book is the concept of doing an adventure like this while you can, meaning when one is young enough and healthy enough to do so. While this may seem like an attitude that most would think to lead to irresponsibility and a lot of regret in an impoverished middle age, in the case of Barbara Savage, the statement rang true. Although she and her husband successfully completed their odyssey, Savage died in a cycling accident near her home as her book was going to press, making the story all the more poignant in how it affected her and her husband Larry. "Miles From Nowhere" stands as a testament to her brief life of adventure, to do it while you can, to even do it at all.