Laid Back Around the World in 180 Days - Richard Evans

From the vast deserts of Kazakhstan to the Pyrenees via the monsoons of Southeast Asia, the Australian Nullarbor, the Canadian Rockies and Great Lakes, this is Richard Evans's travelogue of his six-month journey around the world by recumbent bicycle in 2014. Averaging around 1,000km per week, Richard shared treacherously potholed highways with speeding juggernauts, faced freezing nights and scorching days, and battled headwinds strong enough to blow him off the road. Having lost 7kg in the first seven weeks and with 19 weeks still to go, it was important to stabilise the weight loss. A cure was found in beer and dumplings. Roads varied erratically from freshly tarmacked highways of international standard one minute to heavily rutted dirt tracks the next, where all evidence of any rideable surface had long since disappeared. In the thermal pools of Taupo, New Zealand, he met ultra-runner Kevin Carr, who'd been running round the world at over 50km/day for two years. Kevin's blog Hardwayround prompted Richard to consider renaming his own blog Easywayround. Because there were some easy bits too. And running is always harder. In an American supermarket he stumbled across the gun counter, where a shop assistant apologised for not knowing much about firearms because she usually worked on fruit and veg. Countless acts of spontaneous generosity from strangers propelled him along the way. Several times he was warned that he'd reached the edge of civilisation and to continue would be sheer folly because folk in the next town/province/country were aggressive savages. Upon arrival however he was invariably met by benevolent locals interested in where he was from, where he was going and how old he was (521/2). And one proposal of marriage. Richard eventually finished back where he started, at BikeFix in London, having ridden 23,000km across 18 countries and four continents. The only aggression he'd faced had been on the roads: first from motorists, a sizeable minority of whom morph into murderous maniacs as soon as they get behind the wheel; and to a lesser extent from dogs - but Richard had his own special way of dealing with them... All royalties from this book will go to RoadPeace, a small charity which looks after the bereaved and injured from road crashes, and campaigns for safer streets. Road crashes kill 1.3 million people worldwide every year - that's more every day than died in the Twin Towers on 9/11, and almost three times more than die from malaria.