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It's All About The Bike: The Pursuit Of Happiness On Two Wheels (2011)

by Robert Penn(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1608195384 (ISBN13: 9781608195381)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Bloomsbury USA

review 1: This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in the history of the bicycle OR the current state of the bicycle (spoiler: it's not that different today)! I am a light-to-moderate cycling enthusiast and I found myself unable to put this book down. I also found myself more and more motivated to get out and ride my bike as I began to feel a sort of connectedness to the history of the machine. On the face of it this book sounds like a guy with money to spare and time on his hands designing his dream bike, and if that were all that it was I would have hated it. But Penn's breadth of knowledge on every aspect of the bicycle makes up the bulk of the book. Each chapter covers one cycle part (wheels, tires, frame, etc), and in this way the reader learns the history of th... moree bicycle part by part. Plus you get to see the culmination of all that history as you meet people working in the industry today. The stasis of the bike, more or less unchanged since the 1890's, has meant that essentially the same knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation of bicycle designers, owners and mechanics. The more I understood this the prouder I felt to be a part of that unending bicycle chain of events. It really emphasizes the global community of cyclists. And it motivated me to finally get out there and learn how to tune up and adjust my own bike, which is something that most casual cyclists know nothing about, I've discovered. Finally, there is an hour long BBC documentary available on YouTube that follows Penn around as he collects his parts and assembles his perfect bike. I recommend watching this ONLY after reading the book. It cuts out a great deal of the information and focuses more on the people working at these companies and small workshops all around the world and on Penn's personal journey. Basically, without the book to reinforce the documentary it comes across more like the-book-that-could-have-been back at the beginning of this review. However, after reading the book it is a great way to put faces to many of the names that you've come to know over the course of five chapters.
review 2: This is one guy's story of building the perfect bike from the ground up and the travels, history, and anecdotes he met along the way. I found myself heartily geeking out at quite a few parts of the story, chiefly the visit to the old Repack stomping grounds where mountain biking was born. Though I have been out of the loop on building and riding for two decades now, memoirs such as this really inspire me to get back out there. I won't be building a $5,500 dream bike, but I will keep babying the mountain bike I bought back in 1989 and sneaking out onto the roads occasionally. less

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