The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold: Adventures Along the Iron Curtain Trail

"Three Stars" according to Geoffrey D. Withers. Not as good as gironimo but some interesting relics from the Cold War.. Really interesting travel guide / adventure cyling book. Makes Really interesting travel guide / adventure cyling book. Makes me want to load up and go on a 1000km ride across Europe.. Mr. Customer said Too much is Too much. Interesting concept but too over-the-top. Not every line has to be uproariously funny. That's overkill. Reminds me of Dave Barry's style, and why I stopped reading Dave Barry.

Asking for trouble and getting it, he sets off from the northernmost Norwegian-Russian border at the Arctic winter's brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless and massively subzero desolation of snowbound Finland. Scaling a new peak of rash overambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000 kilometer route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike. After three months, 20 countries and a 58 degree jaunt up the centigrade scale, man and bike finally wobble up to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria, older and wiser, but mainly older.. Haunted throughout by the border detritus of watchtowers and rusted razor wire, Moore reflects on the curdling of the Communist dream and the memories of a Cold War generation reared on the fear of apocalypse - at a time of ratcheting East-West tension. Sleeping in bank vaults, imperial palaces and unreconstructed Soviet youth hostels, battling vodka-breathed Russian hostility, Romanian landslides and a diet of dumplings, Moore and his 'so-small bicycle' are sustained by the kindness of reindeer farmers and Serbian rock gods, plus a shameful addiction to Magic Man energy drink