Some writers will tell you that the great American novel would be about the national pasttime — baseball. I tend to think it could be about bicycling.
Peter Gelman is a writer of fiction from Portland, and he uses the bicycle as a vehicle for many of writings.
I ran across Gelman and illustrator Neal Skorpen (left and right in the picture) at a leaky booth at the Seattle International Bicycle Show a few weeks ago.
Although they each have their individual works, they're collaborating on a graphic novel on bicycling named “Dangerous Bicycle Mystery Quest” that will be available later this summer. Promotional material says it's about “Crumbling civilizations, ancient artifacts, mysterious plagues, and epic rides!”
That gets my attention.
Why bicycles?
I talked to Gelman briefly about why he started using a bicycle in his essays and fiction.
“As a writer, there's isolation, being stuck in an office sitting in a chair. … It's good to get out and experience the world. Bicycling inspires me.
“Everytime you get on a bicycle, something interesting happens.”
Gelman says he's also energized by the positive values of city cycling, that's why he lives in Portland.
Podcasts
You'll find some of these interesting experiences as podcasts in Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained. There's such titles as “This Machine Cures Melancholia,” “Cycling Toward the End of History,” and “A Brief Encounter with the Surly Shakespearean Insult-Quoting Bicycle.” In the last one, the author finds a bicycle with a strange power and takes it to a PBS auction appraisal show.
He has a few narrated pieces on audio CDs. “A Shocking Bicycle Ride” tells how a man and a coworker became fast friends through a common love of bicycling and their adventures led to a shocking experience on an electrified fence.
You can find more of Gelman's work at Danger Quest Mysteries website.
Who knows, maybe one day he will write the great American novel and it will be about bicycling.
Cycletoons
Illustrator Skorpen has his own bicycle themed creations. They're cartoons called Cyclotoons and humorously feature some of the truths of bicycling. You can find more of Skorpens work at the NealSkorpen.com website.
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