Hero: Dervla Murphy

As with so many great things in cycling, I first learned of Dervla through my buddy Gilbert Anderson, who referred me to Dr. Clifford Graves' summary of her book, The Perils of Dervla Murphy. In the midst of a record-setting blizzard in 1963, Dervla Murphy packed a pistol aboard Roz, her Armstrong Cadet bicycle (converted to single-speed for maximum reliability) and accomplished her first international bicycle tour--a completely self-supported solo trip from Ireland to India. In Yugoslavia, she began keeping a journal instead of mailing letters home. That journal was later published as her first book Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle. In Full Tilt, she describes her adventures through Persia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. She particularly enjoyed Afghanistan and wrote lovingly of that country.

Dervla instantly became a hero of mine, but where today was this woman who completed and wrote of this incredible adventure undertaken in the year of my birth? Imagine how thrilled I was to discover that she's still living, still writing and still traveling the world by bicycle!

In the forty years since Full Tilt she has bicycled through, and published numerous books on Africa, the Balkans, and Tibet. Generally traveling alone and unaided, her writing continues to be rich with compelling insights into the cultures and the lives of the people she meets. Recently, she's been exploring and publishing on travels in Siberia. I'll challenge anybody to read her brief Siberian Grand Tour article and deny the sprouting of a seed of wanderlust in their heart.

On her most recent adventures, she brought along her young granddaughters, and chose a gentler territory to explore--Cuba. The Australian published today an excerpt from The Island that Dared as Dervla Murphy discovers the intricacies of rail travel in Cuba.

Being such a fan, I'm proud to boast that I wrote the original Dervla Murphy article for Wikipedia back in 2003.

Mission '07

Back in 2007, while visiting San Francisco, I picked up a genuine Dutch cruiser on Craigslist--a white Batavus with Sturmey-Archer three-speed--and rode it all over the city day & night, on several SFBC rides, across the Golden Gate Bridge, to the beach with Critical Manners, etc.. My employer put me up in a nice hotel during the conference, where I worried that management might object to me bringing the bike inside. I didn't need to worry--the day manager and night manager fought each other for dibs on the right to buy the bike off me when I left town.

But afterward, when the Zeitgeist (biker bar) told me that I couldn't sleep there, I found lodging one night in a real dive of a hotel before moving to the excellent Elements Hostel in the Mission. San Francisco is famously cool and foggy, but the Mission is an oasis of dry sunshininess.

Here's a video:


(or on [vimeo] where you can full-screen it, or download the ".mov".)

In the beginning…

Full text available (free) from Ibiblio / Project Gutenberg:

• The preface and first couple chapters in HTML (work in progress)
• The whole enchilada in plain old txt

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ROUND THE WORLD ON A BICYCLE

from the August 30, 1884 Harper's Weekly

On this page we give the portrait of Mr. Thomas Stevens, who started from San Francisco, California, April 22, with the avowed intention of riding around the world (barring the Oceans) on his bicycle. He was born at Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England, December 24, 1854. Emigrating to the far West in 1871, he had not been east of the Mississippi until he started out on his famous bicycle ride across the continent. Seven men have within the last three years attempted the same feat, but the great difficulties encountered in crossing the 1500 miles of rocky mountain, barren deserts, and bridgeless streams between California and the Missouri River have invariably turned them back.

More than one-third of the route followed by Mr. Stevens had to be walked. Eighty-three and a half days of actual travel and twenty days stoppage for wet weather, etc., made one hundred and three and a half days occupied in reaching Boston, the distance by wagon-road being about 3700 miles. He followed the old California trail most of the way across the plains and mountains, astonishing the Indians, and meeting with many strange adventures. Mr. STEVENS reached Boston August 4, and is now in New York, where he hopes to make arrangements which will enable him to complete the journey around the globe; through England, France, Germany, Austria, and Turkey, thence through Asia to the Pacific.

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References:

• Jim Langley's Spin
• Wikipedia encyclopedia article on Thomas Stevens
• NPR's Weekend Edition on Thomas Stevens