Ten years after experimenting with pedaling off-pavement and writing columns for the local newspapers about my dirt road bicycling exploits, I self-published Cycling The California Outback with Bodfish. These adventures started in 1973 shortly after I'd relocated to Bodfish, California from the lower elevations in California.
I'd always wanted to be a "mountain person". My adventure bicycle spirit took me over Sherman Pass (before it was paved), to Saddle Springs and Kelso Valley, to the top of Breckinridge Lookout from the Bodfish side. My C.Itoh road bike had fatter than normal 27" tires and proved quite durable during all of these exploits.
My son, who is no-doubt smarter than I, has a publishing idea for me..."Put a new cover on your California Outback book emphasizing that these routes are Gravel Grinding loops." He probably didn't realize that I still possess 1,000 of the 10,000 Outback books that I printed many decades ago but, my answer, Great Idea! A bible of Northern California Gravel Grinders.
This is what retirement is going to look like for me...revisiting all of the loops I featured in my four bicycling books; Butte Country Bicycle Journeys, Cycling In The Shadow Of Shasta, Cycling The California Outback and California Dream Cycling...all with Bodfish. I'll just have to come up with a way to release myself from the retail grinder that I've been so heavily involved with these last 25 years. Working on "The Complete Bodfish" book of questionable road surfaces...sounds like a great project for my 70's.
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