A fun journey to go on. Lots of interesting gems of info tucked in throughout as well. He gets a little worn out at the end, as does the story. ( )

The Cyclist Went Out in the Cold:
Adventures Riding The Iron Curtain
Author: Tim Moore
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Publishing Date: 2017
Pgs: 340
Dewey: 796.6094 MOO
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Scaling a new peak of rash over-ambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000km route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike.

Asking for trouble and getting it, he sets off at the Arctic winter’s brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless and massively sub-zero desolation of snowbound Finland.

Haunted throughout the journey 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.

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.
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Genre:
Travelogue
History
Bicylce Travel
Iron Curtain
Europe

Why this book:
I love a good travelogue.
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The Feel:

Favorite Character:
The elderly Norwegian guy, 18 hours after he first started out, giving him the “you’re not from around here, are you?” He questioned him about whether he knew what the weather was like there as he rode his East German Shopping Bike a hundred miles north of the Arctic circle, sliding down Norway into Finland and on along.

The MIFA 900 shopping bike.

The German shopping bike enthusiasts giving him advice on how to modify his little East German MIFA into something that could actually make the ride all along the Iron Curtain Trail(EV-13).

EuroVelo 13 - The Iron Curtain Trail

Least Favorite Character:
Tim, himself.

Favorite Scene:
The image of droves of fisherman along that riverside in Croatia, all suntans, in Speedos, with a fishing rod in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Favorite Quote:
Describing his 30-year-old East German shopping bike with it’s nailed snow tires as looking mean like something Mad Max's aunt would ride to bingo during the apcalypse is hilarious.

Riding a bicycle through Finland in the winter being described as a dribbled slurry of gloom and delusion.

Favorite Concept:
Arctic karma: when you live in a difficult region and find yourself in a bad situation, you must attend, 100%, on other people. They didn't want to help him, they needed to and, now, they feel happy and more safe because they can believe that someone will be there to help them when they need it.

Hmm Moments:
Finally looked at a picture of a MIFA 900 shopping bike...this sumbitch is crazy trying to ride that thing 10,000km from Norway all along the iron curtain to the Black Sea.

He dips into moral lassisitude more than a few times over the course of this hellish bike ride.

After 6,000km, having a kidney stone issue pop up along the road, and managing to drink a bunch of water and do what had to be done and stay on the road. That's a tough man, a tough, tough man.

WTF Moments:
Holy s***! The Schonenberg, East Germany landfill where trucks from the West could dump a ton of anything for $20. And the residents still have an 80% higher cancer rate than those around them. Holy s***!

Meh / PFFT Moments:
He uses way too many column inches talking about his and his wife's previous trip along there and curtain. I like this story and this adventure, but it would have been better served if the editor would have talked him and his page count down a bit, and maybe left half of the story of his and his wife's 1990 car ride around Eastern Europe out.

Wisdom:
HIs trip was horribly planned.

Juxtaposition:
I read some Ugly Americanism into the way he reacts to some of the people along his route. ...then realize that he is being an Ugly Englander. ...guess it’s something to do with all of us Englishers...or whatever the common term for all of us is. Though Ugly Canadian sounds like a contradiction in terms. The way he writes about Finland, he sounds like an ugly tourist, classic cliche-like. Frozen, winterized arctic circle bicycle riding might have impacted his appreciation, but his appreciation is still ugly sounding. Though at the end of the ride, his appreciation for those early days, especially pre-Russia, seems greatly improved.

His visit to the MIFA factory seems odd. Them inviting him and wanting it to be about the future, while what he's doing is obviously about the past.

If EV-13 follows the Iron Curtain shouldn't the trail go down the Adriatic Coast to Greece including Croatia to Albania, but instead goes through Croatia, Hungary, and Serbia across toward Romania. I'm confused about what's considered the Iron Curtain, I guess.

The Unexpected:
His visit to Probstzella and the Haus des Volkes seems very The Shining, all alone in a huge resort hotel in a town that is lost in time and cut off both because of its GDR past and it's “not here yet” future.
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Pacing:
It’s well paced.

Last Page Sound:
So, the big finish, he writes a paragraph that describes what's going on in the last 56km and, then, he's sitting on a bench with those 56km still to go waiting on his family to show up, I don't get it. Built in anticlimax. That paragraph from that last day could’ve been a chapter unto itself, as opposed to the short shrift it was given.

Questions I’m Left With:
So, was he afraid of the camp owner in Finland, the one who he was all alone with in a building full of empty beer cans in the middle of the blizzard, 3 hours from the nearest house...the one who really wanted to get him drunk. ...raised eyebrows.

Why didn't he start in Norwegian and Finnish Summertime, going in winter when it hovers around -14°C, the sweat you build up riding the bike or having breakfast...once you go outside in the Arctic could freeze solid and kill you? Of course on the other end, I wonder what those Balkan mountains would have been like in late summer or winter instead of being there in summer when they were baking him alive?

Editorial Assessment:
Should’ve been a bit more present in focusing the story on the “current” trip as opposed to previous trips through the same areas.
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Growing up as a teenager in the 1980’s the cold war and the Soviet threat was very real indeed. The whole system imploded at the end of that decade and the Iron Curtain that separated Western Europe from Communist bloc for decades was drawn aside. This physical and ideological border stretched from the Black Sea all the way up to the Barents Sea on the Finnish border with the USSR. This continental wide border is now the route for Eurovelo 13 (EV13) a 10,400km trail that passes through 20 different countries, countless monuments and a huge variety of landscapes of the countries that once were opposed.

It was this route that Tim Moore sets out to cycle. Not on a fancy bike though, oh no, the one he has chosen is a two geared, tiny two wheeled shopping bike. His velocipede of choice is a MIFA 900, a bike made in the GDR with broadly similar attributes to that of the Trabant. For some mad reason he was starting on the Russian Norwegian border in the midst of an Arctic winter.

Ambitious? Definitely, but what could possibly go wrong…

The route he takes is littered by the long forgotten and sinister paraphernalia of a once impenetrable border; razor wire, rusting towers and abandoned checkpoints. Cycling on the snow on a properly prepared bike is hard enough, but riding on this remnant of the GDR it is really tough going. He is kept in high spirits by the kindness of strangers, sleeps in hotels and hostels and occasionally peoples spare rooms. His tenacity to keep pedalling is matched only by his addiction to the Magic Man energy drink with its warming addition. He meets all sorts of characters on his journey, all affected by the change as the region changed from Communist control to modern Europe and free borders.

I have read all of Moore’s other books, so I was really looking forward to this. He manages to dream up some quirky and unusual travels, walking across Spain with a donkey, locating those that have had the ignominy of getting ‘nul points’ in the Eurovision and rediscovering his inner Roman in the re-enactment world. He is ever so slight nutty, and this makes for very funny moments in his travels. His self-depreciating attitude means that he rubs along with most people he meets, and give us a series of amusing anecdotes too. It was well worth reading as have been all his others. It didn't quite reach French Revolutions though which is still one of the funniest book I have ever read. ( )

You can always rely on a Tim Moore book to provide the odd chuckle and while the rationale behind "The Cyclist who went out in the cold" (someone older than me rides an old East German shopping bicycle ten thousand kilometres around the old Iron Curtin) strikes me as asking for trouble, particularly considering Moore starts his trip above the Arctic Circle in mid-winter, I did indeed have the odd chuckle.

Beyond the fact Moore seems to relish making things as difficult as possible (I don't think any reader could begrudge him for starting in northern Norway in mid-summer and finish at the Black Sea when it's say late Autumn), I always enjoy Moore's history lessons and the places and people he meets, and his self-deprecating tone is almost always appreciated.

And of course I couldn't but stop every few pages and think "this man is older than me but is able to ride a poor quality bicycle 10 000 kilometres through waist deep snow, pot holed roads while dodging mad drivers, yet I would roll into the fetal position at the mere thought of riding a bike to the other end of town. ( )

This is my second go-around with Tim Moore but I also suspect that this is his last insane bike adventure as short of riding the length of the Great Wall of China on a unicycle it's hard to imagine how he's going to top this. To a large degree this is much less of a deranged trip mostly for the hell of it and more of a memoir taking stock of a life spent in the shadow of the Cold War and a revisit of how the immediate hopes that emerged in the wake of that conflict have been realized; or not. By the time Moore is done with this trip he's nodding in agreement with Vaclav Havel's belief that it's going to take several generations for the impacted societies to really recover from the whole sorry affair. If there is an issue with this book as an entertainment it's that it peaks early with Moore's misadventures in Finland, in March, north of the Arctic Circle; good times. ( )