Dearest friends: We are PSYCHED to announce the release of our second book - Bike Touring with Kids: the Europe Epic!
It has all the best stories from our 10,000km, 20-country family bike adventure across Europe, with tips on how to get started with your own family - and especially some sweet details on all those European desserts!
Please consider giving it a read - print-on-demand paperback or Kindle e-reader - and then a review on Amazon.
Here's the description below. Happy summer reading!
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Ed and Jocelyn fell in love on bicycles, spent their honeymoon pedaling from Vancouver to Tijuana, and refused to believe that life-after-kids would be the end of their ambitious adventures. So they hiked across Europe and South America on parental leave with a baby in a backpack, then cycled with their two young sons on various contraptions all over the Pacific Northwest, Yukon and Alaska, the Canadian Rockies and all four Atlantic provinces, and eventually for six months across New Zealand, Australia and French Polynesia on two tandems.
Now, Heron and Sitka are teenagers – and they’re in charge of the route planning, the fun stops, and most importantly, the desserts.
Europe Epic is the story of this intrepid Yukon family’s biggest odyssey yet: twenty countries, 10,000 km and several hundred desserts from Spain through Portugal, France, Italy and Croatia to Greece; then from Switzerland through Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden to Norway.
In this inspiring and hilarious tale, you’ll follow the fearless foursome as they:
- Bike through bone-soaking downpours, gale-force headwinds, suffocating heat, thick spiky brush, a broken crankshaft, a rambunctious Good Friday parade and numerous dead-ends…
- … But also along spectacular cliffside trails, below sea level (twice), through a 400m-long tunnel under a medieval citadel, up and down the Alps (twice), on hard-packed North Sea sand beaches, and (more frequently than they should) on last-minute mad dashes to catch the day’s last ferry
- Ride not just bikes, but also scooters, surfboards, kayaks, wakeboards, sand dunes, ziplines, waterslides, gondolas, alpine hiking chairlifts, a whitewater raft, a wind-powered rollercoaster, and a Porsche
- Explore sea-carved caves, medieval castles, far-flung Roman ruins, opulent cathedrals, communist war bunkers, hollowed-out airplanes, royal palaces, Viking villages, Dutch windmills, the Louvre, the Acropolis, the Colosseum, and the life of Ötzi the 5300-year-old iceman
- Sleep in tents, on beaches, in free Danish dog-house-sized camp shelters, at a luxury Bosnian resort hotel, in a wooden teepee, next to an all-night karaoke party, in pilgrim hostels, in a Montenegrin cave, at a Willy-Wonka hippie camp, and on a rickety old canal boat
- Witness soccer matches, a tractor parade, a wedding on a fire truck, a silent disco, a spontaneous beach concert, a street fashion show, two sand-sculpture parks, a wave-powered sea organ, and a gaggle of French people chasing a duck with a bag.
- Learn to say Hello, Please, Thank you, “Can I have one of those pastries” and “Where are the chick peas” in 15 languages.
- Chase waves, jump off cliffs, swim in glacier lakes, scale a mountain peak in rock-climbing harnesses, nap under the Eiffel Tower, do the chicken dance in an Albanian grocery store, and get lost oh so many times.
Along the way, you’ll watch this pedal-happy gang experience endless highs and lows, meet hundreds of wacky characters and new friends, learn and grow and laugh and cry, and make forever memories as they evolve from two parents tugging along two kids, to four best friends riding side-by-side (not always literally, which would be hazardous) on the family bonding journey of a lifetime.
You can buy it HERE now on Amazon - print-on-demand or Kindle e-reader.
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