Going Somewhere Ride & Read
The Wisconsin Book Festival, in partnership with the Wisconsin Bike Federation, presents a guided bike ride and reading with Brian Benson for his new bicycle memoir, GOING SOMEWHERE. Join us at Pinney library at 1:00 pm for a ride with the author to Central Library where Brian Benson will read from his book and talk about his remarkable journey by bicycle from Wisconsin across the American West at 2:00 pm.
Brian Benson has a fill-in-the-blank liberal-arts degree, a million vague life plans, and zero sense of direction. So he sets off on a grandly imagined, poorly planned Latin American backpacking trip, during which he meets and falls for Rachel, a self-possessed Oregonian living and working in western Guatemala. When Rachel mentions that she's always dreamed of bicycling across the U.S., Brian asks to come along for the ride. A Plume paperback original, GOING SOMEWHERE: A Bicycle Journey Across America is Brian’s affecting, adventurous account of his and Rachel’s two-wheeled odyssey from northern Wisconsin to Somewhere West. The pair push off from the lush Northwoods, infatuated with the promise of adventure and each other, but as they progress into the bleak western plains, Brian and Rachel begin to discover the messy realities of life on the road. Mile by mile, they contend with merciless winds and vivid characters, broken bikes and bodies—and the looming question of what comes next.
Brian Benson
Brian Benson grew up in northern Wisconsin, just across the road from a lake shaped like a heart, and just outside a town with three bars and no stoplights. Much of his youth was spent biking back roads, chasing soccer balls, and variously injuring himself in the bountiful woods and water. At eighteen, Brian headed to UW-Madison, where he pursued two lib-arts degrees and took zero creative writing classes, and after a few years of bouncing around the Americas on bus and bike, he ended up in Portland, Oregon, where he spends his days talking about how much he misses Wisconsin.