Travels by Bicycle
1990 to 2016

Michael J. Ferguson
Montréal

Preface

My first long distance trip was from Strasbourg to Paris in 1986. In 1990 I was able to share my trips with my friends and relatives. I took a one pound Atari Portfolio with me and started to record my observations, confusions, ignorance, trials, and kindnesses. The Portfolio was not an exceptionally comfortable writing machine so the earlier journals are really a succession of notable events. In 1993 I graduated to a PC laptop. This made writing a little easier but the penalty was that I had to become quite innovative to keep it charged. Then in 2001, I started travelling with a digital camera. Now the journals are tied very closely to the pictures.

I don't feel that I have really seen the country, or met the people until I ride my bike. It is really quite difficult to notice, from a speeding car, that snails in the Gironde much prefer the old concrete kilometer markers to the new plastic ones.

The Journals