Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 56) Farmer is a Brittain fellow and writing teacher in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture in the Ivan Allen College and the winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for his autobiographical tale of the transformation of a 20-yearold college dropout who embarks on a 5,000-mile bicycle journey into an outof-shape 40-year-old who attempts to retrace his route. Prologue I T WAS THE SUMMER OF 1985. Ronald Reagan was in his second term. The Los Angeles Lakers, led by Magic and Kareem, were on their way to their third championship in six years. A music festival called Live Aid played to audiences around the world in order to raise money for the world’s starving children. It was a time of optimism. I was twenty. It is winter now, and nearly 20 years have passed. … I sit in my small writing studio in Walton, Neb., and look at an old photo, at the lean legs that straddle the Trek touring bicycle, the still unused tent and sleeping bag strapped to the rear rack, fully packed panniers draped over each tire. The picture was taken by my mother, and I remember the moment after she snapped it, how we had each stood, not knowing what else to say, and then she hugged me good-bye. I lifted the bike, and in small stuttered steps turned and pointed it toward the street. With the tires wobbling under the weight of my gear, I pedaled off the curb and rode south to the end of Crown Ridge Drive, before finally turning right and heading west on a journey that would take me through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Albert, and Idaho, across Washington, into Vancouver, before returning down the coast, through Oregon and half of California, east across Nevada, Utah, Arizona, one tire carefully set into New Mexico at the four corners (I wanted to tell people that I hadn’t been to New Mexico but my bicycle had), and finally, a five-day push back to Colorado Springs, where a small group of friends, family, and neighbors had gathered on the front lawn to welcome me home. Consider him, that 20-year-old boy. (Knowing who I was then, I can’t think of myself back then as anything but a boy.) Naive, sheltered, painfully shy. In the year that preceded the summer, I’d quit my second college and moved back in with my parents. I was working at a downtown soda fountain called Michelle’s. Two nights a week I 56 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008
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