The First Big Ride

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," as the saying goes. This certainly applied to Eloise Hanner, a fortysomething woman who signed up to ride her bicycle across the United States, even though she had never ridden more than ten miles in one day. This is the story of a middle-aged businesswoman who left a successful career in search of something more meaningful to her. A noncyclist, she joined the first Big Ride, which started with 1,000 riders attempting the 3,000-mile ride from Seattle to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1998. Starting out as a relative novice, she began the intimidating preparation of training to ride an average of more than eighty miles a day, in a ride that would eventually take Hanner - and the reader - from the starting point in Seattle to the grassy Capitol Mall in D.C. What started as a bicycle odyssey developed into a distilled version of life, where storms threatened lives and strong friendships formed in days instead of years. The First Big Ride examines career, values, and what to do with the second half of life, a question asked by many as they approach fifty. The author began by asking herself what she had really accomplished after twenty years in the corporate world. And, of course, a bigger question loomed ahead: What was she going to do next? This is not the story of an athlete but of an ordinary person. It is an inspiration for everyone who sits at a desk and wonders if the time for adventure has passed them by.