Graphic Union Press / Biking the U.S. of Awesomeness

Biking the U.S. of Awesomeness: The mass email correspondence of cross-country cyclists Meryl Estes, Nicole Grohoski, Caitlin Prentice and Jonathan Stuart-Moore, illustrated by Charles Mahal

“To the Idaho Transportation Department: We'll never forget the rumble strips”

Two weeks after graduating from college, Nicole Grohoski, Caitlin Prentice, and Jonathan Stuart-Moore embarked on a cycling adventure from Maine to Oregon, equipped with hypothetical route maps from a college geography project and several gallons of peanut butter. The bikers covered over 4000 miles in eleven U.S. states and one Canadian province, adding a fourth member, Meryl Estes, in Traverse City, Michigan. Their mass emails to friends and family, written from the road on a near-weekly basis, chronicle encounters with friends, strangers, law enforcement officials, wildlife and extraordinary landscapes + memorable cultural phenomena such as fried cheese curds and the Lawn Ornament Capital of the World.

Emails from the bikers are collected together with emails exchanged between their parents at journey's end, the introduction to Caitlin and Nicole's college geography project From Sea to Shining Sea: A Bike Tour of the USA, a route map charted by Nicole and illustrations by Charles Mahal.

Edited by Marissa Gemma and Allison Stielau, cartography by Nicole Grohoski, design and typography by Anne Callahan.

Paperback. 64 pages including 12 illustrations, three-part route map, and index. 800 copies offset-printed by The Stinehour Press in Lunenburg, Vt. and Smyth-sewn by New Hampshire Bindery in Concord, N.H. in May 2008.