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Lois on the Loose: One Woman, One Motorcycle, 20,000 Miles Across the Americas
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Product Description
Lois Pryce was working at the BBC in London, firmly set on the career track. But unbeknownst to her coworkers, Lois was leading a parallel life as well, that of a biker babe with an overwhelming case of wanderlust, one that couldn’t be satisfied by a weekend holiday. Her days in a cubicle were numbered, and it wasn’t long before she was back on her bike and looking for adventure.
Armed only with the Spanish words for “caution” and “cheese,” Lois set off to conquer America---both Americas, actually. Starting in Alaska and working her way down the Pacific Coast, she rode through snow, desert, and everything in between to reach the southernmost tip of Argentina.
Lois tackled every type of fellow biker imaginable and endured everything the continents could throw at her with quick thinking and a vibrant sense of humor. Whether bribing her way through Central American borders, spending the night in a Mexican brothel, or crashing her bike in Patagonia, Lois’s bright, funny travelogue will charm anyone who longs for adventure and a stretch of the open road.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #134768 in Books
- Published on: 2007-03-20
- Released on: 2007-03-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780312352219
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bored by her desk job at the BBC, Pryce decided to convert her travel daydreams into real-life adventure. At her local travel bookshop, she discovered a book called Jupiter's Travels by Ted Simon as well as a few handbooks on motorcycle adventuring, and she was hooked. She bought a small dirt bike, a versatile and affordable Yamaha XT225 Serow, and decided she'd bike from Anchorage, Alaska, to the southernmost city of South America, Ushuaia, Argentina—almost 20,000 miles. In this engaging read, Pryce narrates the adventure. Local bikers helped the witty and sociable Pryce get her Serow fixed, strangers offered shelter or advice and various friends joined her, for better or worse. She rode through flaking dried mud and boulder-strewn donkey paths, through broiling desert heat and blinding Andean snows. Armchair travelers will delight in this funny, vivid account and—almost—wish they'd done it themselves. B&w photos throughout. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
For readers who crave, or enjoy reading about, nonstop action and adventure, here is--are you ready?--a motorcycle travel book written by a woman! Join Pryce as she inks her route onto the map, chooses a bike, resigns from her job, and rolls on out. If "vroom" is your thing, you'll enjoy accompanying her on her many adventures and misadventures. You'll warm up to her steadfast stubbornness, her obsession about keeping on, keeping on. You'll beam as you ride across giant salt flats, high desert, and rocky landscapes. Pryce covers nearly 20,000 miles, yet she is as restless and hopeful when she is finally homeward bound as she was when she set out. As an in-depth travelogue, this disappoints; similarly, as a wildly funny travelogue, the book also disappoints. True, it is a fast read, and the author is truly a friendly storyteller, but veteran travel readers will find themselves wanting more. More casual readers, however, will be just fine with it and come to appreciate that "vroom" is music to her ears. Sarah Watstein
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Mix a biting British sense of humor with a Yamaha motorcycle and you get this adventure-filled story about an intrepid woman facing her destiny across the Americas, one rain-soaked, bug-infested, low-quality-taco-filled mile at a time.”
---Wendy Dale, author of Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals
“If traveling is a sort of education, then Lois Pryce is now one of the world’s most learned adventurers. Her misfortunes, related with wit and good humor, become our fortune, a great tumble of rough gems and gold. Her bike may not be fast, but her account is all speed and joy.”
---Melissa Holbrook Pierson, author of The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles
“Lois makes merry work of a rough road. She knows how to tell a good story, and her lighthearted account almost disguises the grit, the resilience, and the brave independence that lay behind her choices. It’s a great read, and I hope there will be more.”
---Ted Simon, author of Jupiter’s Travels
“Like spending an evening in a warm pub transfixed by a friendly storyteller recounting wild adventures.”
---Tom Miller, author of The Panama Hat Trail
“If I had a motorcycle, and handlebars had dashboard saints, I’d buy me a little plastic Lois to keep front and center, to remind me to keep my sense of humor when the gaskets start blowing and that it ain’t the destination so much as the ride.”
---Ayun Halliday, author of No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late
Customer Reviews
Don't judge a book by its cover
Really, my only real criticism of this book is the really bad cover design. But heeding the advice from my wise father, I cracked open the cover and began reading giving the author fifty pages to capture my attention; it took Pryce far less time. Within the first few pages I had laughed out loud half a dozen times, was entirely engrossed and had added "SuperBri" to my lexicon!
This is the fourth book I've read that details an adventurous motorcyclists attempt to ride to Ushuaia, the southern most city in the Western Hemisphere, but Pryce's version has captured the fun factor better than the competition. Finding humor and irony in just about everything she faces, I giggled and grinned my way from Alaska to Argentina, grew anxious over the state of disrepair or her bike and took comfort in the fact that she surely must have survived because who else would have written her book.
Pryce does a brilliant job of describing the world she is traveling though, with comical prose that is fun and easy to read and where so many of these stories strive to come to some deep, thought-out, life-lesson learned, Pryce simply expresses the desire to return to the comforts of home and reveal the desire to begin her next big adventure (which, by the way, is riding through Africa according to her website). I only wish she would have taken a few more photo's. In any case, this should be on the shelf of any moto-adventure geek who hopes to someday take more than a week or two to wander about on ones motorcycle.
Give Us More!
This is a quick and easy read. Lois's amazing 20,000 mile motorcycle mega-transect from Alaska to Argentina is an entertaining and witty tale. The author has a good sense of humor and her descriptions of the people she meets and places she roars through are light, loose (pun intended) and a lot of fun. Not only that, her scathing portrayal of life in a cubicle for the vaunted BBC may be the best part of the book. What wankers her immediate supervisor and his boss were. Anyone familiar with the drudgery of modern office life can certainly relate.
I've long dreamed of navigating the Pan-American Highway but fear it may be too late, even in a 4WD vehicle. Lois's story relates just what a grueling and demanding trip that would be; definitely an undertaking for a youthful bum and spine. How she managed to do it on a high-pitched 250-cc trail bike made this reader shake his head in wonder. The border crossings of Central America alone were enough to dishearten even the most determined traveler.
As an American I was glad to see there wasn't any Yank-bashing, despite the fact that Pryce must have had plenty of ammunition. Whisking through southern California had to have been tempting fodder. A French woman who tags along for a portion of the trip is described as having "anti-American sentiments" and one bloke in South America, while berating an American biker for his lack of cooking skills says something along the lines of "No wonder the world hates you," albeit jokingly. That's about the extent of it and, all in all, we don't come out looking any worse than the other nationalities, including a maniacal Canadian cop who goes ballistic on her for riding without insurance.
An inkling of just what an undertaking this was is revealed toward the end of the book, in the far reaches of southern Argentina. A peasant woman with whom Pryce is staying looks blankly when told the trip had started in Alaska. When she's made aware that Pryce passed through Santiago, the woman says, "They have come all the way from Santiago! SANTIAGO, CHILE!" As isolated as this woman was, in deepest Patagonia, she could only absorb so much.
If I have a complaint about the book, it's that some sections are glossed over a bit too much. It left me wanting more detail. Having just spent a few days in the redwood country of northern California, I was disappointed at how Lois breezed through that and many other gorgeous sections of the West Coast. Maybe she saw so many beautiful places that it blended together after a while. Also, I've been to most of the countries she traverses and was looking forward to more vivid descriptions. I can imagine that a trip like this was exhausting. I'm sure it was a major chore to make notes at the end of every riding day.
Finally, I can't help mentioning that most readers will relish the karma-like comeuppance that befalls a particularly bitchy companion, Amalia. I will not reveal the end but greatly enjoyed how the story turned out. Diplomatically, Lois reserves judgement, at least in print.
I'm not a motorcycle enthusiast but still enjoyed this traveler's tale. I look forward to a follow-up after her recently completed journey through the length of Africa. More power to you, Lois! Where will you be on the loose next?
Great read!
As a fellow female rider and XT225 owner, I anxiously awaited my advance-ordered book to arrive - and for good reason!!
It's not every day I read a book that makes me laugh out loud, feel the pure joy, frustration, anger, calm, loneliness, nod my head knowingly, AND make me think, "Wow, never would have thought to make THOSE arrangments." Actually, I dont think she ever felt anger, but I did FOR her at a few points in the book. LOL
Kudos to Lois for her fantastic journey and great writing style.
