‘The Limey Project’ is about an epic cycling adventure by two British men ‘Bone and Killer’ (fictitious names) from Dorset, England. In 2004, they took an ambitious journey spanning four months from Seattle to Miami, covering 5000 miles to raise money for cancer research.
The Limey Project will provide you high dosage of good humor, and at times exhaust you with laughter. The journey conveys a variety of emotions, hardships, errors, hilarious episodes and silent messages as you flip chapters and read between the lines. With changing sceneries and shifting temperatures, take a pause and think through wherever you feel connected the most. A book, I recommend you to read especially when travel is restricted, get onto this American odyssey written by Adam Stones.
The trip will remind you of your own situation if you have ever done an unplanned bike tour or other-wise encourage you to hit the road sooner or later.
In this book, Bone and Killer present before us a fresh perspective on long cycling tours and those that can be done at will as far as you are ready to fancy your chances. Experiences are a part of the process and not the destination – like they say “The great danger in life is to not take the adventure” and The Limey Project fits the bill.
The expedition is way too different compared to conventional bike tours and suggests new possibilities of pursuing convenient, slow paced journeys. For a reader, The Limey Project is a feast of real encounters where you will find yourself giggling to raw, unscripted dialogues and real, overwhelming situations.
Under prepared and sort of over confident, there are episodes of tress-passing and tales of struggle to find food, water, campsites and toilets. Amidst uncertainty, the two cyclists are unsparing in their vocabulary while sharing frequent jokes between themselves along the solitary routes. The enthusiasm of jolly good fellows is skewed towards indulging in their own unique experiences, and avoided engaging with long bearded, fellow cyclists for whom they hold high regards.
In one episode, the Brit’s held a fierce discussion about fighting assumed bear attacks even though they barely had anything to defend themselves other than a can of deo spray. And sometimes stuck into weird conversations with strangers, dodged nasty comments and went to the extent of moonlight dancing with raccoons at a campsite.
Undermining the risk, they left mostly to chance from buying food to night stays, suffered loneliness, extreme weather, and technical breakdowns and survived an accident. Sought pleasure, rejoicing the wilderness, ascending a range of peaks, frozen landscapes, desserts, and busy highways and escaping intimidating truck drivers; Bone and Killer eventually reached their destiny fully satisfied with their efforts and profound gains.
A journey mired with chaos and compassion, The Limey Project commands your attention and a little space in your book shelf, order your copy using this link – https://www.adamstones.co/tlp
Meet Adam Stones, the author of the book on twitter: @adamstones
Excerpts from The Limey Project:
When we arrived at the ‘technology’ section our merry guide asked us what sort of cycling computers we had in mind.
“Sorry, computer?” said Killer.
“Yes, for showing your distance each day, speed time and so forth and so forth. So you know where you are and how fast you’re going. It’s er, kinda essential.”
“Oh, then perhaps one that let’s off a small triumphal firework whenever I cover one mile accompanied by a short blast of ‘Eye of the Tiger’.”
It was the man’s turn to look confused.
“Or the cheapest one will also do,” Killer added.
It would have been obvious to any observer that two such inexperienced people should not be allowed to set off on the adventure we had in mind.
We made camp at a place called Circle Creek, which sounded like a romantic Lewis-and-clarkian folly but was merely a slither of land by the main road with a long dribble of water circling behind. We needed to get better at planning good places to stop at. I bought wood and a firelighter from the camp store. The label for the firelighter warned in large letters, ‘Caution! Flammable?”
“Oh dear. Do you have that are non-flammable?” I asked the manager.
“Huh? You need them to be flammable! How do you think you … I mean … Hell!”
The firelighter even came with instructions. ‘Open lighter and light edge’.
“It’s too complicated, I can’t fathom it out,” I told Killer.
We paused under a black sky and found a café.
“How y’all doing today?” the waitress asked in an accent so thick I was forced to ask her to repeat herself after every sentence.
She must have sensed we needed nourishment and vitamins, as she took out her notepad and asked, “Would y’all like the super salad?”
“Well yes, we would!” I beamed in reply after her second time of asking.
“Indeed we would!” agreed Killer. I don’t even need to know what is in it. It sounds super. We’ll take the SUPER salad.”
The waitress screwed up her face and shifted her weight to the other foot. She looked around to see if her colleagues were witnessing this.
“No, sirs. It’s not a super salad. We have two choices. Would you like the soup … or salad.”
“Ah …” said Killer, looking sheepish but laughing. “Then for me, the soup.”
“And for me the super soup too,” I concluded.
The waitress frowned and walked away.
Follow this blog on facebook, twitter or instagram
Author: Vijay Malhotra, Mumbai
