The Long and Winding Road by Jim Travisano

Two days last week were completely disrupted by the appearance of this book, written by my friend Jim Travisano. I just couldn’t stop reading.

This is the tale of Jim’s bike trip across Europe in 1984 that he took with a cycling partner Nancy, a woman he met on a supported bike trip in New England. They had both experienced major changes in their lives and decided to undertake a trip that was long and unplanned. This was in the days before GPS, cell phones, and the internet, so they made plans day by day and sometimes minute by minute. Their planning from the outset did give them the option to ride separately and for each to end the ride as they needed. This book, using the journal Jim kept, tells how this worked, as well as recounting the wonders of the landscapes they encountered, and the people they met.

In 2023 Jim had a stroke that he said was, “A sudden, humbling shift in everything I took for granted—speech, movement, memory. It left me standing on the edge of a life that felt… unfamiliar. I had to relearn things. Reframe things. Reclaim pieces of my self that I thought were lost.” Then he pulled out his notes from that bike trip and began to relive it and wrote this book that “became a bridge from who I was to who I am.” Somehow it manages to be chatty, thoughtful, fun, and enlightening.

I had met Jim in occasional social settings, and it was sometime in the 1990s that we bumped into each other at a Bike Virginia event, an annual 5-day supported ride. Along with several of those trips, we often rode in the beautiful countryside around Charlottesville. I was an unusual partner for a person as athletic as Jim, because I was the slowest rider who could manage a 40 or 50-mile ride. It was wonderful to have an unhurried, pleasant partner who was in it for the companionship, the stories we told each other, the exhilarating beauty of the area, and the joy of sitting outside an old-fashioned country store, sweating and rehydrating.

The passage below was from Jim’s experience while he and his partner were traveling separately. He was riding in the mountains not far from Olympia in Greece while Nancy was on her own. This was written after he had shared a celebration of Easter with a Greek family. It was a simple meal, notable for the goat’s head that was bobbing in a cast iron pot full of stew with goat intestines. After eating, the farming family went back to work and Jim rode on.

The sun and the clouds continued to vie for the afternoon. Sometimes I rode in a soft mist, sometimes in a blustery gale. During the late hours of the day, the wind settled. A soft light spread across the land. I stopped, leaned my bike against a tree. Below me, an orchard of fruit trees stood. Here and there, a few white petals had started to make their journey into the world. Below the trees, an old woman gathered branches that had blown down during the cold mountain winter.

Italy came next, and right away, it was welcoming:

On our second afternoon in Italy, we stopped to mail a postcard in a small village. When we emerged from the post office, we found ourselves in the middle of a party, and we were the guests of honor. A crowd of 25 or 30 schoolchildren laughed and shouted as they gathered around us. Transfixed by the bicycles, they fired questions at us about our adventures and peered curiously at the brightly colored baggage we carried. One or two brave souls reached out to touch a handlebar or a shiny wheel spoke. I guessed these youngsters had never seen bicycle tourists before.

I hope that what I’ve written here gives a good description of what I so loved about this book. You can read the Kindle version through Amazon now and soon a printed version will also be available from Amazon.

Jim Travisano, The Long and Winding Road, BikeBookPress.com, 2025, 168 pages (I read the Kindle version).