One of my favorite books as a kid was Kontiki. Here’s an interesting adventure that I’ve been following. A boat made of 12,000 plastic bottles nears end of Pacific voyage. Next perhaps we should try building a battleship out of bottles or maybe cruise ships :)
I can say from my experience at speaking at schools across the world that education is the backbone of our society. And, I can also say that teachers are an extremely under-valued commodity. And even the best-intentioned teachers can’t overcome the budget restrictions, standardized (read dumb-downed) curriculum requirements and other artificial barriers imposed to actually give the kids the best education. Of course, that doesn’t even include the $80,000 student loan Kate has shouldered to follow her dream.
It is teachers like Kate that take the extra time and energy to invite me into their classrooms to share my story with the kids. Kate is an outstanding teacher, and she had the brilliant idea of having her students illustrate my next book. Not only will the kids get to meet the author and read the book, but they actually get to participate in the creation of a real-world project, something that will last the rest of their lives, and inspire generations to come.
It is important to understand that teachers, like Kate, don’t have to take the extra time to invite guests to the classroom or create projects for the kids. Indeed, it would be much easier to just spoon feed the kids the state-approved curriculum. In fact, it would probably be easier and more profitable to just work most any other job, and just leave the kids to fend for themselves. During my travels, I have seen many children that never had the opportunity to attend school, and were often working and living on the streets.
Pictured below some Guatemalan girls posing for photographs and tips, instead of being schooled.
Here is the first picture of a planet outside our solar system. Would you volunteer to be the first person to visit this planet even if took your whole life to get there?
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. ~ Aristotle
I’m a little sad to announce that my dreams to circumnavigate the USA on a bicycle for my Falling Uphill Book Tour has concluded here in Wisconsin. I traveled about halfway around the country before realizing I was being over-ambitious, and that promoting a book is a full-time job, which doesn’t allow for cycling 6-8 hours per day. However, I am grateful to also have discovered that by staying in on spot (planning events can take months) I can inspire many more people; indeed, I have rediscovered friends are the greatest resource on the planet, and I feel honored that the people of Wisconsin have welcomed me back. Someday, I do hope to continue traveling around the country bringing my stories of inspiration to people’s doorstep; however, for now I must also rest my aching body. Unfortunately, according to several doctors, I went too many days without proper nutrition and hydration which has affected how my liver metabolizes sugars. But rest assured, I continue to share my story at all the local schools and special events.
Thanks to everyone who supported the journey. ~ Scott
As a post world tour honor, me and my bike got to occupy first, second and third place on the podium at the Downer Classic race at the Tour of America’s Dairyland. I also had the chance to share my story with the crowd.
I’ve always been impressed that many world-class cyclists and teams that don’t qualify for the Tour de France come to Wisconsin for our excellent race series also including Super Week starting soon.
National Geographic’s top adventurers from 2010, including an acquaintance of mine, Mark Beaumont, who holds the speed record for cycling around the world, and recently cycled from the tip of Alasaka to the tail of Argentina, climbing the two tallest mountains along the way. Mark’s a real nice and honest guy. Congratulations.
Now imagine increasing the steepness of this curve by 10-100 times and that would measure human consumption of non-renewable resources, which would also be an approximate measure of pollution, oxygen consumption, greenhouse gases and much more.
I’ve never wanted to measure my life by money, which lately has been an overly idealistic philosophy; nonetheless, I believe in measuring my life by new experiences and new opportunities. Books are a rather bad business plan, so one of the main rewards of my book is hearing the stories of how I’ve made a difference. Not to sound too arrogant, but I think it is important both as a business and as an artist to know if the world considers your works valuable, which creates a mutually beneficial feedback loop.
One recent story comes from an 88 year old woman named Jean. She saw my bicycle leaning outside a store and insisted her driver stop and let her out. She “ran” into the store and told me that she had purchased my book last summer and “just loved it” and that she bought a copy for all her friends. She found it so inspiring, she said, that after reading it she added up all her frequent flier miles from a lifetime of travel, and not long after that she made a solo journey to the other side of the world to Bangladesh. Her eyes were still on fire with the excitement of her recent trip. She rattled off a few amazing stories, and told me of her new dream to write a book about her adventures and she says to me, “I want to call my book ‘An old lady and 3 Bangladesh men’.” Then she winks and says with a smile, “Do you think that will sell?”
I considered myself lucky. I’ve got a creative bone that just needs to be itched, and I had something entertaining and enlightening to write about—I rode a bicycle around the world in quest of happiness. Combining work and play seemed a recipe for success. I thought there couldn’t be a simpler business plan than to produce a book, and I would have the added benefit of fulfilling another dream. Well, years later, including a year of promoting Falling Uphill, the book about my quest for happiness and the meaning of life, I seem to keep surprising myself how difficult it is to sell a book. And that’s not including a 4-year, 26,000 mile trek, including dengue fever in India, being imprisoned in Zimbabwe, suspected of terrorism in Israel, nearly dying of dehydration in Mexico, meanwhile discovering the meaning of life along the way; and let’s forget the degree in graphic design and production, and the on-the-job education of learning my P’s and Q’s as a copywriter, and nevermind the thousands of hours of writing. That’s all simple stuff compared to the publicity stunt of selling a book.
It should also be noted that I achieved some stellar results. I started a book tour again riding my bicycle around the country as a publicity stunt. Spending 6 hours a day pedaling wasn’t a great use of time, but it did produce results even without a PR agent. I had dozens of media interviews, including the New York Times, far exceeding the average 1% return rate on my cold emails. I advertised on Youtube with a movie about my trip that actually got conversions. I had friends helping me. My mom sent out 200 letters to agents. They actually responded. Even publishers were showing interest. My book was translated into Korean. I had rave 5-star reviews. And I broke at least 4 records at bookstores for author signings. In fact, I have 18 spreadsheets of actions and ideas that are too numerous to list. The bottom line is I sold about 4000 books so far, which is 8 times more than the average book even by a big name publisher. But yet, I have still burned/invested every penny I own, hoping someday my book will go viral. Yet, the world seems to have had other plans, for one inventing a thousand upon a thousand devious ways to get a slice of my pie, or prevent my pie from getting to the market. So, what is my devious solution? Why not fight fire with fire?
Why not enter the world of online innovation and publish an e-Book?
This will save me the cost of manufacturing and shipping, especially opening up the overseas market. I can tap into this market that has seemingly exploded overnight. (Two new e-readers have hit the market since I was asked to write this article.) And, hopefully, I can claim some online real estate, since it seems people are skipping books and even televisions and going straight for instant online satisfaction. Plus, there is fairly convincing evidence that you will sell 35% more books at the click of a button.
What the heck is an e-Book?
Well, obviously it is an electronic book that can be read on a computer or portable device using a variety of file formats. The most basic kind is an ePub format, which is basically a variation of HTML so that the type can be reflowed and resized at whim. The second kind is a PDF, which can look fantastic, but the page layout is static. And, there are a bewildering array of other file formats: DRM, XML, LIT, DTP, PDB, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MP3, Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible, MOBI, PRC, HTML, XHTML, DOC, RTF, BBeB, and more.
What kind of e-reader should I choose?
It seems every e-reader is different and uses different formats, which means publishing numerous different versions of your book. The big players at the moment are the Amazon Kindle, iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, Adobe Reader, MS Reader, Palm Reader, and your basic old computer or cell phone. However, the current battle that is revolutionizing the publishing world seems to revolve not around the e-reader itself, but the unique distribution network each one is attempting to capture.
So the next question is: Which distribution network do I use?
My printer, a division of Ingram, the largest book distributor in the world only deals with a handful of devices, excluding the Kindle and the Nook; however, they just struck a deal with Apple’s iPad. The cost is astonishing! Apple takes $250 to join plus 30% royalties; and Ingram gets another 5.6%. So far, Barnes & Noble, in traditional fashion, snubs the small publisher, offering no information except an email address. And Amazon’s Kindle takes a whopping 70% of my literal blood, sweat and tears. There are also a variety of online bookstores that will distribute your book for you.
So what’s the answer?
Well, I haven’t been able to find a good solution. So, I plan to take a few small steps in the general direction and see what happens. I think my book, Falling Uphill, would simple be lost on the e-shelf of most of the distributors (there were a record breaking 1,000,000+ new books in print in 2009); and, since, publicizing my book and driving the customers to the bookshelf is 99% my problem (i.e. being an unpaid employee for the distributors), I’ve decided to simply sell the e-book on my website. I know how to make a PDF and ePub file, and those two formats work on every device. One of the consequences will be security. The benefit of the aforementioned distributors is being able to prevent people from pirating your book, you can even set your book to expire. However, since after a year of hard work it still hasn’t gone viral, I don’t foresee e-piracy as being a big problem. (I never figured into my business plan that multiple people would read my paper book or the used market further undermining my promotion efforts.) Also, though I like to attribute Amazon as one of my biggest problems (read my article “The high cost of low price”) I have to give them credit for making publishing on their Kindle open to everyone and super easy to convert to their format and distribute inline with your existing paper book, rather than having to buy a separate ISBN at another $125 bucks and marketing a second e-edition. Plus, they promise to lower their royalties to 30% this summer, provided you meet their list of unmeetable requirements.
And, if you are new to this, you will soon realize that e-book or paper book, the great grandmother question of them all is: How do I publicize my book? Well, that is a whole other e-ball of wax.
Stay tuned for an update of how this whole dream manifests itself into some kind of cyber reality.
Update: My story in the acclaimed Milwaukee Magazine was on the newsstands in March and was a sweet summary of my trip. Wish I had a professional photographer following me around the world. Can you guess what that white stuff is? BTW, how did I get beat for the cover by a piece of pizza?
We are all aware of our reliance on fossil fuels and their byproduct of greenhouse gases and poisons. But have you ever wondered about the oxygen needed to burn the fuel?
Gas (C) + Oxygen (O2) = Carbon dioxide (CO2) or Carbon monoxide (CO).
As mankind burns more and more fuel, we are also burning more and more oxygen. Simultaneously, the planet’s ecosystem is being destroyed. And because the plants produce our oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis, less plants also means less oxygen.
Are the plants suffocating too?
The over-simplified answer is — Yes! Plants breathe carbon dioxide (CO2). A common misperception is that more emissions means more CO2, and thus plants will grow faster and produce more oxygen. Does the planet look anymore green to you? Unfortunately, the emissions from a vehicle contain more carbon monoxide (CO) which the plants can’t use and is poisonous to humans.
The oxygen in our atmosphere is being measurably and quickly reduced. Oxygen depletion, in our opinion, will soon be recognized as the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced. And it will probably happen in our lifetime. It is critical to start changing our habits and infrastructure while we still can. Because as we all know, we can’t simply stop driving our cars tomorrow. Which, by the way, is another great reason to ride a bike. Especially since one minute of driving your car consumes the equivalent oxygen that 5 people breathe in one day — that’s a lot of bicycling.
Here’s a little story from Peter Gostelow, a friend cycling Africa that recently had a misadventure. As an interesting side note, Peter had a standing invitation to join his adventure, and had I more money and more time, I would have been there with him. We are all wishing him a speedy recovery.
I probably would have walked away unscathed had I not put up some resistance. It was a natural reaction to hold onto my camera bag and ruck-sack as they were being pulled out of my hands. I let go when the machete slashed through my wrist.
I ought to start at the beginning. This post was going to be about my impressions of Dakar and the nearby island of Goree, instead it is a description of how I was attacked by five men, two of whom were wielding rather large machetes.
It happened around 8pm last Saturday night, right outside the International School I’d been speaking at the previous week here in Dakar. I was walking along the corniche – a large, well-lit and usually busy road that runs along the coast.
My assailants were wearing flip-flops. It was the sound of their footwear along the pavement that I heard first. When I turned round the five bodies had surrounded me. They were all black, young and two were wielding large machetes. The blades looked old and rusted. There were shouts, possibly in Wolof, as hands began to tug at my bags. I was wearing a small black day-sack on my back and an SLR camera was in a bag across my shoulder.
Those first few seconds were surreal. I didn’t accept it was a reality until I’d moved backwards into the road and fallen onto the tarmac. I watched car headlights approaching and wished they would come quicker. When they did the horns sounded and the vehicles swerved around me. I thought the vehicles would stop and deter the five. At first none did.
The bags were still in my possession at this moment. It was when the machetes started slashing in front of my face and one connected with my wrist that I let go. It was probably at this moment that my wallet, buried deep within a zipped pocket of my trousers, was taken too.
Within seconds the five had run across the road and jumped over a wall on the sea-ward side of the corniche. I got to my feet in an attempt to chase them. One of the attackers had yet to jump the wall. I cried out from several metres away. He turned and looked at me nervously, then threw the empty camera bag back, before disappearing over the wall.
It was then that I looked down at my arm and saw the gaping slash. My left foot had also slipped out of my sandle. I thought it was sweat that had caused this, but a pool of blood was collecting here too.
By this time (about 30 seconds later) a number of cars had stopped. A French woman opened the car door and yelled for me to get in. She said she had seen everything.
Blood was oozing out of the wounds as she drove me to a hospital. “This is the best one in Dakar. Don’t worry”. I didn’t really register the words so clearly. I soon started to feel dizzy and was moved onto a bed in an operating room.
I don’t know how much time past before I woke up. The Director of the International School, who’d arrived shortly after me at the hospital, was still there. It was good to see an English-speaking face.
The hospital discharged me yesterday. My wrist and foot have been stitched up and I have a course of antibiotics and painkillers to ease the discomfort. I can’t put any weight on my left foot and know it will be some time before I get back on the bike.
Very fortunately I’m being well looked after by an American couple from the school. I entered their house as strangers last week and they now feel like the closed people around me.
Now that I’m out of the hospital and reflecting back over the incident I realise things could have been much worse. I know I should have let go of my bags instantly. It is what my host, who was also mugged with a machete along the corniche last year did. Judging by the looks of their faces I don’t think it was their intention to really use the machetes. They were possibly as scared as me.
There was a moment, whilst I was awaiting the anesthetic and looking up at the fluorescent strip-light above me in the hospital bed, that I said to myself – “now would be a sensible time to quit”. What the hell am I doing riding a bike through Africa when in the space of two weeks I’ve had both my cameras stolen, all my money taken and my arm and foot slashed with a machete? Sure there were incidents of theft when I cycled from Japan-England, but nothing like this.
The truth is I’ve put a lot of thought and energy into The Big Africa Cycle. I’m determined to complete what I set out to do at the start, and continue fund-raising for the Against Malaria Foundation. Senegal has dealt me some blows, but to quit in the face of them is something I feel I’ll regret down the line.
Tomorrow I will see the Doctor and hopefully get a better knowledge of how long I’m looking at for a full recovery. My mum has booked a holiday to see me in The Gambia in several weeks. It is not far from here, but I don’t think I will be riding my bike there somehow.
Where is Scott?
World Bicycle Tour
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