He spends several weeks with David Santos, author of WHEELIAD, and several other people riding bicycles from Austin, Texas into Mexico.
It's not a spandex and carbon fiber sort of bike ride. They are riding what might be called art bikes and living off the land, or sometimes the waste-stream, drinking soup made from boiled chicken bones, with some roadside grass added for flavor - from a leaky used styrofoam takeout container.
Five people start out on the trip, but can't quite get along with each other - so two drop out and later a third (the author). There are some interesting thoughts about utopian visions and why they fail; the fact that the five people on this particular trip couldn't work it out adds credence to the arguments for why humans have so far found it impossible to live in a utopian society. The main point being we are individuals with a drive to express our selves, rather than being assimilated into a collective.
Still makes for fascinating reading...
Some semi-related links:
