Going Somewhere

April 14, 2014
Two young lovers pedal fractiously into the sunset in this charming but callow memoir. Recently out of college, Benson set out with his girlfriend Rachel to bicycle from his home in Wisconsin to her home in Portland, Ore., partly as a lark and partly to impose a solid vector on his feckless life. His travelogue is vibrant and engrossing, with wonderful portraits of Western landscapes and scruffy small towns, Job-like ordeals of gusty headwinds and breakdowns, and piquant portraits of kindly, parental folks who offer the cyclists food and shelter and another of a menacing drifter on a dark road. The journey feels less compelling when the author makes it a template for the progress of the couple’s relationship. Benson’s giddy infatuation—they start out “looking at each other with twinkling eyes, as if one of had just told the other ‘I love you’ for the first time”—sours into an equally immature resentment of Rachel’s slow pace and her unexcited knitting at day’s end
while he rhapsodizes over the scenery; “ow awesome it is not to have to compromise with your girlfriend,” he muses during a day-long separation.

June 1, 2014
The story of a naive 20-something's monthlong 2,000-mile bike trek, a journey designed to provide some direction to his life.First-time memoirist and Portland, Oregon-based bike enthusiast Benson tells the all-too-familiar life story of the archetypal disaffected young white male just out of college putting himself through some masochistic Pilgrim's Progress ordeal in order to make sense of his life. In the beginning, we find Benson in the Guatemalan jungle, where he soon grew tired of the backpacker's life and decided he needed more than just rudderless experiences abroad to have a chance at spiritual fulfillment. Consequently, he and his girlfriend, Rachel, traveled back to the United States to embark on a grueling bike journey from their native Wisconsin all the way to western Oregon. To make the trip even more difficult, they imposed a strict one-month deadline for the adventure. However, the best American road narratives are borne out of leisurely pacing, often allowing for more randomness and serendipity to take place along the road. Benson and Rachel were so busy blazing toward their destination that they missed countless opportunities to connect with their surroundings or, more importantly, with each other. What we get instead is a lot of bellyaching about gnarly headwinds, sore legs, flat tires and sweaty armpits-and not much real drama otherwise. Furthermore, the author misses nearly every chance to find humor in their situation, instead dropping the F-bomb in every other sentence like some rogue Vice magazine correspondent ("Fuck the stupid Rockies. I didn't need them").Ultimately, Benson moans his way through the entire experience, as though he couldn't have foreseen the punishment he would absorb on this colossal but spiritually empty cycling journey.

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July 1, 2014
It's hard to pinpoint what makes this road trip (on bikes) so irresistible. Part of it is the author's fresh, honest voice. He's wondering what will happen to him nextwill he stay in love with his traveling partner, the lovely and kind Rachel? The bike ride starts in his hometown in Wisconsin, but is Portland, Oregon (Rachel's hometown and their ultimate destination), where he wants to be? Benson writes in a charming, you-are-there manner, even through the many flat tires and other snafus. Almost effortlessly, he makes tears spring to readers' eyes at more than one point. We grow to care about both these travelers and to see through their eyes not just the forests and the lakes but the roaring semis and rotten highways, as well, and always, the subtle portents of a love affair that may or may not survive the voyage. Readers will be sad when Portland and the trip's end appears. Let's hope Benson has more travels in mind. He is gifted writer, an observant human with an eye for the telling detail and how to tell of it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)