In a book called 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', the author describes a journey he did with a friend in the 60's on a motorbike across America. In amongst all the travelogue narrative, there is a lot of philosophising about how zen buddhism becomes part of everyday life, and in his case, part of motorcycles. Well, it also comes into cycling. Let me give you an example, and sorry if it sounds pretentious. A lot of people, when they learn that you have...

I think I got to Zagreb in the last email. We left there on a cool day at the beginning of September, and as the grey skies threatened rain, I began wondering if travelling in September was such a great idea..it would have been ironic, considering the summer we'd had until then in Britain, if it had continued like that for long. The road out of Zagreb was dull, and continued to be so most of the way to the Slovenian border, although a very pretty town called Samo...