It wasn’t until the third night of my bike trip through the Finger Lakes that I started reading The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner. The first night I was so exhausted that I may have fallen asleep before my head hit the inflatable pillow. The second night I counted stars through the screen door of my tent instead of reading. But I snuggled into my sleeping bag on night three and adjusted the light on my Kindle. 

Illustrated with a woman biking on a twisting road, the novel’s cover had caught my eye when it came out last year. Thirty-three years old, Abby Stern is at a crossroads in her life. Pausing before making the turn, she decides to veer off course on her bike. 

For the next few weeks, she’ll lead a tour group of cyclists along the Empire Trail from New York City, north to Albany, then along the Erie Canal to Buffalo, NY. Maybe by riding fifty plus miles a day, she can shake out some answers to the questions that have been nagging her. Is her perfect boyfriend really perfect for her? What is the right career path, and can she find it? And will she ever feel good in a body that her mother has always made her feel bad about?

While these weren’t exactly questions I was dealing with, I could relate to the desire to ride away from one’s life in order to put it into perspective. The problem for Abby is that it follows her along. 

Who should show up amongst the dozen or so riders but two surprise guests—Sebastian, who “seemed to have gotten even more handsome since Abby had seen him” two years before for one unforgettable night, and a trim middle-aged woman with a conspicuously new bike and an all too familiar voice, her mother Eileen.

The Breakaway checked a lot of boxes for a book to take on a multi-day bike trip where my main reading goal was to distract myself from the imagined cyclist-nibbling night creatures outside my tent. Abby is likable and there’s enough page-turning drama, camaraderie, and romance along the route to make it more interesting than one’s social media feed. 

But it didn’t end up feeding my taste for adventure. Yes, Abby’s muscles were sore like mine by the end of the day, but her luggage was ferried by van instead of carried by bike, and she packs scented candles and perfume instead of insect repellent and an air mattress.

 I couldn’t help wondering what different outcomes might’ve occurred had Abby and her crew had to hang up their laundry on trees and heated beans over a campfire. But if an easy, breezy, somewhat steamy novel can turn readers on to biking at any speed, age, and size then bike don’t walk to your nearest bookstore.

For those of you who prefer a grittier fix of two-wheeled adventure, South Away: The Pacific Coast on Two Wheels by Meaghan Marie Hackinen may be more your cycling style. 

That is, if you don’t mind the idea of wearing the same shorts and t-shirt for days on end. Hackinen was the first woman to finish this year’s Tour Divide Race from Banff, Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico in a total of fifteen days. In South Away she recounts the over three-thousand-mile bikepacking trip she took fifteen years earlier from her home in British Columbia down to the tip of the Baja Peninsula. 

It’s interesting to see where competitive athletes get their start and South Away is a very up-close account of a young woman with plenty of determination but very little experience. At the beginning of her trip, she barely knows how to fix a flat tire, gets freaked out camping alone, and loses her cellphone. But who wants to read only about the good days? 

Hackinen learns, solves, finds, and gains much more along her ride, including the company of her sister and a more mature appreciation of her family, especially of her mother. This provides an interesting overlap between the real story in South Away and the fictional one in The Breakaway. 

Both Meaghan and Abby begin their trips with narrow views of their mothers, seeing them as overly protective, instead of supportive. As the road gives these young women time and experience, their views change and broaden. “I love her for everything,” Hackinen writes of her mother near the end of her book, “even if it’s not what I would have done.”

I know a bike trip isn’t the only way to see life in a bigger, more thoughtful, more meaningful way, but each of these books gives you good reason to dust off your bike and go for a ride.

Tracy gates is a book editor and journalist and runs and cycles on the backroads of Sullivan County. Find more of her work at readinginthecatskills.com.