This article, written about 2 weeks before my initial departure from Columbus, takes a different tack than most… it’s a little skeptical, and questions the nuts-and-bolts of both systems and business model. I find that refreshing, as it introduces a few details that escape the rhapsodic journalistic approach that was more common. At the time…

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I was starting to get into the groove at this point, and was in Savannah on Thanksgiving Day to visit an old friend from Louisville. This turned into a fun book chapter (including a crazy trip over the tall Savannah River bridge in driving rain and high wind, and the tale of my recent discovery…

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Typical of on-the-road newspaper stories during the first year, this overviews the trip and curious technology, then mentions the “nationwide computer network.” Most folks then were not aware of emerging online culture and how it made a crazy adventure like this possible. by William Ruberry Richmond Times-Dispatch November 12, 1983 Steve Roberts had some sleepless…

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I love the closing line of this one:  “This man is very serious about his alternative lifestyle.” <grin> Reston was a brief stop for me, with only a couple of days in this planned community that was yet early in its development stages. I’d be interested in knowing how it has evolved in the past…

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This was the first article written after my departure from Ohio in 1983 (not counting the shakedown cruise), and it brings back fond memories… they caught up with me at the mall in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where the security guard had just ordered me to get my bike outside. A diminutive, feisty old woman hissed at…

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One of the home-town papers in Dublin, Ohio published this little photo-caption just after I pedaled the Winnebiko away from my home of four years. The image was from the send-off on September 28 in the CompuServe parking lot. In the image, I was demonstrating the Radio Shack Model 100 laptop that would become my…

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I almost left this out of the collection since it was so embarrassingly flattering at a time when I felt anything but confident. But it helps tell the story of that difficult beginning, so in the interest of completeness, I let it stand. It’s not that it’s negative or anything… far from it. But imagine…

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This was a hugely pivotal article in my unfolding adventure. First, the author unwittingly named the whole escapade, and second, this was published just before launch. That meant that almost every CompuServe subscriber had a heads-up that there was a guy on a computerized recumbent bicycle taking off around the country, posting tales online (paleo-blogging)…

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This was a delightful find, deep in a stack of old papers… a press release I issued six weeks before departure. Mixed in with a bit of breathless hype are some glimpses of the state of technology at the time, and why this was uncharted territory. (The first actual publication about the adventure was already…

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