In the summer of 1991, already five and a half months on the road, I spent weeks cycling across Germany, the Netherlands and France. After crusading through Paris, we headed south. By then it was just me and Reinout, my good friend from Thunder Bay. En route to Geneva, Switzerland, we were unceremoniously de-trained in the middle of the night (ok, our bad), and we found ourselves staring down a series of remarkable hills and mountains to get to our destination. We climbed the Col de la Faucille — a mountain pass in the Jura, overlooking the distant Alps. I didn’t know then that decades later I’d climb it again, not by bike, but through words.

A Continental Affliction began as a simple travel journal. Thoughts, experiences and people encounters jotted down at the end of each day, along with letters home. Those handwritten notes became the spine of my memoir, capturing the raw immediacy of youth, fatigue, and discovery.

The Uphill Work of Writing

Writing a travel memoir feels remarkably like cycling over that mountain pass. The early chapters roll by easily; you find your rhythm and believe you’re in control. Then the gradient steepens. Doubt creeps in. The story resists. You question your direction — or why you started at all.

But, as on the climb, persistence pays off. One line leads to another, one paragraph to the next, and slowly, you rise in elevation. The summit isn’t perfection — it’s clarity. You can finally look back and see how every struggle shaped the view.

The Letters That Led the Way

The letters I wrote home in 1991 — full of wonder, exhaustion, and the search for meaning — became emotional waypoints. Like the paper maps that never quite had enough detail, they somehow kept me on the right path as I wrote. They reminded me that endurance, whether on the road or on the page, is its own kind of grace.

The feeling that came with crossing that pass was as sweet and delicious as the cafe treats we scarfed down at the top. Revisiting that journey through writing was another ascent to be conquered: steady, humbling, and ultimately, worth every turn of the pedal. Bring on the cappuccino and chocolate croissants, the book is done!

December 10/25 – official release date for A Continental Affliction at major bookstores. Get your copy today at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/a-continental-affliction