Roll Around Heaven All Day: A Piecemeal Journey Across America by Bicycle, is a book about Stan’s bicycle journey from Astoria, Oregon, to Yorktown, Virginia. The book is available from Amazon.com, and also through your local bookseller.
About Roll Around Heaven All Day, Stan writes:
I didn’t set out to write a book, but to scratch a wanderlust itch that had been needling me for a long time. Since I was a kid, I had wanted to ride a bicycle across America, always telling myself that someday I would do it. But the business of making a living, raising a family, mowing the grass, and so on, all seemed to push “someday” further and further away. But finally, as my 50th birthday approached, I figured I better get on with it. The book, which grew unexpectedly out of the trip, is not a how-I-spent-my-summer-vacation monologue, but the record of a love affair with footloose travel. And I pause occasionally along the way to reflect on what the mundane realities of journeying can mean in the life of one for whom the voyage, and not the destination, is what it is all about.
Stan Purdum
Books
Playing in Traffic: America from the River Niagara to the Rio Grande, by Bicycle, is an account of Stan’s ride on the length of U.S. Route 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas. The book is available from Amazon.com, directly from the publisher, and also through your local bookseller.
The current edition of Playing in Traffic is the Expanded Edition, identifiable from its blue cover. You may happen across the original edition, identifiable from its white cover. Both editions tell essentially the same story, but the Expanded Edition includes some route directions for people who might wish to follow Stan’s route, and the volume itself is of superior manufacture to the original. We recommend the Expanded Edition.
About Playing in Traffic, Stan writes:
It has long stuck me as an idea clever in its simplicity that a series of independently built roadways across America could be linked together and given an identity by the mere assignment of a federal highway number, such as in the case of U.S. 62. What cross-section of America would the length of such a highway reveal? What historical movements might it encounter? Since I love to travel by bicycle, I decided to pedal the length of 62 and find out. In Playing in Traffic, I narrate not only my journey, but also some of America’s, including the story if its highway system and of some very old pathways into history that 62 intersects.
Stan’s book about the days of Jesus’ ministry is titled He Walked in Galilee. It is available from Amazon.com, directly from the publisher, and also through your local bookseller.
The back cover copy reads:
In this thoughtful study, Stan Purdum helps us focus on the ministry period of Jesus’ life from the time of Jesus’ baptism, through his journey to the Cross. He explores the things Jesus taught and did during that active ministry, providing insights for us as his followers in the twenty-first century.
There are seven sessions. Each begins with a story related to the topic but drawn from life today, followed by relevant scripture, life applications, and discussion questions. The session topics are:
• Jesus Lived Up to His Baptism
• Jesus Proclaimed the Good News of God
• Jesus Healed the Sick
• Jesus Offered Forgiveness to Sinners
• Jesus Taught with Authority
• Jesus Associated with Bad Company
• Jesus Withdrew to Pray
As crucial as Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection are to the Christian faith, it’s useful to look beyond those events to a time when Jesus walked the earth, teaching, preaching, and modeling a faithful life.
Another of Stan’s books is New Mercies I See, a book of short stories set in rural Ohio churches. It is available from Amazon.com, directly from the publisher, and also through your local bookseller.
The back cover copy reads:
In New Mercies I See, Stan Purdum does for the ministry what James Herriot did for veterinary medicine in All Creatures Great and Small. Set in rural Ohio churches, Stan’s stories are humorous, poignant, thought-provoking, pathos-filled, and heartwarming. But above all, they are hopeful. Whether it’s sudden rain falling on a pain-wracked young man clinging to his brother’s coffin, the guilty woman whose love for an abused baby brings resurrection to them both, or the overly enthusiastic pastor who has to serve communion with walnut juice freckling his face, these accounts recognize that the persistent grace of God is never far from any one of us.
Pedaling to Lunch: Bike Rides and Bites in Northeast Ohio
is available at http://www3.uakron.edu/uapress/purdum.html
Discover the beauty and variety of Northeast Ohio’s landscape with twenty bicycle tours that take you down back roads, through rural villages, and over covered bridges. Long-time cyclist and area resident Stan Purdum weaves local history, humorous anecdotes, and philosophical musings into an engaging personal narrative of his experience pedaling in each of the region’s sixteen counties.
Pedaling to Lunch includes detailed maps, mileage notations, precise directions, and Stan’s recommendations for lunch halfway through the rides. Those diners, taverns, and cafés not only serve as destinations, but also allow riders to savor distinctive small-town regional cooking.
Stan’s carefully chosen routes will take you past a host of unique and interesting sights. Among them are the site of an experiment in utopian communal living, a place where a colony of native Americans was massacred, a “hollow” that was occupied by characters so notorious that lawmen refused to enter it, remnants of two canals and the historic Lincoln Highway, the childhood home of famed attorney Clarence Darrow, Lake Erie parks, and much more.
This book is not just for cyclists. It will appeal to hikers, to automobile day-trippers, and even to armchair travelers who want to learn about Ohio’s history. Mostly though, it’s a ticket to enjoyable cycling. Whether you stop for lunch or not, these out-of-the-ordinary tours will give you miles of pleasure in Ohio’s great outdoors.
Now Available
from the
University of Akron Press
