Lois on the Loose (Book Review)

I’ve never enjoyed a motorcycle adventure book as much as Lois on the Loose. Lois Pryce takes us on a journey from Fairbanks, Alaska to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego over 8 months and 20,000 miles. This is exactly what I am preparing to do in the summer of 2010 so this story was especially close to my heart right from the start.

I really liked Lois’ writing style. Very casual, but very imaginative in her descriptions of events, feelings and people. She has a great sense of humor as well. I was laughing out loud every 5 pages. From the “motorcycling mammary excitement” of finding a bee in her bra, to being harrassed by the “gigantic gyrating clown”. She almost had me in tears at some points.

The following excerpt describes exactly how I felt when I spent A Day in the Sierra Madres:

There was something exciting about motorcycling in these extreme conditions, and even though I yelped out loud with the pain of my frozen hands and the speedo rarely nudged forty miles an hour, due to the potentially hairy combination of the porridgey white fog, loose gravel and random potholes, the experience seemed bizarrely appealing. This is exactly what I’m meant to be doing, I though, this is about as different from sitting in a centrally heated office in West London as I can get.

Just over the border from Arizona Lois is awestruck by the beauty of the desert. Something I identified with heavily:

And here they were for real, in the spiky green flesh, hundreds of them, scattered across an endless lunar landscape of towering, mind-bending rock formations in disky pastel pinks, oranges and browns. It was official: I had fallen head over heels in love with the desert.

Adventure, struggle, triumph, whimsy, tragedy. Lois’ adventure has too many facets to list. I felt like I was riding right along with her. I will be checking out her other book that recounts her travels through Africa: Red Tape & White Knuckles.

Oh and I’d like to ask one last thing of the cute, fair skinned redhead (just my type) who just so happens to share my passion: Marry me?

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