My book travels the world on my behalf
I’m proud to announce Falling Uphill has arrived in South Korea. To me, it is like sending my own ambassador. I’m also honored that Falling Uphill was selected by the School Library Journal Book Recommendation Committee in the categories of Youth Art, Culture and Sports. Speaking of being an ambassador, I wonder if any of my books made it to North Korea?
As a side note, it’s interesting to read these different viewpoints of my journey. In retrospect, that has been one of the rewards: to learn how different people see the same thing and that my book can teach lessons that I hadn’t even realized were there. In other words, life keeps paying you dividends.
Building yourself up with a bicycle:
50 Questions for myself on a bicycle world tour
자전거로 나를 세운다
자전거 세계일주, 나를 향한 50가지 질문
Written by Scott Stoll, 스콧 스톨.
Translated by Yoon Deok-no, 윤덕노.
Published by Maekyung the Maeil Business Newspaper, 매일경제신문사.
“Falling Uphill” has been transliterated into something like “Building yourself up with a Bicycle,” which probably has a more colloquial meaning in Korean. It has also been translated as “Adopt me and my bicycle,” which is true enough. People often wanted to meet my bicycle. And, more literally, it translates as “Standing up with a bicycle.” I wonder if any of these expressions have a similar oxymoron connotation as Falling Uphill in Korean.
Here’s a review by one of several newspapers, the Korean Economic Daily, which is one of the world’s most well-respected newspapers. There is an option to read this article in English, or you can use Google Translate. I’m honored to be grouped with “The Life of Pi” and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”
You can flip through the Korean edition here. But, the book sold out, which is good. But it also is no longer available.
From the publisher
[Roughly translated by Google Translate.]
A 4-year, 6-continent, 50-country, 41,444 km bike trip around the world. I traveled the world to find myself!
Have you ever spread out a large world map and vowed to go there someday? Imagine going to a place that seems like a dream. Everyone dreams of this at least once when they are tired of their boring lives. They want to throw everything away and escape from their suffocating selves and go on a trip. However, they don’t have the courage to do so.
A book that will bring a heavy ripple effect to our ordinary daily lives, “Standing Up on a Bicycle,” has been published. It is a story about a man who was fired from his job and lost his lover and best friend in an instant, but who gained greater courage in the midst of deep despair. Let’s take a look into the life and travel of the author who challenged a 4-year, 6-continent, 50-country, 41,444km bike trip around the world.
When you are tired of life, ride a bicycle around the world!
Traveling is not always fun. A bicycle trip around the world is not a luxury trip, so you may have to endure more pain. Author Scott Stoll suffers from life’s agony, chronic pain, illness, and injury while traveling the world on a bicycle. However, he experiences much more joy than hardship. Scott says that he has trained himself through a bicycle meditation trip, as if he had overcome a fever. It was a trip that revealed his true self and made him realize that everything he owned could be less than a glass of water. Above all, it was a trip that gave him hope that he could live completely differently from before. He had a chase, was deceived by locals, met a transgender, and searched for water at the edge of the desert. However, he burned away the self-pity that remained in his body and mind while turning the bicycle wheel. If you read the numerous episodes in the book, it is definitely a travel book, but it seems far from a common-sense travel book. However, it also allows you to see the true nature of a real trip. Rather than just describing the flashy appearance of a tourist destination, it feels like you are looking around every nook and cranny of the countryside and the bottom of the country, containing the true life of the travel destination. When you can’t stand the boredom of always staying in the same place, ride a bike around the world!
50 Questions the World Asks
This book is an essay that collects fragmentary facts seen, heard, and felt while traveling by bike. The author develops the story based on questions that are routinely asked during travel, such as “What do you eat?” and “Where do you sleep?” Unlike ordinary travel essays that follow the travel route or focus on a specific country, this book contains philosophical reflections on the “questions” the world asks. However, this does not mean that it is consistently written in difficult sentences. It adds depth to propositions that most people would have thought about.
The 50 questions reflect the fact that most people in the world are unable to solve basic food, clothing, and shelter, and even those who are materially abundant are unable to overcome the fear of life. And in the last part, it poses the question that we often hear but cannot easily find the answer to: “Are you happy?”
“Happiness” is a question that everyone pursues, but is a relatively rare question. After completing a wonderful bicycle world tour and returning home, the author ultimately delivers the most universal message, “If you follow your dreams, you can find happiness.” This comes from the author’s experience of achieving his dream through a long preparation process and returning home.
Life, happiness…
This book is a travel book and also a life guide. It is a book for those who feel that life is hard, those who want to have time to look back on their lives, and those who are at a loss in the face of a frustrating future. However, it does not teach the answers to life that readers expect. It merely provides an opportunity to look into themselves or their current lives. As the author says, finding the answers is up to each individual.
Standing Up on a Bicycle is a book that fundamentally seeks to find joy. Author Scott says that if readers combine their own experiences with his own, they may be able to find a more enjoyable life.
If you are a reader who has read this book and decided to find your own answers to life, then get on a bicycle and go right away! Pedal as hard as you can!
Excerpts from the book
[These excerpts are translated from English to Korean by Yoon Deok-no and back to English by Google Translate. So, it’s very rough but interesting.]
When I think back on my past, I remember kind people and pleasant experiences more than unpleasant ones. The pyramid trip was also a dramatic expedition. I still jump into adventures voluntarily. There are always mistakes to make when stepping from a familiar world to an unknown world. You have to fall down thousands of times to learn how to walk. After taking a hot shower and lying down on the bed, I ask myself, “How was your day?” At that moment, I realize, “I am a very naive and lucky person, and even when I was occasionally unlucky, I enjoyed that moment.” ~ From “How are you?”
The adorable sight of a mother elephant and her baby elephant, the wonder of life, the thrill of seeing an endangered animal—these are sentimental thoughts. Nothing is needed in the face of the fear of being trampled to death. If a mother elephant sees me, she will trample me without a moment’s hesitation to protect her baby. “What if the mother elephant attacks?” asks Debi. “Should I run into the forest? Or should I run farther toward the road?” An adult elephant can run faster than the fastest athlete on Earth. Even in this situation, a joke I heard before comes to mind. You don’t have to run faster than an elephant. You just have to run faster than Debi. ~ From “Are you afraid of animals?”
I ran down the back streets of Athens, turning corners here and there, until I was lost, and no shoulders or women in sight. I was thankful that I was wearing sneakers. I ran into Dennis outside an ice cream shop. We both laughed about how we had fallen for a classic, textbook scam. I often get lost, physically and mentally, when I travel. And I’ve learned three things from that. First, I always go on adventures. Second, I always find myself. Third, I always end up laughing and a little smarter. ~ From “Don’t you get lost?”