Goldstein's affable good humor makes him an ideal armchair traveling companion.

On a folding bicycle towing a wagon, self-supported, Bob Goldstein pedals out of Helsinki into the wide-open arctic and towards the Barents Sea. He'll encounter furious storms, survive a near-disastrous accident, and spend a lot of time obsessing about the odds of being eaten by a bear as he makes his way through the remote forests of Eastern Finland. In sparsely populated Lapland, reindeer become Bob's constant companions as he slowly makes his way through the Arctic.

Riding with Reindeer intersperses humorous accounts of his adventures, such as getting trapped in the women's shower in a remote village, with rich cultural and historical anecdotes as he passes through endless forests littered with rotted fortifications, rusted tanks and mass graves—the detritus of Finland's desperate defense against a massive Soviet invasion in the winter of 1939. Riding with Reindeer gives insight into the mind of the solitary traveler and into the soul of a country whose honest and resourceful yet often taciturn citizens are always willing to lend a hand to the stranger on the little blue bicycle gamely grinding his way through their "Suomi" - literally "the end of the land."

Praise

"Goldstein's affable good humor makes him an ideal armchair traveling companion — I laughed out loud" — Debra Dean, author of The Madonnas of Leningrad

About the Author

"Riding with Reindeer" is the story of Bob Goldstein's 2007 solo self-supported bike trip from the Aland Islands, through Finland, Lapland and Arctic Norway to the Barents Sea. Bob's previous book, "The Gentleman From Finland, Adventures on the Trans-Siberian Express," received the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Award for best travel memoir. Bob enjoys hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, and kayaking throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and has also traveled in India, Nepal, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, China, Vietnam and Bhutan. Bob is Chief Financial Officer of the Kitsap Regional Library, and leads trips for the National Outings Program of the Sierra Club.

Buy a SIGNED copy of Riding with Reindeer: A Bicycle Odyssey through Finland, Lapland and Arctic Norway - $15.95