Bicycling Books, Articles, and Essays

The Essential Bicycle Commuter (by Trudy E. Bell, Ragged Mountain Press, 1998) is the first and only book to address the needs of female commuters as well as male, to discuss recumbent and folding bikes as well as standard uprights, to discuss defensive bicycling among lawless drivers, to show how to combine errands (kids and groceries) with commuting to work, to detail how to rehabilitate a second-hand bicycle for commuting, and to offer a complete chapter on industrial-strength urban locking strategies--both  hardware and psychology.

Bicycling Around New York City: A Gentle Touring Guide (Menasha Ridge Press, 1994; now out of print) has 25 wholly original rides, virtually all accessible by biking or public transportation to the start. All range from 8 to 40 miles long, but can be joined for longer trips, and were designed to appeal to novice and casual cyclists. Format is narrative, not cue sheet, sprinkled throughout with fascinating history, humor, and even recipes.

The Best Bike Rides in the Mid-Atlantic (Globe Pequot Press, 1994, 1997), which included the first road rides ever to be published for West Virginia. For the third edition, the mid-Atlantic region was split into northern and southern sections; each volume was independently revised by another person, although using a fair amount of my original material: The Best Bike Rides in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania (revised by Dale Lally, Globe Pequot Press, 1999) and The Best Bike Rides in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia (revised by Patrick Gilsenan, Globe Pequot Press, 2000).

Numerous bicycling how-to articles, contemplative essays, and trip guides and narratives of mine have also been published in magazines and newspapers, including  Essence, The New York Times,  Adventure Cyclist, and Philadelphia magazine's Mid-Atlantic Weekends (a few are shown at right). Other publications include sections in other authors' books (notably in The Bicyclist's Sourcebook by Michael Leccese and Arlene Plevin, Woodbine House, 1991) and an 8000-word entry on "Cycling" in Collier's Encyclopedia (1997 print edition).

The Essential Bicycle Commuter and the two ride guides below can be ordered at discount from Amazon.com--just click on the cover image to be linked to the right page on Amazon's site!

For a complete list of Trudy E. Bell's bicycling and travel publications (6 pages), click here for a PDF file (55KB).

Third editions of Trudy E. Bell's Best Bike Rides in the Mid-Atlantic, published in 1999 and 2000, was split into northern and southern editions, each of which was independently revised by another writer.

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