Short, sweet, passionate account of a British dude's affair with the bike. He rode around the world when he was younger, and then decided to meet the bike makers, and build himself a custom bespoke bike. Good work. ( )

This is a love story to the bicycle. It's the story of the author having his perfect custom bike made, and visiting each component manufacturer to see how they do what they do. It's also a history of the bicycle, mountain biking, bike culture and the resurgence of the bike in contemporary days. I absolutely loved it, and fell more in love with bicycles and bicycling as a result.

I listened to the audiobook version, and it was excellent in that format. ( )

Made me want to get my bike fixed so I can ride it again. ( )

This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in the history of the bicycle OR the current state of the bicycle (spoiler: it's not that different today)! I am a light-to-moderate cycling enthusiast and I found myself unable to put this book down. I also found myself more and more motivated to get out and ride my bike as I began to feel a sort of connectedness to the history of the machine.
On the face of it this book sounds like a guy with money to spare and time on his hands designing his dream bike, and if that were all that it was I would have hated it. But Penn's breadth of knowledge on every aspect of the bicycle makes up the bulk of the book. Each chapter covers one cycle part (wheels, tires, frame, etc), and in this way the reader learns the history of the bicycle part by part. Plus you get to see the culmination of all that history as you meet people working in the industry today. The stasis of the bike, more or less unchanged since the 1890's, has meant that essentially the same knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation of bicycle designers, owners and mechanics. The more I understood this the prouder I felt to be a part of that unending bicycle chain of events. It really emphasizes the global community of cyclists. And it motivated me to finally get out there and learn how to tune up and adjust my own bike, which is something that most casual cyclists know nothing about, I've discovered.
Finally, there is an hour long BBC documentary available on YouTube that follows Penn around as he collects his parts and assembles his perfect bike. I recommend watching this ONLY after reading the book. It cuts out a great deal of the information and focuses more on the people working at these companies and small workshops all around the world and on Penn's personal journey. Basically, without the book to reinforce the documentary it comes across more like the-book-that-could-have-been back at the beginning of this review. However, after reading the book it is a great way to put faces to many of the names that you've come to know over the course of five chapters. ( )

I’m not a hard-core cyclist by any stretch, but I want to be out on my bike more. I have a road bike, and I truly like to ride it. But I know so few people who want to ride with me, and I don’t love hitting our amazing bike trail by myself (mostly safety concerns). Plus I’m really busy these days. Perhaps after the wedding and quitting my job, I can find the time and the friends to take it out some more. My favorite part of riding my bike is that I am cut off from all my technology. I can’t text or check Facebook. I don’t listen to music when I ride. It’s just me and the wind and the bike. It’s liberating. And isn’t that what the bicycle really stands for? Being free.
It’s All About the Bike is about Penn’s own love affair with cycling. This guy is a serious lover of bicycles, and it comes through in his writing. The book has sort of a dual narrative — his quest to build the perfect bike, as well as a history of the bicycle. I found both parts interesting, for different reasons. I hadn’t known much of the history of the bicycle when I started, and felt like I learned a lot. It’s one of the few things that was invented back in the 1880s that is relatively the same today — the materials are different, but the concept is the same. I also thought Penn’s search for the different parts of his bike was enjoyable. I love how he eschewed the new carbon fiber race bikes and built himself a steel bike that could make it around the world (you can weld steel…you can’t weld carbon fiber!). It was really interesting to learn more about the world of custom bikes.
It made me want to get out there and ride more!

Read my full review here: http://letseatgrandpa.com/2013/08/02/book-review-12-its-all-about-the-bike-by-ro... ( )