An Inspiration for Anyone Who Wonders If the Time for Adventure Has Passed This is the story of a middle-aged businesswoman who left a successful career to see if she could find something more meaningful to do with her life. A noncyclist, Eloise Hanner joined the first Big Ride (sponsored by the American Lung Association), in which more than seven hundred bicycle riders crossed the country from Seattle to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1998. To Hanner, the ride represented a new beginning fraught with challenges and opportunities. Starting from zero, she trained for several months to work up to where she could ride and average of more than eighty miles a day. What started as a bicycle odyssey, however, developed into a distilled version of life, where storms became life-threatening and strong friendships formed in days instead of weeks or months. More than a travelogue, Hanner's account of the inaugural Big Ride is an examination of career and values and what to do with the second half of life—a question asked by many baby boomers as they approach fifty.

In their late forties, Eloise and Chuck Hanner decided they wanted to do something new and challenging for the second half of their lives. To the amazement of their friends and family, they walked away from their stock-brokerage careers and joined the Peace Corps--again. Twenty-five years before, they had gone to Afghanistan as volunteers and had loved it. They had thought it would be fun to do it again when they were older. But, Eloise and Chuck discover that it's one thing to join the Peace Corps as carefree college graduates and quite another to go as middle-aged business professions, obligated to family and accustomed to stateside amenities. Hanner's humorous and insightful tale will take you on a tropical journey to the middle of South America--to a small village called General Artigas, where life delivers unexpected adventures, adversities and friendships.