This book began eight years ago. It was then that the e-book or digital devices such as the iPhone, Android, iPad or Kindle Reader that can so easily read on line text did not even exist.  Nor did the social media that can so readily disseminate those many  parts of our offering that provoke thought or inspire people to act. Armed now with the ability to keep the information about the National Bicycle Greenway (NBG) movement we are building fire for current, we are publishing not as printed matter that ends up in a landfill,  but electronically  as a manifesto that will remain dynamic, virile and alive.

When you consider that for several decades the first automobiles were dismissed as recreational toys for the well heeled, there is always an adjustment period before society takes advantage of  the latest advances in technology.  From refrigerators to telephones, televisions and computers, all these innovations were met with initial resistance until they combined in just the right way with  all of the other latest and greatest products the people of their era were using to gain acceptance.

Allowing my imagination to wander for the future of bicycling, I knew our time was coming when the Internet first began to appear. I knew  had to be on its leading edge if I wanted the NBG dream to be taken seriously. So in 1995 at a time when the web was brand new,  I transferred promotion of the NBG  from my Cycle America book publishing company to BikeRoute.com. Now with "How America Can Bike and Grow Rich" (HBGR), we can directly reference our massive web site with active links to a lot of  the work we have done on line including all the  video, podcasts and blogs we long have been producing .

Since society benefits whenever we make it possible for greater numbers of us to make use of the most advanced technology  available, I will show you how this has impacted transportation. It is for this reason that we will take a look at all those inventions that have enabled a wider cross section of people, including the weak, the young and the old to be able to travel greater distances. And do so with greater ease and efficacy

In showing you how the most efficient user of human energy, the bicycle is keeping pace with our rapidly accelerating world, in merging the old with the new, as the information becomes available,  this book will also include developments that are solving a lot of the mobility issues those who move about under their own power face.  Toward that end, there is a lot of excitement being generated by the people at  Rails to Trails,  Alliance for Biking & Walking, Complete Streets, Safe Routes to School, League of American Bicyclists, Adventure Cycling and all the many state, regional and local bike organizations and coalitions all over the United States. As we join  bike activists everywhere in shifting consciousness, HBGR  also shares some of the powerful  work being done by SUSTRANS. Led by their comprehensive  bike map of England, they are helping  to  bring about enormous growth for cycling in the  United Kingdom.

Here in Ireland, close to the UK, where  I have been living with my Irish  wife and our new baby for the last year and a half, not only do government agencies have plans for a Greenway that rings the island, but they recently opened  a 27-mile section, the Great Western Greenway,  that is at the heart of much excitement. As car roads that access it are being improved for bike travel, tourism is exploding in the towns it visits. Part of a plan with big vision, there are even programs in place to get more people on bikes so they can take advantage of all the improved bicycle infrastructure they foresee for  all throughout the country here. One example  is their Bike to Work scheme. Financed by taxpayer dollars, it offers substantial discounts on bicycles and gear for those who choose to cycle to their places of employment.

The subject of a lot of the optimism people hold for the future of this island, the Great Western Greenway is revitalizing an entire region, the west of Ireland. As I build this example into HBGR, I have assistance from the leader of the  Irish Nation, its Prime Minister,  Enda Kenny. In helping me collect information in this regard,  he is also one of the main people who helped to bring the GWG about  A genuine cyclist, who still rolls the big miles, Enda is showing he knows the part bikes can play in  helping him showcase his country to the world as well as in  increasing its financial fortunes. .

"How America Can Bike and Grow Rich" (HBGR) is an in depth visualization of the National Bicycle Greenway, set against the back drop of one of the coast to coast national Mayors' Rides we have produced since 2002. As we work to make my next bike ride across America  real, for the purposes of the picture we are painting here, I will be riding my 1891 Eagle (reverse facing) HiWheel bike as joined by our 15-person smile invoker, the internationally famous Busycle.

Soon the national conversation we hope to bring about with this book, will give results getting traction to the effort I began when in 1986, after my last bike ride across America, I dedicated my rehabilitation from a two month coma, paralysis and clinical death to the goal of connecting the coasts with a bicycle highway. When  my autobiography "Awake Again" came out in 1994, instead of letting a very interested Hollywood sweep it in a different direction, I have been using the message of hope my story represents to open even more doors for the NBG.

As the long awaited sequel to "Awake Again", a book that Wayne Dyer believed in enough to write the Foreword, and Denis Waitley, the Introduction, HBGR  is  my love offering to the planet for a tool, the bicycle, that has rebuilt my body, mind and spirit. It draws on my decades long career in the bike industry and as a bike activist, two and one-third bike rides across America, my NBG business plan and well over a thousand hours of research.

Since it was the bicycle that helped me to overcome paralysis, spasticity, atrophy and a mind that did not have a structured way of thinking, I found myself in close proximity to all the conversations those of us with a bike based lifestyle take for granted. As my rehabilitation forced me to detach, I have watched  the car driving public's preoccupation with reaching their destinations in the fastest way possible destroy our collective  well  being. This as i became aware that using a bike to get places can help us keep faith with our real purpose for being here, to grow spiritually. With the objectivity my bike-centric lifestyle has engendered, HBGR is also allowing me to give voice to kids and the childhood we lost when we yielded the free feeling that cycling gave us for the rules, laws and many other forms of oversight that govern the time we think we save when we drive.

"How America Can Bike and Grow Rich" is a story that uses our decade of national Mayors' Ride campaigns to portray the real world visualization I have painted for my National Bicycle Greenway audiences for years. Hopefully by reading this book, you will go away seeing the heaven our world could become if the bicycle were the preferred travel option. If you choose to think big thoughts with us you will realize that we have finally reached that day in age where the technology we now have at our disposal can finally make the dreams I present here real.  We  feel, for example, that once the powerful Google based mapping system I took a year off to create a well received Power Point  for gets funded by the socially responsible investors we foresee, we will be able to actually change the landscape of the American continent.

HBGR also shows you how many of  America's  cities came about and  how beautiful they can be when not roared through at freeway speeds  As my book also shows you the old highway and transportation systems that once used to connect us to our brothers and sisters, hopefully it will be planting even more seeds  for you for how these can be built into the the National Bicycle Greenway. This  as we rebuild America as a wonderland beyond compare.

This book closes with the realization that dawned on me during the  deprivation training I did  in preparation for my ride to promote it. After moving on to our  40 foot support bus, in my attempt to make my  comfort eliminating exercise pure, already car free, I also tried to be as oil free as possible.

As I found myself on the Eagle loaded down with office gear (complete with extension cords) looking for
something powered by oil we all take for granted, electrical outlets, I quickly learned that the  less oil I used, the more insignificant I  became, the more muted was my voice. You will see how my attempt to leave as light a footprint as possible, pushed this book and my ride further and further behind.

The woman I would marry could only sit back and watch from here in Ireland as my efforts on the bus failed to gain traction. I had to escape to her, to the delicious quiet of this European island, to be able to better  understand what had become of all the excitement I long had built. It has been living here  that has helped me put my time on the bus into perspective. It has been the objectivity this has given me  that has brought a whole new dimension to this book.

While it would have been simpler to fuel up our  bus and just pedal myself into the condition I would need, you will see how by my living on it during an unexpected colder than average California winter  to toughen up for my ride, the need I had for oil came in ways I had not expected.  As a result, I now have a hands on understanding of how dependent all of us are on petroleum and its endless number of by-products. And  that  we, as cyclists are not better users of the road because we do not, use fossil fuel. Fact is, we do  Lots of it!

You will see how, beginning with food (and why it is so oil dependent), our bikes, apparel and  our accessories we use oil in many ways. And the more noteworthy our effort, the more of the black gold others had to take out of the ground for us.

From what ended up being nine months time on the bus, there is a richness to the words you will find in here  that did not exist before. It gave me a deep insight as to why the have nots of this world have such a hard time just getting to the starting line of a playing field that is not at all level. Like my rehabilitation from head injury and then my bike rides across America, my naive attempt to be oil free forced me to learn appreciation of the simplest of things all over again.
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My deprivation training turned  humility training has not only improved this book, but it is also helping me show you that in our making the NBG real, motorists and cyclists must all be viewed as equal players. Toward that end, then, the words ahead will inspire you to look for ways that we can  show car and truck drivers  that the world is a better place when they see us on the road. With that in mind, you will see  the importance of the smile we can send to people in vehicles. We can use it to communicate that we want them to join us. As you feel called to help us make the NBG dream real, you will learn that you do your part  whenever your happy, cheerful way compels those behind a steering wheel to want to be a part of our fun.

This book will  help you see that we need for motorists  to understand how easy it is for them to be one of us, no matter their age or physical condition. This is so, because as I have also shown you in this book, there is a bike for each and every  person who travels in a motor vehicle. You will see that when car and truck drivers see us as their friends on the road, they  will help us get our Greenway built.  They will want to bring even more of the  joy we represent to the streets as increasing numbers of us travel to and from the labyrinth of car free arterials we foresee for all over America.

Along these lines, you will  hopefully see the example we endeavor to set with  our much celebrated Busycle. As it comes and goes from the story line, you  will see the power of 15 smiling faces. It is for this reason I wanted you to get a look at, how on our rides, cars regularly pulled over to let us by. Why people came out of their homes to cheer us on. And why it was that so many people happily clambered aboard for their chance to help us get places.

In further proving that joy is contagious, I show that the fact the Busycle  inched along did not matter. The fact that we were quite obviously happy did. It is my hope that this book convinces you that, as bicyclists we need to get vehicle drivers  to join us in the same way. We need to make the full heart we feel on the inside visible on the outside. All of us need to see that we are just better people when we use our own bodies to get places.

In HBGR you will also  read how we need all of our brothers and sisters to have the first hand understanding that all those long distance cyclists among us  take for granted. That food is our fuel. And that  when we eat better, our experience of the road that life is improves. This, as on the planetary scale, when we make more wholesome food choices, not only are we healthier as individuals, but doing so makes for wiser use of the earth's resources. It is this that I will be showing as  a growing critical mass of people rally around my words about how we can eat more simply  to find ourselves more  at peace in our bodies

By making motorists part of our healthy, happy ways, HBGR shows  that we are not running from them with the Greenway but that we all need one another to make it real.

By the time you are done reading this book you will understand why I ride the HiWheel, a  bike from the 19th Century. You will see all the doors it opens as it disarms all those with whom I come in contact, especially motorists. In having the same effect as the Busycle, it acts as  a bridge connecting cyclists with those separated from us and from one another by plastic, metal and glass. As it returns the mind's eye to a simpler time, it is all those with love in their hearts who enjoy seeing the HiWheel on the roads  And as the young, the old, the fit, the not so fit, the rich, the poor and everyone in between wants to learn about my bike, as you will see, in acquiring such knowledge, they also learn that it was the machine that brought about the first roads in America. And how we are using it to make them safe for bikes once again with the NBG.

Thanks in advance for your having an open mind as you read the words ahead. I look forward to the day when how we move about in our lives stops taking from the planet and instead improves the world for our children and all those who follow in our footsteps with the National Bicycle Greenway. This as we grow richer in body, mind and soul,

About the Author:
NBG Director, Martin Krieg, has pedaled across the nation twice. The 1986 ride he did for the National Head Head Injury Foundation on a recumbent bicycle reached 40 million people for the cause of head Injury in and amongst his public speaking and TV and radio appearances. For seven years, until 1994, his company Cycle America, published many tens of thousands of bicycle guides of which the theme was the National Bicycle Greenway (NBG) and long distance bike touring.

The nonprofit organization that became official in 1989, the National Bicycle Greenway, has, since that time, launched and celebrated, many with festivals, seven coast to coast bike crossings. The NBG has also produced seven successful coast to coast Mayors' Ride campaigns and not only has Krieg written the book “How to Bike America”, but he has also personally inspired, coached and consulted on over a dozen other successful transcontinental bikes rides.

In the summer of 2009, in an attempt to call attention to the NBG, in what now amounts to a test run because of horrific weather, Krieg rode the Eagle HiWheel, the only one like it in active use in the world, from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. In 2010, his Mayors' Ride/Author Tour on the amazing Eagle was put on hold by a car that turned left in front of him. Keep an eye on this space as we now have all the tools and experience needed to make the 10th Anual National Mayors' Ride, the most spectacular bike ride to ever cross the Nation.