Journeys, Two-Up: On the Road Through Grief to Renewal

When we experience the bleak geography of grief and sorrow, we find comfort and hope where we can. After his wife of forty years died from breast cancer, Ray Uloth sought his on a path less traveled, riding a motorcycle named Gladys. JOURNEYS, TWO-UP is an engaging and uniquely layered road journal of a nine thousand-mile solo trek across the U.S. and a tour of the ancient Middle East. With wry humor, subtle wit, and pitch-perfect prose, the author candidly describes uncharted pathways across unfamiliar landscapes and historical time in the turbulent weather of a life in disarray. We ride along, two-up, as he encounters small adventures, natural and man-made spectacles, strangers with stories of their own to tell, and his own close brush with death. We retreat from surly buffalo on the Great Plains, laugh at a motorcycle-riding Weimaraner on the Olympic Peninsula, explode with fury at Crater Lake in Oregon, weep at the wake of a nine-year-old boy in Wisconsin, argue with God in Coptic Cairo, stand where Moses did to glimpse a different Promised Land, and more. This is more than a tale of loss and grief or of travel. It is a thoughtful story of the beauty and wonder of life and living.

Ray Uloth is a former reporter and columnist, high school English teacher, college dean, Outward Bound instructor, corporate trainer, Fortune 50 executive, management consultant, and executive coach. He now lives and writes on his ranch in Gold Hill, Oregon.