Bike Magic

Ariel Ross is a daily bike commuter to her job as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Oklahoma State University. Seth Wood is a daily bike commuter to his job as a Lecturer in the Department of English at Oklahoma State University and has twice completed the iconic Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.

"To read this book is to wheel into a misunderstood state and run headlong into the big-hearted characters of Oklahoma's cycling subculture. Bike Magic will live on my shelf between The Worst Hard Time and Boom Town; it's that good." -Jon Billman, author of The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands ""What a treasure this was to read! At its heart, this book is rooted in three loves: self-discovery, Oklahoma, and bicycles. It's an invitation to wander through all three, and to notice how each one gently reveals something about the others-and perhaps about yourself, too." -Crystal Wintle, co-owner of District Bicycles in Stillwater, Oklahoma "This is a wild ride. Bike Magic is absolutely unique, a one-of-a-kind. I can't think of another book that has made such an effort to tell the experience of cycling in the larger contexts: in history; in society; in family; amidst rapid technological change and located in the middle-south of a massive, colonized continent. What a ride." - ?James Longhurst, author of Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road "A personal, powerful, and persuasive history of bicycling that not only unearths hidden histories of Oklahoma, but also helps us see how bikes were (and are) magic."-Evan Friss, author of On Bicycles and The Cycling City "Written in personal and uncompromising prose which speaks to the current cultural moment, Ariel Ross and Seth Wood unpack the ramifications of the sport in novel and exciting ways and surface profound questions about the ways in which the bicycle has been a tool for both personal and political change."-James Hamilton Hibbard, author of Racing the Reich: The Life and Death of Germany's Greatest Cyclist and the Nazi Quest for the Super-Human "Heartfelt and entertaining, Bike Magic travels beyond Oklahoma's gravel-grinding bicycle culture to craft a unique history of the state itself." -Tom Fucoloro, author of Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from behind the Handlebars