PLANNING IS FOR SISSIES.A solo bicycle ride across the country should be filled with sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and eighty-degree temperatures every day.Right?Not so much.Cory Mortensen left Chaska, Minnesota, on a bicycle bound for California with no real route, no cell phone, four spare tubes, a forty-two-pound backpack, and considerably more confidence than preparation.I will ride my bike down a never-ending ribbon of asphalt wearing a backpack.That was pretty much the plan.Ahead were the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Salt Lake Desert, the Sierra Nevada, thousands of miles of forgotten American roadways-and plenty of opportunities to reconsider the entire idea.Which he did.Frequently.Along the way came brutal headwinds, broken spokes, flat tyres, questionable motels, Chinese takeout, unexpected kindness from strangers, lonely stretches of highway, strange roadside history, a Greyhound ticket he bought and never used, and enough questionable decisions to make proper planning seem increasingly attractive.Then there were the semitrucks.Funny, self-deprecating, curious, and occasionally reflective, The Buddha and the Bee is more than a story about riding a bicycle across America. It's about what can happen when you leave the familiar behind long enough to discover that the life waiting for you at home may no longer be the life you want.Cory set out to reach California.By the time he got there, California wasn't really the destination anymore.The Buddha and the Bee is the first book in a three-part travel memoir series. The journey continues in UNLOST, as Cory leaves the bicycle behind and heads south through Mexico, Central America, South America, and eventually Antarctica. In Embracing Bewilderment, the wandering continues through Iceland and Europe before an unexpected detour to Hong Kong sends the journey in an entirely new direction-and eventually across Southeast Asia.Each book stands on its own, but if you want to know what happens after California, keep going.Apparently, I did.