A guidebook to navigating Portland, OR’s craft beer world by bicycle seems like a painfully obvious thing. They are, after all, two of the city’s two best known features. Nonetheless, it took until 2012 for that book to be written.
Due to be published in November of this year, Hop in the Saddle is a 96-page guide to Portland’s breweries, bottle shops, bars and restaurants and how to get there by bike. It is written and designed by three Portland women, Lucy Burningham, Ellee Thalheimer, and Laura Cary. Burningham is a freelance food and drink writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, Saveur, Bicycling, the Wall Street Journal, and more. Thalheimer is a bike touring guidebook author who’s written guides to touring Italy, Oregon and elsewhere. The Bicycle Story reviewed her latest guidebook, Cycling Sojourner, and interviewed Thalheimer earlier this summer. Cary is a graphic designer and did the design work and illustrations for Hop in the Saddle.
Like many independent writers and publishers these days, the Hop in the Saddle authors are hoping to fund the publication of their book through a Kickstarter campaign. Kickstarter has, without a doubt, provided the opportunity for many authors to publish their work that could not have afforded to otherwise and I suspect Hop in the Saddle is in a similar situation. As I write this, they are currently a little over one third of the way to their $15,000 goal, but still have 16 days to reach it.
Check back here in a few weeks for a review of the guide.