In the penultimate episode of The Sopranos, the most congenial member of the TV crime family, Bobby Baccalieri, is gunned down by New York mobsters in a New Jersey model railroading shop. Although a very loyal mobster and brother–in–law of Tony Soprano, Bobby's real passion was model railroading. At the moment he was killed, he was waxing eloquent about his most recent vintage train acquisition, using the miniature train car as a metaphor for a better world.

Of course many of us who feel true passion for toy trains or knitting or baseball or skydiving will come to see that activity as a metaphor for all that is good in the world. Sometimes, these metaphors can be useful, beautiful, and inspiring. Some are informative. Most often—like Bobby's last riff—they fail, except in the mind of their creator.

One reason for the failure is that we who see the world through the eyes of an enthusiast have to explain so much of the history and mechanics of our passion to our auditors that we lose their attention. In his book Tour de Faith: A Cyclist's Lessons for Living, Robert F. Molsberry uses an annual seven–day ride across the state of Iowa as a metaphor for Progressive Christianity and for how to live life well. But Molsberry spends so much of the book explaining the details of each of the seven days of the ride that we lose sight of the subject he's trying to illuminate.

I ought to be the perfect person to write this review. Like Molsberry, I'm an active member of my church and also an avid cyclist. (Last year, I rode over 10,000 miles.) And the similarities go deeper. A bicycle accident on a lovely day in May of 1997 left Molsberry paraplegic (he now rides a hand cycle). For my part, ten days before I received this book for review, I was in a serious bicycling accident and broke my neck in three places, so I'm writing this during what will be a long recovery. But for all the similarities, there are many ways in which Molsberry and I disagree—about theology, and about bicycling. The church I attend is part of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA); I like creeds and dogma. The organized races I regularly enter separate people by ability for reasons of both safety and competition; I loathe the free–for–all melee in all–comer rides of the kind that Molsberry favors. In short, I'm not a completely sympathetic reader.

That said, I want to do justice to Molsberry's project. At the heart of it is an event known as RAGBRAI (The Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa). Maybe not the catchiest acronym on the block, but each year this event—dreamed up in the 1970s—attracts more than ten thousand cyclists, who ride across Iowa during the last week in July. The parallel with Progressive Christianity isn't immediately transparent, but once you understand where Molsberry is coming from, it begins to make sense. A good place to start is the website of The Center for Progressive Christianity (www.tcpc.org), where you'll find that the sixth of eight points defining their beliefs is this: [We] "Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty—more value in questioning than in absolutes."

What does this have to do with cycling, and with RAGBRAI in particular? To get the connection, you have to see how an event such as RAGBRAI fits in the larger world of cycling. Viewed globally, the vast majority of bicyclists use their vehicles for transportation. I rode the perimeter road of Beijing seven years ago and saw an endless river of bicycles, four wide, rolling at a very efficient nine miles per hour on every single meter of that 60–kilometer road (as they no doubt were on most every other road in that bustling city). In every inhabited continent, bicycles are basic transportation. Millions of kids ride bikes just for fun, as do tens of thousands of adults. Some of these recreational riders become tourists and ride to see scenery and hang out with other bicyclists. At the other end of the spectrum are licensed amateur and professional bicycle racers. Racers ride seriously, train year–round, and want to win every event they enter, even when wins are few and far between. (At best, I win just one of the 30 to 40 races I enter each year.)

Workers ride to get to their jobs. Kids ride for fun. Racers ride to win. But just as Progressive Christians find more value in questions than in answers, preferring a state of congenial indecision, so many RAGBRAI riders fall into a gray area in cycling between touring and racing. They are riders who occasionally like to ride fast but don't want to commit to the training necessary to race. And in a different mood they are against competition altogether. Early in the book Molsberry talks about the time he entered and won a bicycle race, and about the time he was one of the first to finish a day's ride on the RAGBRAI. But later in the book he chides Lance Armstrong for missing all the scenery around France simply to finish first in Paris. This does not represent a change in Molsberry's thinking over time. He makes clear that he was conflicted about the imperatives of speed and competition versus the claims of scenery and community from his first RAGBRAI in 1974.

Although Molsberry does not mention his accident until the middle of the book, it is obvious from the cover photo of the author on a hand cycle and from the blurbs on the back that his accident, recovery, and return to RAGBRAI in 2006 are important in his story. Molsberry's passion for cycling put him in a wheelchair. After the accident in 1997, a big goal of his recovery became completing RAGBRAI again, which he accomplished in 2006.

Molsberry's road back to the RAGBRAI changes the tone of the book and, more important, adds a layer of inadvertent irony missing in the first half. Molsberry is clearly a career preacher. Given his adherence to Progressive Christianity, he is not a traditional Hellfire preacher. But in the second half of the book Molsberry preaches about discipline with a conviction as clear as Jonathan Edwards on sin. Molsberry attributes many of society's current evils to lack of discipline across our society, and he does name these evils: gambling, divorce, spending addiction, the health and wealth gospel. If his tone early on is reminiscent of the Jesus People, he ends up sounding more like a Southern Baptist street preacher.

It is strange to read about the delights of discipline after Molsberry has devoted the first half of the book to freedom, community, no condemnation of "lifestyles," drinking beer, eating fattening Midwestern food at a whim, etc. And it's plain irritating when the preacher gets bicycling itself wrong. Repeatedly, for example, Molsberry tells us that riders stop for food at the top of the hills as a reward for climbing the hills. The lesson: Do the hard work, then get the reward. That sounds good, but in reality, bicyclists stop at the top of hills because stopping on flats or downhills means using the brakes—turning leg power into heat through friction. No cyclist wants to waste energy, so the food stands at the top of hills are successful and the ones at the bottom of hills have no customers.

It is clear from the book that Molsberry loves RAGBRAI and believes sincerely in the tenets of Progressive Christianity. It is equally clear that he is a brave guy who has overcome horrendous injuries through discipline, perseverance, and good humor. His most recent RAGBRAI, using a hand cycle instead of a bicycle, was a much greater challenge than the 20–odd rides before the accident. But if the difficulties of the hand cycle make RAGBRAI a genuine challenge to paraplegic riders, the event nonetheless draws a huge gathering of riders who represent the undefined region between recreational riding and racing—riders too strong for the former and averse to the latter.

Certainly, Molsberry tells an inspiring story. His preaching of discipline makes sense in the context of his hard–won return to the road, but it stands in stark contrast to his professions about Progressive Christianity. He could also have written about his faith in Progressive Christianity in the context of recovering from injury, but instead he tells the story of isolation and of making his way mostly on his own. This dissonant mixture results in a book that resembles an overweight gangster who sees the good life in the reflection of a polished toy train: even at the points where the metaphor works, the ironies overwhelm the message.

Editor's Note: On May 9, Neil Gussman was passing a rider toward the front of the pack in a downhill training race on Turkey Hill in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Just yards from the bottom of the hill, traveling at 50 mph, he touched wheels with the rider in front of him and flipped hard onto the road, breaking three vertebrae in his neck, four ribs, his shoulder blade and collarbone on the right side, and his nose. He also suffered extensive skin abrasions. The other riders with Neil kept him immobile. An off–duty EMT showed up on the scene and he was flown to the hospital by Med–Evac within minutes. The surgeons replaced his broken vertebrae with one from a cadaver and fused it with a plate to the C–6 and T–1 vertebrae on either side. A plastic surgeon fixed his face. Thankfully he's healing well and has returned to work. He hopes to be riding a bicycle again by early fall.

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