Help me celebrate the release of my new book Bars Across America: Drinking and Biking from Coast to Coast with a free party featuring the Blue Line Riders honky tonk band in the cozy confines of Cole's tavern.

I'll be reading from the book and performing a few of my songs about cycling on guitar, alternating with sets by the Blue Line Riders (http://myspace.com/bluelineriders). The band kicks off the evening at 9 pm.

About Bars Across America (Pint Size Press, 160 pages, $12.95):

“As John spins his yarn across the U.S. via roads, paths and pubs, you’ll wish at some point you’d gone along.” – Dave “Mr. Bike” Glowacz, author of Urban Bikers’ Tips and Tricks.

In Bars Across America, longtime Chicago bike and beer advocate John Greenfield tells the story of his 5,000-mile bike journey from Astoria, OR, to Portland, ME, stopping to check out 48 taverns along the way. Every other day or so he would take a break from the hot pedaling, duck into a watering hole, jot down notes about the décor, and get the skinny from the local barflies.

He stopped at the Silver Dollar Saloon at the bottom of a canyon in Idaho, and Kerouac’s favorite dive in Denver. In Paxton, NE, Ole’s Big Game Steakhouse, filled with stuffed African wildlife, was a welcome oasis. He joined thousands on the rowdy RAGBRAI ride across Iowa, then led a pub roll to celebrate the striping of new bike lanes on Chicago’s Milwaukee Avenue. After experiencing a Parrothead party on the Canadian Riviera, he reached the ocean at Revere, MA, and celebrated at the Shipwreck Lounge, sadly destined for the wrecking ball.

Along the way Greenfield met other scruffy cyclists, cowboys, carnies and lonely ex-cons. Part travelogue, part guidebook, part ode to the vanishing community tap, Bars Across America is the story of one man’s two-wheeled trek in search of the perfect pint.