A Mexico Escape 1936: Biking the Pan American Highway

After the 1936 inauguration of the Pan American Highway, three young Americans are the first to pedal bicycles from Laredo, Texas to Mexico City. This chronicle allows the reader to accompany the bicyclists during the ups and downs of mountain passes, share insights from encounters with the Mexicans they met, and be entertained from the stories emerging from the thousand-mile journey. Their adventures created a deep appreciation of the Mexican people and the timeless importance of international understanding and mutual respect. The book’s hundred vintage photos let the reader view what they saw. The appendices trace the route they took and the dramatic population increases in the places they passed. The three riders, who used the journey to temporarily escape the 1930’s Depression, drew lessons from their adventure that influenced the rest of their lives. A Mexico Escape also serves as a demographic study, a geographical portrait, a photo journal of Mexico in the mid-1930s, and an inspiration for others to pass on their own adventures to later generations. Author Dick Cleaves had an adventurous life in the first half of the twentieth century. After growing up in rural Iowa, he taught physical education at a French girls’ school, bootlegged liquor from Canada during Prohibition, was an outstanding college lacrosse player and Golden Gloves boxer, spent time as a beach bum in Martinique, and stowed away on a luxury cruise ship from Puerto Rico to New York, before working for a congressman in Washington, DC and heading a trade mission to Japan after WWII. In this chronicle, posthumously published by his two sons, Cleaves relates the adventures he shared with two good friends — Whip Walser and Bill Kass – bonding with one another and with Mexicans along the way.