The presidential candidates look as suave and dapper as ever each time they step to a new podium on the long and winding campaign trail—but each man’s well-groomed countenance belies the rigors of the arduous road each has traveled during the 2012 presidential race. Following is a discussion, with some facts and figures from behind the scenes, about the two men fighting to have America’s most demanding job and each candidate’s long, long journey that ends tomorrow at the polls.

Where the candidates have been:

Between June 1 and November 2, the Obama camp—including the president, the vice president and each man’s spouse—made 483 campaign-related appearances. Barack Obama was present for 214 of them. The same four-tiered Romney party, meanwhile, made 439 appearances, with 277 by Romney. In late September, the Obama campaign’s efforts seemed to max out: on September 22, the Obamas and the Bidens made 11 appearances, and 10 the day prior. The Romney camp has more recently made its most active efforts, with 10 appearances on October 31, and 11 the next day. Barack Obama has not visited Montana, Idaho, or Wyoming, among other states, and neither candidate has bothered appearing in Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

On October 24, Obama had what may have been the busiest day of his campaign. He flew 5,300 miles and made appearances in Iowa, Colorado, California (to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno) and Nevada, before, at last, catching some sleep on an overnight trip to the major swing state of Florida (which has seen 112 campaign visits by both presidential husband-wife quartets since June), where the campaigning commenced the following morning. Later that day, the president continued to Virginia, Ohio and Illinois, where he cast an early vote. A week later, Obama made another campaign sprint beginning on October 31; forty-eight hours later he had bounded 6,500 miles around the country. November 1 was a particularly exhausting day. After leaving the White House at 9:20 a.m., he hit Green Bay, Las Vegas, Denver and, finally, Columbus, Ohio. And on November 4, he left the White House at 8 a.m. and made visits to New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Illinois.

Air Force One carries the president almost everywhere he goes. The plane has been especially active during Barack Obama’s campaign efforts of recent months. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Clownfish.

How they get there:

The president gets around in his own private jet, called Air Force One. While “Air Force One” is, in fact, the call sign of any Air Force plane on which a U.S. president is traveling, the term more commonly refers to a particular pair of customized Boeing 747s used exclusively by the White House. Operating the planes is not cheap. ABC News has reported that an hour of flight on Air Force One costs about $180,000–usually of taxpayers’ money, unless a flight is considered strictly part of the campaign. But Obama does occasionally journey overland by bus—specifically in a black, slick and shiny armored coach that, just like its duplicate vehicle, cost $1.1 million when the Secret Service purchased the pair last year. By some guesses, Ground Force One, as it’s been dubbed and which has been active during this campaign, travels just six to nine miles on a gallon of gasoline.

Mitt Romney has also covered some impressive distance during his campaign. According to the Huffington Post, Romney will make a last-minute, four-day, 15,000-mile dash that ends tonight after visits to seven states, and he has traveled tens of thousands of miles throughout the campaign. As of late August, he has been traveling mostly on a private jet—a McDonnell-Douglas 83. Running mate Paul Ryan has his own plane—a similar model called the DC-90.

Where they sleep:

Luxury travel goes hand in hand with luxury lodging, and the president has stayed at the Beverly Hills Beverly Hilton Hotel in a room that costs $4,000 per night, the Ballantyne Hotel in Charlotte, North Caroline, the Hotel Bellevue in Washington, and many other fine establishments. And Romney has stayed at the Charleston Place Hotel in Charleston, the New York Palace Hotel, which can cost $9,000 per night, and the Millennium Bostonian Hotel.

How they stay fit:

In spite of their busy schedules, Obama and Romney both take the time to care for themselves and maintain physical fitness. Romney, it’s been reported, jogs three miles daily, whether on treadmills, around the hotel premises or on trails. Obama, too, keeps an exercise routine and aims for 45 minutes of boosted heart rate per day, achieved through running, basketball and even boxing. Although one of the Air Force One jets contains a treadmill, as Obama recently told Jay Leno, the stationary running machine was installed during a previous presidency and Obama does not jog on it during flights.

In the end, for all the sleepless nights and airport marathons and shaking of hands, we wonder: Did their campaign efforts steer the election? Whether Romney wins or Obama, America will know soon which man will get to spend the next four years flying in Air Force One.

This bear has been chased up a tree by a pack of hounds in the California wilderness but appears unconcerned about its predicament. The bear was not shot. Photo by Matt Elyash, California Department of Fish and Game photographer.  

Dog versus bear: An ancient duet of nature? Or an artificial battle royale staged by sport hunters?

Advocates and critics each flaunt the opposing characterizations—but either way, hound hunting can be simply defined: the pursuit of a large mammal using a pack of trained dogs that, often, chase the quarry up a tree. Many times, the human hunter, who often locates his dogs by following the signal emitted from their radio collars, shoots the animal out of the branches. Other times, the hunt ends without a gunshot as the houndsman, satisfied only by the chase, leashes his dogs and leads them away, leaving the quarry—very often a black bear, other times a cougar or bobcat—alive in the treetop. Still other times, the pursued animal may fail to make it up a tree and get mauled by the dogs.

This is hound hunting.

In England, foxes have long been the target animal of the sport as highbrow hunters on horseback follow their bawling hounds to the eventual death of the fox. Such hunting has been banned in the United Kingdom, though hunters seem to be thumbing their nose at the law; they continue mounting their steeds and trailing their hounds—”at least as much as ever,” according to one hunter quoted by the The Telegraph. And in America, hound hunting was romanticized in such literature as The Bear, by William Faulkner, and Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls.

But state by state, the practice—call it a sport, a tradition, a hobby, a way of life—is becoming illegal as people sympathetic to the well-being of wild animals campaign to abolish hound hunting. Of the 32 American states that permit black bear hunting, 14—including Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington—prohibit hunters from using dogs to chase the animals. Now, California could be looking at a statewide ban. Senate Bill 1221, introduced earlier this year by Senator Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), will ban the use of hounds while hunting bears and bobcats if Governor Jerry Brown signs the bill.

The ban would not affect bird hunters who rely on retrievers to recover ducks and other fowl, researchers who hire houndsmen to assist in treeing study animals, and wildlife officials who conduct depredation hunts of bears and mountain lions deemed dangerous to the public or their property.

Hunters are up in arms and have been protesting at public gatherings. Josh Brones is among those leading the defense of the sport. As the president of the California Houndsmen for Conservation, Brones says that hound hunting does not usually involve killing the bear and, what’s more, brings to life an ancient and natural drama between black bears and canine predators. During an interview, Brones said hound hunting is rather like a game of “hike-and-seek.” In these pursuits, the bear leads the hounds through the woods, often for many miles, before climbing a tree. The houndsman, slower but just as dogged as his hounds, eventually arrives, shoots some shaky video of the bear to post on YouTube and finally departs. Hunters sometimes call this activity catch-and-release—and even many wildlife researchers rely on it.

Brones, like many houndsmen, almost never kills bears, he says.

“In my 28 years of hunting with hounds, I have only killed four [black bears], and the last one was more than a decade ago,” he said. “I don’t even take a weapon when hunting for bear.”

Fitted with radio collars, these hounds are bawling and ready for the bear hunt. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Cowgirl Jules.

Brones assures that catch-and-release hunting is not stressful to the bear. Though hunting publications frequently characterize bear hunting as the most epic of adrenaline rushes (just Google hunting bears adrenaline rush), Brones says black bears themselves do not experience particularly increased adrenaline levels when chased by dogs. Rather, by fleeing for miles through the woods, bears—as well as other large game—are answering to basic instincts; they are not afraid—just running, he explained to me. He also described treed black bears yawning and nodding off to sleep in the cozy crook of a tree, indifferent to the dogs below. Department of Fish and Game warden Patrick Foy similarly told of treed mountain lions, which are sometimes pursued via hounds by researchers, as appearing “like they don’t have a care in the world.” Foy said, too, that a chase covering several miles of rough terrain is not especially hard on many large wild animals—just a walk in the woods, really.

“For a bear, six miles is nothing,” Foy said.

Some biologists, however, assure that hound hunting has considerable impacts on wildlife. Rick Hopkins, a conservation ecologist in San Jose, California, said in an interview that he participated in a long-term study more than 20 years ago in which he helped catch and radio collar 30 Bay Area mountain lions. In three of the chases, a cougar was caught and viciously attacked by the dogs. He says he knows, too, of cases in which a research hunt led to a cougar kitten getting killed by the hounds.

“Even in research hunts, which are carefully controlled,” dogs catch and maul the quarry, he said. “And I can guarantee that in less controlled hunts, bear cubs get caught.”

Hopkins went on to say, “It’s absolutely silly to suggest that it’s OK to run animals to exhaustion and chase them up a tree, and think that they’re fine.”

To the sport’s many opponents, hound hunting appears like little more than brazen wildlife harassment. Jennifer Fearing, the California director of the Humane Society of the United States, recently told the press, “It’s just reckless wildlife abuse. Even if [hunters] don’t intend to kill the bear, there isn’t such a thing as benign catch-and-release hound hunting.” Fearing noted that many public parks prohibit unleashed pet dogs.

“And yet we allow this narrow field of people to not only run their dogs off-leash but with the express purpose of chasing wildlife,” she said.

Brones says bears are very rarely injured by dogs, and he says he doesn’t know of any incidents in which cubs were attacked, though this (incredibly graphic, so be forewarned) video shows it happening. While such tooth-and-claw combat may be rare, no one seems really to know how often it occurs. Hunters are regularly separated for lengths of time (that’s why they use radio collars) from their dogs, which may show extreme aggression toward the pursued animal (the dogs often mob dead bears that have been shot from a tree). And for every dog-and-bear fight videoed and posted online, other similar skirmishes likely go unseen or undocumented. In one case described by an official with the Haven Humane Society in a recent letter to Senator Lieu, an injured bear fleeing from hounds happened to enter the city limits of Redding, California, where it climbed a tree. The said official tranquilized the bear, discovered that it bore severe dog bites and euthanized the animal.

A houndsman-hunter takes aim at a black bear. Hunters assure that bears, like this one, are not stressed or bothered when chased into trees. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Cowgirl Jules.

Hounds on the chase almost certainly scare and disturb nontarget wildlife. One European study (Grignolio et al. 2010) found that roe deer, though not the subject of hound hunts, would shift to less desirable habitat during the boar hunting season, where food was less abundant but where regulations precluded hunters and their hounds from entering. And in a July 2006 report (PDF) from the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Bureau of Wildlife Management, wildlife biologist Mark Ternent wrote, “Pursuit with hounds also may impose stress, disrupt reproduction, and alter foraging effectiveness of bears or other wildlife. Family groups may become separated, or cubs occasionally killed by hounds. However, several studies have concluded that most biological impacts from hound hunting are minimal (Allen 1984, Massopust and Anderson 1984), and the issue of hound hunting is largely social.”

As a species, black bears are not considered threatened. Scientists believe that there are about 30,000 in California, some 300,000 in the United States, and as many as 725,000 across their entire North American range, from Mexico to Alaska. Every year, licensed bear hunters in California take no more than 1,700—a quota set by the Department of Fish and Game. Half or less of these are currently taken with the assistance of dogs—and it’s almost certain that in California, even if houndsmen are soon banned from unleashing their dogs onto a scent trail, the bear hunt will still go on.

The dogs will just have to stay home.

Weigh in in the comment box below: Is hound hunting of bears, bobcats, mountain lions and other animals a fair chase? Or a sport whose time must end?

The Panache, or tiger-striped, fig is both delicious and photogenic and a favorite of Fig Day, at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchard. Here, the Panache has been included in a varietal tasting of four different types of fig. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Across the sun-drenched country, as far as the eye can see in the river-valley lowlands between the mountains, live armies of clones—millions and millions of fruit trees, each almost identical to every other nearby tree of its kind. These are the orchards of California’s Central Valley, fruit basket of America and one of the most fertile and wealthy agricultural regions in the world. Peaches, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, grapes and many more fruits are harvested here for eight months of the year—but what this productive region has in sheer volume it largely lacks in diversity. For just several varieties of each species constitute the bulk of the state’s produce market, and the Central Valley’s fruit orchards are, to use that dirty word of the agricultural cognoscenti, vast and unapologetic monocultures.

But tucked away on the western edge of this great valley is a small but glittering treasure—a farm containing almost a planet’s worth of biodiversity. Many have likened it to a Noah’s Ark of the world’s tree fruits, while those attuned to the vernacular of plant genetics call the site, located in Winters, California, a germplasm repository. Operated by the federal government with American tax dollars, Wolfskill Experimental Orchard includes more than 6,000 types of plants. Thousands of grape varieties, with two specimens of each vine, grow on the premises, as do hundreds of varieties each of walnuts, olives, peaches and almonds. Mulberries are grown here, too, and kiwis, and plums, and persimmons, and pistachios. And perhaps best of all, the Wolfskill Experimental Orchard is a public resource. Seeing the site by appointment, tasting fruit harvested by the staff and requesting wood for propagation are all welcomed.  And perhaps best of all, the Wolfskill Experimental Orchard is open to the public. Seeing the site, tasting the fruit and borrowing wood for propagation are all welcomed.

The best time to visit this remarkable farm is during one of the site’s annual tasting events. Most recently, Wolfskill’s managers hosted the always popular Fig Day. This annual September gathering draws farmers, hobbyists and general fig lovers from around California and even the country to taste across a spectrum of unusual figs, hear several short lectures on the various species grown at the Wolfskill property and tour the orchard itself. Howard Garrison, Wolfskill’s orchard manager and one of the chief fig experts in the state, had assembled a tasting table of sliced and diced figs of several varieties. Among them were the Calimyrna, the large and popular yellow-skinned fig imported from Turkey in the 1800s; the absurdly beautiful supermodel of the species—the Panache, or tiger-striped, fig; the fudgy-fleshed Santa Cruz Dark; the highly regarded Black Madeira; and the elegantly stemmed Pied de Boeuf (means “cow-foot” fig in French). Garrison also served platters of large green Excel figs wrapped with bacon and, for the vegetarians, just stuffed with goat cheese. Finally, Garrison delivered a brief talk on figs, their history and their botany. Among the scores of guests, one had brought with him a shoebox containing several show-and-tell figs of the most bizarre sort anyone present had seen. Harvested from a single, decades-old tree in Ventura County, this mystery fig, with its extremely elongated stem, delicate skin and honey-like flesh, baffled every geneticist, collector, farmer and hobbyist who had a close look. It was also a giant, with at least one fig from the tree weighing more than half a pound.

This bizarre fig, which a guest brought as a curiosity feature to the 2012 Fig Day, came from a tree in Ventura County. Not even Wolfskill’s fig specialists could identify the long-stemmed, honey-fleshed fig. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Fig Day 2012 also included an adjacent grape display and discussion arranged by Wolfskill’s grape horticulturalist, Bernie Prins. Prins had selected a half dozen of the 3,600-plus grape types in the orchard—almost all of them ripe and ready. Selections included the Kyoho grape, a Japanese giant about the size of a golf ball with a black skin; a golden brown, elongated hybrid grape that tasted faintly of chocolate and melon; and the show-stealing Black Hamburg, a musky, perfumey grape as shiny as obsidian.

Fig Day includes a grape tasting and lecture most years. Here, government grape expert Bernard Prins discusses several of the Wolfskill orchard’s 3,600-plus grape varieties. Photo by Alastair Bland.

A variety of tasting events are held at Wolfskill each year, and those who gag at the thought of figs (many people do) may take interest instead in the November persimmon and pomegranate tasting, the January kiwi tasting and the June mulberry and peach tasting. Visit their website to inquire about directions and the calendar of events—and if you go, don’t forget some cash for the donation pot.

But Wolfskill Experimental Orchard is not simply a venue for fruit-tasting events. The site is a public resource. John Preece, a USDA horticulturalist and researcher, told the small crowd before the tasting, “What we do here is preserve heirloom plants so they don’t go extinct, and then we make them available to anyone in the world who requests [wood for grafting or propagating] free of charge.” Farmers and gardeners may also submit online requests for wood cuttings by variety.

And John Baum, a member of the California Rare Fruit Growers, also took a moment to speak to the fig and grape tasters. “When you get home today, write to your congressmen and senators and tell them to support these operations,” Baum said. “Because there are people who think these collections should be run by private industries, and if industries controlled them, they would bulldoze up all the trees, because all they want are the market varieties.”

Which would leave us in a world of mostly black mission and brown Turkey figs—two industry staples of California. We might lose the huge and decadent black Zidi fig; the almost seedless, jelly-fleshed Mary Lane fig; the favorite cold-weather fig of Northwest gardeners, the green-skinned Desert King; and that supermodel of them all, the Panache.

Other fruit tastings:

Olives. A variety of events occur year-round in California.

Citrus. January, at UC Riverside.

Cherimoyas. February, at UC Irvine.

Strawberries. March, at UC Irvine.

Avocados. August, at UC Irvine.

Apples. Not an official tasting, but the USDA, which manages a huge apple collection in Geneva, New York, will be offering an open field day on September 22, where several apple varieties may be tasted.

What other tastings did we miss? Tell us about them in the comment box below.

The table is set in vibrant colors at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchard’s annual autumn pomegranate and persimmon tasting. Photo by Alastair Bland.

The United States government has compiled a tremendous range of the existing diversity in many of the world’s cultivated food plant species—almost comprehensive, but not quite. That is, many varieties (or “genetic material,” as collectors often refer to their quarry) remain undiscovered in faraway places and uncollected. This means that the most exotic, most wonderful fruit tasting of all may be the one you host yourself while traveling. Want pomegranates? Go to Montenegro or Albania, where mountainsides are covered with wild pomegranates. Want grapes? Hike through the vine-draped forests of formerly Soviet Georgia. Want mangoes? The jungles of Borneo are thick with untasted varieties. Want figs? Try cycling through Greece, the Balkans or Turkey, one eye ever on the roadside.

The author assembled this varietal display of roadside-harvested figs while touring by bicycle through the Parnonas Mountains of southern Greece, one of the prime centers of fig diversity. The only drawback to such ad hoc tastings is not knowing the varietal name or history of a given fig. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Friend or foe? The sun, shown here above Lassen County, California, has brought fires, drought and intolerable heat to much of the world this summer. Photo courtesy of Flickr user SP8254.

Headlines this summer have announced 2012 as America’s hottest year on record, with particularly brutal heat waves striking the Northeast, and stunning temperature highs all but cooking Death Valley and other Southwest desert hotspots.

What many papers have not pointed out, however, is that 2012 is shaping up to be among the warmest on record worldwide. In June, across the planet, the average land temperature was the highest since such record-keeping began in 1880. And factoring in ocean temperatures, the month of June was the fourth hottest June since 1880. The same data source, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that May 2012 was comparably scorching in the Northern Hemisphere. The global report for July is not yet available, but the national analysis is in—and the month burned like never a July has before. The lower 48 states’ 31-day temperature average of 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit made July 2012 the warmest single month ever recorded in America since national records began in 1895. Also during July, fires across America burned more than two million acres. Now, it’s August, and while we’re eagerly awaiting the next monthly summary, we don’t need a government climatologist to tell us that it’s broiling out there. Fires are sweeping the country, and farmers are grumbling about a drought. Global warming? It feels that way.

Following are a few of the hottest of hotspots where recent weather extremes are making 2012 a summer to write home about.

Spain. I was there, pedaling a bicycle through the Spanish interior in late June, and I almost cooked. The land was erupting in flames. Distant plumes of smoke marked brush and forest fires while helicopters in response came and went. Nights were balmy and comfortable, and mornings weren’t intolerable—but by noon each day the mercury edged past 100, and from 3 p.m. until about 7, the heat made riding a bike impossible. For four days I baked, spending one miserable afternoon on La Ruta de Don Quixote, a pathetic gravel trail through the scrub and desert, and itself the subject of a feeble tourism marketing campaign. Signage was poor and of water there was none. Windmills towered above me on a low ridge—but there was not a shade tree to be found. Relief came two days later, on the 26th, when, at last, I rolled into the air-conditioned terminal of Madrid-Barajas International Airport. June 2012 in Spain would clock out as the fourth-hottest Spanish June since 1960. The day I got out of that oven, temperatures peaked, reaching 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Cordoba.

The author’s bike bakes in 105-degree heat in Spain, on June 24, during a long, dry and waterless day on La Ruta de Don Quixote. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Death Valley. On July 11, the temperature hit 128 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley. Through the night, the mercury crashed more than 20 degrees to 107, which tied the world’s record for the warmest daily low, and the 24-hour average for the same day was a world record 117.5 degrees. Just four days later, scores of ultramarathoners embarked on the annual 135-mile Badwater foot race, which leads from 282 feet below sea level, where asphalt can get hot enough to melt rubber, to 8,360 feet above, at Whitney Portal. And while the race is considered one of the most brutal competitions in the world, climbing almost two miles straight up from the aptly named Furnace Creek, starting point of the race, may be about the surest way to beat—or simply escape—the heat of Death Valley.

Austria. Since the country began keeping records in 1767, Austria recorded its sixth-hottest June this year. On June 30, temperatures maxed out at 99.9 degrees Fahrenheit in both the capital city of Vienna and in German-Altenburg, Nope.

Canary Islands. Recent soaring temperatures, preceded by one of the driest Spanish winters in seven decades, have sparked raging fires on the islands of Tenerife and La Gomera, of the Canary Islands. Four thousand residents have been evacuated and British tourists have been asked to report to the Foreign Office as firefighters struggle to control the flames. Eight fires were recently burning on Tenerife and ten on La Gomera, where the inferno has threatened Garajonay National Park, a Unesco World Heritage site containing prehistoric woodland dating back 11 million years. Authorities report that the La Gomera blazes may be the result of arson.

The Arctic. If it looks freezing, and it feels freezing, it still might be warmer than ever—and in the high Arctic this summer, the sea ice has shrunk to historic lows. Though July’s ice cap cover was up slightly from last year, it was the second lowest recorded by NASA’s satellite monitoring program for polar ice extent. But the ice has been melting in the past 30 days, and now the square mileage of sea ice—2.52 million—is the lowest ever recorded for the month of August.

Lassen Volcanic National Park. A fire that broke out on July 29 in the California park has since scorched 24,000 acres of forest. A recent article predicted that the fire might be contained by the final days of August. The main highway through the park and over the mountain—a living volcano and no stranger to heat and fire—has been closed, and numerous homes around the park are threatened. Elsewhere throughout California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, fires have burned half a million acres of countryside, all of it parched by summer heat. In Redding, California, for instance, at the north end of the Sacramento Valley, summer started early, with the temperature reaching 102 on the last day of May. Twelve days in July were hotter than 100 degrees, and only four days in August so far have been less than triple digits. On August 12, the temperature reached 112.

In Related News:

Bearing the Heat. Across the United States, hungry black bears, facing a heat-induced food shortage, have resorted to breaking and entering to meet their daily caloric demands. With berries and other food forage shriveled by high temperatures, the animals have been raiding trash bins, cars and cabins with unprecedented frequency. In New York State, one black bear reportedly broke into a minivan stashed with goodies. When the door closed behind it, the bear became trapped and, in its efforts to escape, shredded the interior of the vehicle. And in June in Aspen, where searing heat has dried up the chokecherry and serviceberry crops, a female black bear with three cubs broke into at least a dozen cars in a guerrilla quest for calories.

Climate Change a Boon to English Tourism. While the subtropics burn, the higher latitudes are starting to feel just right for summer travelers. English officials expect the heat of continental Europe to be a great boon to tourism at U.K. beach towns. A document (PDF) produced by the University of Wales Swansea reports that erratic heat waves are expected to occur with frequency in the future in Europe—and whereas summers under the Greek, Spanish, Majorcan, Corsican and Tuscan suns have historically been regaled as idyllic icons of high-season tourism, replete with vineyards and wine tasting and so many pleasures Mediterranean, experts believe that, increasingly, Britons will stay home during the high season as southern Europe bakes under hotter and increasingly unpleasant summers.

Global Warming at Work? Maybe. Because federal government data like this is darn hard to argue with: “June 2012 also marks the 36th consecutive June and 328th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average.”

British Winemakers Say “Cheers” to Climate Change. The unfurling story of Southern England’s new and growing wine industry also seems to leave little doubt that global warming is real. More than 400 wineries are now producing good whites and reds in what scientists assure is a steadily warming region—one which they say warmed by 3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1961 to 2006. Don’t believe them? Then just look at the vines, which are thriving where 30 years ago winemakers say they couldn’t produce decent fruit. Sure: Data can get goofed—but grapes don’t lie.

Oregon? Bordeaux? Tuscany? Nope. This is England, at the vineyards of Denbies Wine Estate, one of many wine producers for which global warming has been a boon. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Pilgrim.

Heirloom tomatoes will star at the Sonoma Heirloom Tomato Festival this September at Kendall-Jackson Winery. Photo courtesy of Flickr user tamaradulva.

Where does a traveler go to best taste the foods and flavors of a region? Local restaurants? Not me. Because when a dish arrives at the table in a fine restaurant, it is more often the artful work of a chef, not the pure product of the land, and I don’t know about you, but I travel to experience a place, not its chefs. When I visit the East Coast of America, I want a steamed lobster, plain and simple—not shredded and rendered into a bisque, or folded into a delicate soufflé. And when I visit Southern California, I want to see the avocados, whole and complete, one variety beside the next, not whipped into some unidentifiable frothy salad dressing or blended into ice cream. And when I travel to Turkey, I want to eat Turkish figs, fresh off the branch as the tree offered them—not wrapped in bacon, doused with oil, stuffed with cheese and grilled. And in Alaska, there may be no better summertime dinner than a steak of salmon, grilled over open flames and drizzled with lemon—no fancy kitchen tricks required.

No, it doesn’t take a culinary college graduate to make good food. The land does it for us—and here are a few walk-around festivals this summer and fall, each starring some of the world’s greatest ingredients.

Tomatoes. The 16th Annual Sonoma County Heirloom Tomato Festival arrives on September 14 for a two-day gala at Kendall-Jackson Winery in Fulton, California, where visitors will meet 175 varieties of tomatoes that have almost slipped to the wayside in the shadow of Romas and other dominating commercial varieties. Tasting opportunities will abound for those interested in discerning the subtle and dramatic differences between varieties, while local star chefs will also get their hands on a few tomatoes for a competitive cook-off. In Valencia, Spain, meanwhile, the annual giant tomato fight arrives again on August 29 as thousands of revelers engage in La Tomatina. There is less food at this event than there is tomato smashing, stomping and squashing, plus half-naked wrestling in freshly pulped tomato sauce.

Figs. In Fresno, California, heart of America’s fig-growing industry, the 11th Annual Fig Fest comes this Saturday, August 11, on the front lawn of Fresno State University. The gathering will feature farmers, each at their own stalls and each showcasing the fruits of their mid-summer labors for guests to see and taste—like the Calimyrna, black mission, Kadota, brown Turkey, panache and other varieties of fig grown in local orchards. Wine and fig-based hors d’oeuvres can also be sampled, while a “Fig Feast” later in the evening at the Vineyard Restaurant will present the sweet and squishy fig in a fine-dining context. I’ll sate myself with unadulterated figs on the university lawn, thank you—though I’ll venture to guess (and correct me if I’m wrong) that those who buy the $75 meal ticket will find figs wrapped in salted swine and grilled.

Fresh figs are decadent as jam and the cause for celebration at the annual Fig Fest in Fresno, California. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Oysters. Any seafood fan knows that the best oyster is a raw one, slurped down minutes after being shucked from its shell—and oyster lovers at the annual International Oyster & Seafood Festival in Galway, Ireland, held the last three days of September, will find no short supply of their favorite cold and clammy mollusk. Events at the the festival include an oyster- shucking contest (watch that knife!) and Irish dancing. And don’t mark my words, but I would bet that somewhere in that three-day spell you could find yourself a pint of oyster stout. We just missed another oyster fest in June in New Orleans, as well as in Arcata, on the wild, black bear-trodden North Coast of California. Pencil them in for next year.

Wild Salmon. In British Columbia more than anywhere else, perhaps, a sharp line separates farmed salmon from wild. The former is abundant, cheap and likely a direct cause of the decline of some wild salmon populations—and proceeds from the annual Wild Salmon Festival of Lumby, British Columbia, held each July, go toward restoring local salmon-spawning habitat. As the event’s website poignantly states, “This festival honors the Wild Salmon who still come here to spawn and die.”

Mangoes. A festival each July in Coral Gables, Florida, features all things mango in one of the only American states where this tropical rock star of fruits can thrive. Florida farmers grow unique local varieties that festival visitors may taste nowhere else. In Guam, a celebration each June in the village of Agat showcases the island’s summer mango harvest with tastings, music, two- and five-kilometer runs and plant sales.

Watermelons arrive in heaps each summer, as do the worldwide festivals that honor them. Photo courtesy of Flickr user UGA College of Ag.

Watermelons. Festivals for America’s favorite and clumsiest fruit abound each summer. In Hope, Arkansas, watermelons take the stage this weekend at the 36th annual Watermelon Festival. Other similar festivals occur in Fair Bluff, North Carolina, in Carytown, Virginia, and in Mize, Mississippi. Throughout the Old World, too, summertime festivities honor the big juicy fruit, native to Eurasia. Upcoming is the annual watermelon festival in Salamanovo, Bulgaria, while the one in Beijing, China, came and went in late May.

Avocados. The Hass is the king of commercial avocado varieties, but hundreds of others can be found in Central American forests, in smaller orchards in California and Florida, and in government tree collections—like the experimental orchard at U.C. Irvine, where we just missed the annual walk-around-and-taste tour of the 80-variety avocado grove. But yet to come this year and early in 2013 are the avocado festival in Carpinteria, California, from October 5 to 7, next February’s avocado festival on the Big Island of Hawaii, where 200 varieties of avocados grow on local farms, and still another festival next April in Fallbrook, California. At each event there is sure to be mountains of guacamole—and even avocado ice cream.

Maine Lobster. We missed this one by a week—but pencil the Maine Lobster Festival into your 2013 calendar. Here, at Harbor Park in Rockland, the East Coast’s favorite crustacean will be served up in almost every manner. Consider getting to know the lobster first with a whole steamed two-pounder before moving on to more complicated dishes, which will be served by competing chefs in the lobster cook-off.

Black trumpets and golden chanterelles take center stage at such fungus celebrations as the Mendocino Wine and Mushroom Festival, coming this fall in Northern California. Photo courtesy of Flickr user portmanteaus.

Mushrooms. They rise unpredictably from the mossy forest floor, in dark, damp places, and in a vast array of colors, shapes and sizes—and the fact that some wild mushrooms are gourmet-grade edibles stirs fascination in millions of human admirers, who wait for them aboveground, frying pans greased to go. And so it’s hardly a surprise that countless fungus festivals celebrate wild mushrooms. In California’s Mendocino County in November, the annual Wine and Mushroom Festival spotlights one of the world’s most productive mushroom hotspots. Visitors will see and taste such culinary stars as the porcini, chanterelle, morel, lobster and black trumpet. Other annual mushroom festivals occur in Madisonville, Texas, Boyne City, Michigan, and Telluride, Colorado. And the world’s favorite underground mushroom, the white truffle, stars at the 82nd Annual International White Truffle Fair, which runs October 6 through November 18 in Alba, Italy.

Zinfandel. The largest single-variety wine tasting in the world, held each January in San Francisco, is a celebration of the Zinfandel grape, but just as much, it is a celebration of California itself, producer of virtually all the Zinfandel wine in the world. This Croatian-native grape variety makes a distinctively sharp and peppery red wine, which may owe its unique qualities in part to the chemistry of California soil. Scientists have found compounds of marine origin in the skins and juice of Zinfandel grapes—delivered, so the theory goes, from ocean to inland valley via migrating Chinook salmon, which die after spawning and whose carcasses were historically hauled from the rivers by bears and eaten in the state’s future vineyards. Taste a Zinfandel today, and you’re tasting California of yesteryear.

Yogurt, garlic, apples, wild game, olives, durians, cheese, jackfruit—foods of almost every sort are celebrated by the people who love them in the lands that produce them. So tell us: Which great or off-the-beaten-path food festivals did we leave out?

These cyclists are enjoying another day on the trail in the Crocodile Trophy, in northeastern Australia, considered one of the most punishing bicycle races in the world. Photo by Regina Stanger/Crocodile Trophy.

As the famed grand tours of summer begin rolling through Europe on carbon frames and ultra-light wheels, a number of lesser known but perhaps much more rigorous races are also gearing to go. They include cycling and foot races that take athletes through some of the world’s most spectacular and rugged country, as well as to the boundaries of what humans can endure, physically and psychologically. The more demanding of them allow no rest or sleep—unlike the more publicized stage races—and amount to nonstop endurance tests lasting as long as a week or more. Some of them also allow almost anyone to enter, in case you’re interested in trying your muscles in what might be the most unenjoyable tour you’ll ever take of the Sierra Nevada, the Rocky Mountains, the American desert or the Australian outback. Here are a few options for your next vacation:

Race Across America. Called RAAM and widely considered the hardest road cycling race in the world, the event starts in mid-June in Oceanside, California and leads several hundred dogged competitors more than 3,000 miles across the entire country to Annapolis, Maryland—without stopping. Last year, Christoph Strasser, now 29, pedaled the distance in eight days, eight hours and six minutes. RAAM soloists (racers in the team divisions take turns riding) may take cat naps totaling an hour of shuteye per day, but the general idea is, you snooze, you lose. The race is so demanding that many cyclists don’t finish at all. Some have died trying. Others begin losing their wits. Some solo riders may even lose their teeth as they eat sugary foods nonstop to replace the 10,000 calories that they burn a day, and for those that don’t brush at each pit stop, teeth may decay rapidly. To get a good taste of what this race offers before you consider attempting it, read Hell on Two Wheels, in which author Amy Snyder elaborates on the many forms of misery that one can expect while pedaling without rest across the continent.

Badwater Ultramarathon. For many foot racers, running one marathon isn’t enough. Nor are two, or three, or even four, and the Badwater Ultramarathon amounts to five—135 miles of trotting through some of the hottest, grittiest country in the world. It begins as low as one can go in the western hemisphere while still keeping your feet dry—at 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley. From there, it only goes up, with runners eventually finishing—or trying to, anyway—at Whitney Portal, 8,360 feet above sea level. As though such mileage and elevation gain weren’t strenuous enough, the race takes place in July, when temperatures may easily exceed 110 degrees. No one has ever died in the Badwater Ultramarathon, but between two and four out of every 10 runners fail to finish each year. The record time of completion is 22 hours, 51 minutes.

Western States Endurance Run. What began in 1955 in the Sierra Nevada as a 100-mile horseback competition shifted to a super-marathon foot race in the mid 1970s as men and women began to wonder if they, too, could trot for some 20 hours and 100 miles nonstop. Today, the “Western States 100” takes place every Saturday of the last full weekend in June as hundreds of the hardest-core runners in the world start on the notorious 2,500-foot climb over the first four miles and proceed on old mining trails that ascend a total of just over 18,000 vertical feet. The route goes from Squaw Valley to Auburn, over country so rough that only horses, hikers and helicopters can come to help, in case runners should fall ill or injured. The race begins at 5 a.m. sharp, and runners must cross the finish line by 11 a.m. The next day.

For many of us, a 30-minute jog will do. But this runner, just finished with the Western States 100, has been trail trotting for over 27 hours. Photo courtesy of Flickr user runnr_az.

Paris-Brest-Paris. Considered the great granddad of ultracycling endurance events, the hallowed Paris-Brest-Paris was first held in 1891, an 800-mile sprint from Paris, out to the coast at Brest and back again. Like the Race Across America, the PBP is a catnapping affair, with cyclists going nonstop and striving to complete the ride in less than the 90-hour time limit. But unlike RAAM, PBP is a ride, not a race—though it once was. The contest took place once a decade, until 1951. Now, the PBP occurs once every four or five years as a recreational ride, or randonnée. The most recent PBP took place in 2011. While the stakes in the PBP are far less than in pro racing events, cyclists must still abide by some rules. Notably, there is generally no vehicle support allowed, and riders are expected to make their own repairs, fix their own flats and, if they need an emergency recharge, stop for croissants and espresso on their own dime, and clock.

Crocodile Trophy. At more than 500 miles and self-touted as “the hardest, longest and most adventurous mountain bike race in the world,” this one just sounds awful. But the Crocodile Trophy, set in the low-latitude tropics in northeast Australia, is a stage race, offering food, rest and plenty of sleep every single day. RAAM cyclists may seem to have it rougher, but if Croc Trophy contenders had to do it all at once, the effort just might kill them. The late-October race is off-road, meaning gravel, rocks, ruts, puddles (potentially containing crocodiles lying in ambush), dust and lots of crashing. If this sounds like a pleasant way to see Australia, then sign up; the race welcomes men and women over 18 years of age and registration for the 2012 event is open until August 20.

And for a race that’s already underway, World Cycle Racing Grand Tour. Jason Woodhouse is burning about 11,000 calories a day—but unlike most pro racers, Woodhouse does not have a van shadowing him with food, gear and mechanical support. The 24-year-old from England is currently racing around the world in an unsupported journey that will cross every line of longitude on Earth, include 18,000 miles of pedaling and finish right where it began, in London. The fastest recorded time for the same ride is currently 164 days, and Woodhouse—who is carrying camping gear and racing against nine others—is planning to demolish that record with a completion time of 130 days. As he goes, Woodhouse is raising funds for Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He also aims to demonstrate that the bicycle can be adequately used in virtually any trip shorter than five miles. On an itinerary that includes about 130 miles of cycling most days—plus a few airplane trips—his point is well made.

Want to train for an extreme race? Consider the Extreme World Races Adventure Academy, which offers five-day courses in long-distance adventuring in cold, icy, miserable landscapes. The academy is in Norway, and the session includes a three-day mini expedition on the ice and tundra. Bundle up, and enjoy the scenery if you can.

King Juan Carlos, at right, stands with his guide from Rann Safaris as his dead Botswanan elephant lies propped against a tree.

The king of Spain visited Botswana recently, and on the famous savanna, teeming with animals familiar from the picture books we read as youths, King Juan Carlos shot and killed an elephant.

When I heard about the king’s outing, I decided to learn a little more about Botswana’s laws governing the protection—or lack thereof—of Africa’s most famous creatures. It turns out that many of them can be lawfully killed for those who buy the privilege. According to the website of Rann Safaris, the hunting outfit that guided King Carlos (who happens to be the honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund) it takes $6,000 to shoot a leopard. For $1,200, you can shoot a crocodile. For the pleasure of killing a hyena, you must turn over only $500. For a rhino, sorry, you’ll have to visit South Africa. But if you’re content to shoot an ostrich, stay on in Botswana, where the permits will run you $550. Short on cash? Then there’s always baboons, which go for a paltry $200 a pop. And to shoot the greatest land animal on the planet, the one that lives in matriarchal herds and mourns somberly when a family member dies, the one that’s been targeted by tusk-seeking machine gunners for decades and which you’d think should be a protected species—to shoot an African elephant, you’ll need to pay $19,000. It’s a princely sum, but nothing for a king.

The world is full of opportunities to shoot at its mightiest creatures, whether they’re good to eat or not, and here are just several animals that some of us would love to see and photograph—and that some people just want on the rec room wall.

Sharks. There’s nothing politically correct about shark fin soup, but an annual killing contest goes on in Martha’s Vineyard, where hundreds of sport fishermen gather every July to compete in the Annual Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament. The event’s website states that 98 percent of sharks caught in the derby are released (a change from prior years), but there are prize incentives to bring the largest fish in to the dock, where crowds gather expectantly to see dead and bloody “monsters” hoisted at the weigh station. Last year, the biggest sharks landed and killed included 630-pound and 538-pound thresher sharks, a 495-pound porbeagle and a 278-pound mako. In 2005 a fisherman took a tiger shark weighing 1,191 pounds.

Big cats. The African lion has declined in numbers from possibly 100,000 in the early 1990s to a current population estimated to be as low as 16,000 individuals. Yet hunting of this vulnerable species is legal in parts of Africa. By some reports, in fact, the number of lions killed by licensed trophy hunters each year is on the rise. In California, cougar hunting was banned in 1990—so when a member of the state’s Fish and Game Commission got the urge to kill one this January, he went to Idaho, where hunting the cats is legal. The hunter, Dan Richards, posed gleefully with the cougar in his arms, sparking an explosion of anger among animal rights activists and trophy hunting critics. The controversy centered on the question of whether a man charged with, among other things, protecting cougars in one state should go and hunt them in another. Richards pointed out that he and his friends ate cougar the evening after the hunt—an excuse often voiced by trophy hunters. If you want to put food on the table, shoot a rabbit or a deer—but please, not a top predator.

Dan Richards, of the California Fish and Game Commission, went out of state to shoot this Idaho mountain lion.

Bears. They reportedly taste vile if they’ve been feeding on salmon or marine mammals, but that doesn’t stop Alaskan hunters from killing brown bears. In fact, these animals usually aren’t eaten—just skinned and beheaded, as Alaska state law requires. Alaskan black bears, too, are often killed only for wall mounts. The state, to its credit, prohibits one from using the meat of a game animal for purposes other than human consumption, yet exceptions are generously granted to bear hunters, who can at certain times of the year (like during salmon runs) use a black bear’s flesh as pet food, fertilizer or bait. (For wolves and wolverines, the meat does not need to be used at all.) Elsewhere in the world, bear hunters sometimes participate in controversial “canned hunts“—such as the one in 2006 in which King Juan Carlos, our mighty elephant hunter, shot a tame, drunk Russian brown bear named Mitrofan, who was fed honey and vodka prior to being prodded into an open field, where the crowned noble had an easy shot. Even imperiled polar bears are still legally hunted for trophies.

Baboons. I’m almost reluctant to discuss this one, so similar are the animals to us and so grisly the nature of this hunt, but the fact that men and women shoot baboons for kicks needs recognition. Landowners consider baboons pests in some places and welcome trophy hunters, who often use bows to kill the primates. The animals are known to react dramatically when hit, and—much like a human might—a baboon will scream and holler as it tussles with the shaft protruding from its torso. Even hardened hunters reportedly grow queasy at the sight of a skewered baboon panicked with fear. If you have the stomach for it, look through this Google gallery of “baboon hunting” images, showing proud hunters with their trophy kills, or for some less graphic insight into the minds of the people who would kill baboons for the joy of it, read through this baboon hunting discussion. Here is a sample from the conversation: “Seems kinda twisted but given the chance I’d shoot one. Cool trophy.” And: “Good Luck, Hope ya get one. My next time back I’d like to kill one as well.” Someone get me a bucket.

Wolves. While this top predator reproduces relatively rapidly and can be naturally resilient to some level of persecution, sport hunting the gray wolf still stinks. To justify the hunt, wolf hunters describe the animals as having negative effects on deer and elk herds. In the Rocky Mountain states, where wolves were reintroduced in the 1990s, they are already being hunted again. Some wolves are baited into shooting range, others pursued via snowmobile, and in a few places wolves are shot from airplanes—like on the Kenai Peninsula, where a government predator control program is drawing fire from wolf allies. Wolf pelts, not the flesh, are the goal of the game, though cast members of the film The Grey reportedly ate wolf stew in order to prepare for a scene in which the actors, including Liam Neeson, would pretend to dine on wolf meat. Most of the cast vomited during their meal, donated by a local wolf trapper, though Neeson returned for seconds.

More top targets of the trophy hunter’s hit list:

Billfish. Anglers may eat sailfish sashimi or braised marlin, but let’s keep things real: These fish die for their swords.

And crocodiles for their hides.

And walrus for their tusks.

And hippopotamus for … honestly, I really can’t imagine.

This just in: King Juan Carlos has publicly apologized for killing his elephant. “I am very sorry,” he told the press on April 18. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.” Sure, now that he’s got his tusks.

The author and his bike stand about 850 feet above San Francisco on Conzelman Road. Repeated 10 times, this little hill amounts to a world classic of climbing.

On St. Patrick’s Day, my brother and I rode our bicycles to the top of Conzelman Road in Marin County, and from the overlook above San Francisco, with a view of the Golden Gate Bride, we drank a strong ale from our local Lagunitas Brewing Company. A man, just out of his car and camera in hand, said, “You guys earned your beer, eh? Makes me feel lazy.” We nodded but didn’t have the heart to tell him that we’d actually pedaled to the top, gone back to the bottom, and repeated the mountain ride nine more times. The four-hour stunt was our birthday gift to ourselves (we’re twins)—a 35-mile ride in which we gained more than 7,000 vertical feet. Not bad, but at the end, we were dizzy with the numbing repetition of the feat, and we knew one thing for certain:

“We need a bigger hill, Andrew,” I said to my brother.

Because for hill climbers like us, long, steady, unyielding climbs are the holy grail of athletic conquests. Climbing such roads on a bicycle delivers endorphins to the brain, strengthens muscles and calms the mind. It works like yoga, asking concentration while allowing meditation. Big climbs mean health, nourishment and prolonged youth. We thrive on them, and hill climbers like us can’t help but measure the worth of a landscape by its rise over run. And so we scorn Holland and its tidy flat bike paths, and we dream of mountains and those rare roads that go upward for thousands upon thousands of feet without pause. But where are these monsters—and how high do they climb? The following list includes just a few of the best uphill bike rides in the world. You needn’t be a hill climber to love them, because they’re equally thrilling to ride down. Just check your brakes and wear your helmet.

Haleakala, Hawaii. Rise Over Run: 10,023 feet of climbing in 35.5 miles. The road up the Haleakala volcano delivers one of the longest highway ascents, with the most vertical gain in one push, in the world. It is also one of the most downright difficult rides, as there is virtually no flat or downhill ground once the climbing starts. Moreover, the air grows thin with the altitude, heightening the difficulty as cyclists struggle to catch their breath. Not surprisingly, some tourists come to this mountain for only the thrill of going down it. Maui Easy Riders, for one, offers what is billed as one of the longest guided downhill bike rides in the world.

Khardung La, India. Rise Over Run. 5,566 feet in 24 miles. Elevation measurements seem to vary in the Himalaya depending on the source, the country, the website and the altimeter, but still, cyclists agree: Khardung La out-passes nearly every other highway pass in the world. It offers only half the vertical gain of Haleakala, but it leads cyclists to unsurpassed heights of more than 18,000 feet above the sea. Supposedly, no “motorable” road goes higher than the one to Khardung La. Before going down, bundle up against the chill.

Mont Ventoux, France. Rise Over Run: 5,303 feet in 13.6 miles. Three roads lead up this famed climb on the western edge of the Alps. Each is tough, but the steepest is considered one of the most challenging bike rides anywhere. The climb has gained notoriety as a recurring feature in the Tour de France, often as a dramatic mountaintop stage finish, with all cyclists sprinting for the summit on the steep home stretch. But during the 1967 Tour, Mont Ventoux reminded cyclists that hill climbing is not all fun and games. Legendary British cyclist Tom Simpson died on the way up due to heat exhaustion, dehydration and, possibly, a combination of drug and alcohol use. Romantics may prefer to believe it was simply the mountain that took his life.

A cyclist fights gravity and grade on the final miles to the top of Mont Ventoux, one of the most legendary cycling climbs in the French Alps. Photo courtesy of Flickr user The Pingus.

Sualmaz Pass, Turkey. Rise Over Run: 5,540 feet in approximately 25 miles. This climb from the Mediterranean Sea into the Toros Mountains does not make the lists of the world’s great rides, nor is its statistical info posted on any online cycling forums, nor do teams of Lycra-clad road bikers blitz up and down it on warm weekends. I know of the Sualmaz Pass only because I know the pass personally, and it’s got all the charisma of a world classic. It begins in the town of Anamur, roughly at sea level, among groves of banana trees and subtropical sun. Then, inland several miles, the ascent begins. The lush valley floor drops as the mountains soar overhead. Bring food and water (I ran out of both when I climbed it in 2010) and start early (I got a late start and arrived in the town of Ormancik after dark. I slept in a vacant lot and finished the climb in the morning). The magic of this road is the near absence of traffic, the dramatic climatic change one observes between bottom and top and the novelty of being the only cyclist for miles. People will stare at you and cheer and honk their horns in encouragement. Soak up the glory.

Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Rise Over Run: 13,597 feet in 43.1 miles. This biggest of big climbs should top the list, but it comes with a disclaimer: The final three miles are unpaved dirt, ash and gravel and are reportedly almost impossible to ride on a road bike. On the asphalt, which terminates at 9,200 feet above the sea, the highway slants to as steep as a 17-percent grade in places. If you reach the top, savor the strangeness of being in a frigid, treeless Mars-like moonscape—in Hawaii.

Mount Washington, New Hampshire. Rise Over Run: 4,586 feet in 7.6 miles. If bang is elevation and buck is overall mileage, then this route may offer more of the former for the latter than any other paved road. Unfortunately, this legendary climb, considered by many to be the world’s most difficult feat in uphill cycling, is not open to just anyone. The road, which averages 12 percent in grade, is private and is closed to bicycles except during two organized races each year, in July and August. Currently, the July event is open for sign-ups. Note: Registration requires a fee. Cyclists must also arrange for a ride down afterward, as the road is considered so perilously steep that cycling downhill from the summit is prohibited.

Organized bike rides and races that will bust your butt:

The Everest Challenge, Nevada and California. 29,035 feet of climbing in 208 miles, 2 days.

The Death Ride, California. 15,000 feet in 129 miles, 1 day.

The Leadville 100, Colorado. 16,165 feet in 99.3 miles,  1 day.

The Cape Epic, South Africa. 53,460 feet in 488 miles, 9 days.

The Steepest Streets:

Steep city streets are a much different sort of challenge than long highway climbs. They are short, usually a standard city block, but they can be really, really steep, allowing those who go up them some no-joke bragging rights. Consider these nasty, slanty city slopes:

1. Broderick Street, San Francisco. 37 percent.

2. Canton Avenue, Pittsburgh. 37 percent.

3. Baldwin Street, Dunedin, New Zealand. 35 percent.

4. Eldred Street, Los Angeles. 33 percent.

Meadows, lakes, snow and granite are the enduring elements of California's John Muir Trail, which leads through 211 miles of some of the world's most beautiful alpine wilderness. Photo courtesy of Flickr user peretzp

After cycling for weeks, now I’m thinking about walking. Foot travel has been the way of the wayfarer since men and women were still dragging their knuckles. The fact that people still opt to walk today, in the age of the wheel and the combustion engine, tells us there is something virtuous and irresistible in the plodding of one foot forward after the other. And without question, walking works. Using their legs and feet, many people have moved thousands of miles overland, and in many places the trails they wore in the earth are used by modern recreational trekkers who follow in the footsteps of their forebears. Following are five of the world’s great walks—with more to come next week.

Appalachian Trail. Leading 2,181 miles through 14 states and the historic forests and backwoods shanties of Appalachia, the Appalachian Trail was conceived in 1921, and by 1937 it was ready for walking. Today, 4 million people walk parts of the trail every year. Those attempting a through-hike number in the thousands, and only one in four finish. From Maine’s Mount Katahdin to Georgia’s Springer Mountain, the whole package takes as long as six months as hikers accumulate a total elevation gain equal to climbing Mount Everest 16 times.

John Muir Trail. This path through the high Sierra Nevada of California immortalizes the landscape that naturalist John Muir worshiped. And at just 211 miles long through beautiful alpine country, it’s both epic and doable. From the south, the JMT begins at the lower 48 states’ highest peak, Mount Whitney; crosses mountain passes more than 13,000 feet in elevation; traverses some of the world’s most beautiful high altitude wilderness; never touches a road and finally lands hikers in one of the world’s most esteemed natural places, Yosemite Valley. The trail generally requires three weeks from start to finish. If you happen to have a little extra time on either side, you could walk from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, of which the JMT is just a small part.

Coast to Coast Walk. A walk that doesn’t demand superb physical condition or half a year to complete, this 220-mile path crosses Northern England and leads through the evergreen verdure of the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks, from the Irish Sea to the east coast of England. Writer and walking enthusiast Alfred Wainswright devised the trail and suggested that hikers touch their toes in the Irish Sea at St. Bees before starting and step right into Robin Hood’s Bay after 10 or 20 days of trudging. Or else it doesn’t count.

Great Wall of China. No, you can’t really see it from space. That was a myth more or less debunked in the past decade or so by astronauts. However, while the Great Wall of China no longer plays a role in international affairs, it makes one heck of a walking platform. Unlike the heavily trammeled Camino (see below) or Appalachian Trails, the Great Wall demands ingenuity, craftiness and durability in anyone who attempts to plod the length of it, which is broken, crumbled or gone in many sections. Australian Mark Scholinz walked the wall in 2007. He encountered frozen steppe country, wolf tracks, endless hospitality and a whole lot of rice and tea.

Camino de Santiago. Once a path of the pious, this European network of trails converges toward its terminus as it leads many thousands of walkers each year to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Though founded by deeply religious pilgrims more than a thousand years ago, “the Camino” today is simply a recreational venture for most making the pilgrimage. It is also hardly an adventure anymore, as every step of the way has been walked a million times before, with many miles of pathway paralleling freeways and cutting through suburbs and farmland. One highlight of the trail is certainly the Cruz de Ferra, a 25-foot-tall cross which pilgrims have built by depositing knickknacks and trinkets and stones. Today, the rockpile is is almost 20 feet high, a sacred midden built over centuries. It’s truly a wonder just to touch it.

The Cruz de Ferra, surrounded by an ancient mound of stones left by pilgrims, is one of the marvels to be found along the Camino de Santiago. Photo by Alastair Bland

Reading About Walking:

Don’t feel like walking the walk? The armchair is one of the comfiest vehicles of travel we have. You’ll need a good book, and here are several classics of adventure travel.

The Snow Leopard. In this sober account, we find author Peter Matthiessen to be a man of Buddhism, western science, literature and a love of big cats. In 1972, when biologist George Schaller invited him on a 200-mile trek into the Himalaya to track the rare blue sheep, Matthiessen, now in his mid-80s, accepted, unable to resist the opportunity to see a snow leopard. It was the fall, and their trip led into one of the most mysterious, dangerous yet peaceful regions of the world under blue skies and a warm sun. By November, frostbite and blizzards were ever-present dangers. The two Americans, accompanied by Sherpas and porters, do eventually see the blue sheep, while all along the high and rocky trails lurk the haunting signs of the snow leopard.

Danziger’s Travels. English author Nick Danziger points out early in this book that he was not interested in walking a record distance or cycling across a continent when he took up the old trade route of the Asia-to-Europe silk traders. Rather, he utilized whatever local means of travel were available in China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey—and often he was walking. Danziger’s travels lasted 18 months, for part of which time he went disguised as a Muslim. The book is an adventure account almost as simple as the travel genre gets, but few are better.

The Places in Between. Journalist Rory Stewart walked for 16 months through Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal in 2000 and 2001. Then, in the virulent months following the September 11 attacks, he found himself facing Afghanistan. The month he spent walking across it would produce, eventually, one of the best modern travel books I’ve found. Stewart survived on the food and shelter of kind strangers, but many Afghans, hardened by war and the desert, were downright vicious. Stewart was determined to walk, and he firmly refused rides across known danger zones. For part of the way, a trio of Afghan soldiers escorted him. But it’s the many miles he walked alone (and with a great shaggy dog adopted along the way) that make readers marvel, at times, that Stewart lived to write about the trip.

A Walk in the Woods. He’s pudgy. He’s brainy. He has a strange penchant for stupid knickknacks and trivia from his Americana Midwest childhood. And for some reason, late in the 1990s, he decided to walk partway across America. In the end, comic Bill Bryson only completed, in bits and pieces, 800-some miles of the Appalachian Trail, but it was enough to provide him with the fodder he needed to write one of the funniest travel books of our time.

Next Post: More Great Walks of the World

Sue Macy's Wheels of Change

Sue Macy‘s elaborately illustrated 2011 book, Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way), describes the surprising role that the bicycle played in freeing women—both physically and spiritually—from the oppressive and conservative constraints of 19^th century America. Bicycles at the time were clumsy, heavy things made of iron and wood and sometimes called “boneshakers” until rubber tires softened the ride. But men were getting a kick out of them, and women wanted in on the fun. Their clothing was a problem, as Macy points out:

Imagine a population imprisoned by their very clothing; the stiff corsets, heavy skirts, and voluminous petticoats that made it difficult to take a deep breath, let alone exercise…How suffocated women must have felt. And how liberated they must have been as they pedaled their wheels toward new horizons.

To efficiently ride a bike there was only one thing to do: Take it off. Skin-tight lycra and tube tops were still some years down the road, but women were, at last, freed from the ridiculous layers that had physically anchored them to house, porch and trimmed Victorian lawn for ages. They swung their legs over the frames of their bikes and pedaled off on adventures, often with male companions. Macy tells of one bitter curmudgeon named Charlotte Smith who said in 1896 that “the alarming increase of immorality among young women in the United States” was a product of the bicycle. Smith also said that the bicycle was “the devil’s advance agent morally and physically.”

Other people, Macy tells us, saw the virtues of the bicycle.

“A girl who rides a wheel is lifted out of herself and her surroundings,” declared one Ellen B. Parkhurst. “She is made to breathe purer air, see fresher and more beautiful scenes, and get an amount of exercise she would not get otherwise.”

(Sounds like Parkhurst had the spirit of a bike tourist.)

The bicycle impacted the world in measurable ways in the 1890s. Cigar sales took a nosedive, Macy reports, as the collective preoccupation with cycling replaced smoking in stodgy reading rooms. Use of morphine, popular at the time as a sleep inducer, declined as people discovered how a little vigorous exercise could induce relaxation and sleep. Pastors and priests even observed that church attendance began dropping as more people opted to spend their Sundays jerseyed up, sipping off their CamelBaks and shredding sweet singletrack.

Well, riding bikes, anyway.

Cycling, unarguably, was fun, and voices of the conservative naysayers were drowned out as the American bicycle industry exploded. For instance, 17 manufacturers and a 40,000-bike output in 1890 increased to 126 manufacturers and the production of nearly a half million bicycles in 1895. Already, in fact, bike builders were customizing designs to accommodate women.

It was official: Ladies were on board. Critical mass had been reached, and there seemed to be no stopping the craze.

Some women engaged in competitions that lasted days as they pedaled hundreds of miles around oval tracks. For other women, just cycling somewhere, anywhere, was enough—and they began touring. In 1894, Annie Londonderry rode 1,300 miles between New Hampshire and Chicago. Later she would travel by boat and bicycle around the world, finishing with a ride from San Francisco to Chicago. Macy doesn’t tell us if lionhearted Londonderry camped out, how much weight she lost, what was the highest pass that she tackled, if she ever ran out of food or if she saw grizzly bears out West, but adventurous spirits, plainly, were taking flight.

Macy’s book ends abruptly and with a sad shocker: The bicycle craze curled up and died, for the automobile had been born. “By the turn of the century,” Macy writes, “the bicycle’s heyday was over and a new mechanical wonder promised to transport men and women faster and farther than ever before.” Great. Cars, traffic and suburbia were coming. But on bicycles, women had gained a huge spurt of momentum in gaining basic rights, and so they stepped off their bikes, straightened their dresses and went off to pursue other liberties.

Free at Last: This Sicilian, touring in Greece, may owe her liberty to the women's independence movement of the 1890s, described in Sue Macy's Wheels of Change.

In another book published this year, It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels, the history of the bicycle goes on into the 20^th century. The book is author Robert Penn’s account of his personal quest to find the perfect bicycle. Along the way he describes some of the same history of which Sue Macy writes. For example, Penn adds to our growing accumulation of bike trivia that Annie Londonderry carried a revolver in her saddlebag. What a lady! But mostly, Penn tells the history of the machine and the development of its many components—complex products of engineering that today allow us to scale mountains, freewheel back down, stop on a dime, keep at it for hours without getting a sore rear end, and so on. He talks frames, wheels, saddles, gears, hubs, derailleurs and chains. He looks at fixed-gear bikes, road bikes, mountain bikes and hand-built bikes so dashing that it seems foolish even to ride them. He chitchats with bike builders who are constantly pushing the improvement of every nook, cranny and corner of the bicycle.

Penn recalls for us, too, a great Ernest Hemingway quote that every cycle tourist should know: “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them…you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through.” And I’d always taken Hemingway for the sort who just writes short sentences in Parisian cafes. Seems he would have made a fine touring partner.

In one humorous encounter in a Welsh village, where Penn had just moved in, he describes the locals’ inability to comprehend why a man would choose to ride a bike unless he had to. In a pub one evening, a fellow asks Penn if he had lost his driver’s license. Penn tells the man that he simply loves riding and does so by choice. A year later in the same pub, the same man takes Penn aside once more.

“‘I see yor on the bike still, boy,’ he said. ‘A long time to be banned now, see. You can tell me…did you daw something tehr-ribble in a car? Did you kill a child?’”

We’re reminded that many people still regard the bicycle as a toy and by no means a valid form of transportation. But, as Penn writes, “The cultural status of the bicycle is rising again…In fact, there is a whisper that we might today be at the dawn of a new golden age of the bicycle.”