Bookshelf hold guides to real and virtual cycling

    Slick roads and impassable trails can make a cyclist cranky, but consolation for the snowbound this year came in the form of several new biking books. Some recently published volumes that staved off cabin fever and will be handy references in season:

• "Bike Cult" by David Perry (Four Walls Eight Windows, $23.95, 212-206-8965). This hefty compendium of all things bicycle-related has lots of illustrations and lists, and fascinating histories of human-powered vehicles, bicycling as a political tool, sports feats and more. Worcester's own Marshall W. "Major" Taylor, world sprint champion in 1899, rates eight full pages.
• "Cycling in Cyberspace" by Michelle L. Kienholz and Robert Pawlak (Bicycle Books, $14.95, 800-468-8233). Just when the bike bookmarks in my Internet browser were getting out of hand, I got this thorough, up-to-date and well-organized guide to biking news, information and advice on line. It took me months of surfing the Net on my own to come across a fraction of the on-line sources catalogued here, including World Wide Web pages, e-mail lists, Newsgroups and bulletin board services. A couple of locally useful sites that aren't mentioned are the North East Bicycle Club, which has a link to the New England racing calendar, and Midcoast Velo/Team Bikeman, which has the lowdown on masters racing in the East.
• "Great Rail-Trails of the Northeast" by Craig Della Penna (New England Cartographics, $12.95, 413-549-4124). The author is a railroad manager from western Massachusetts who mountain biked more than 1,300 miles to research the book, which consists of detailed maps and mile-by-mile descriptions of 26 trails on old rail beds. Railroad histories and a healthy list of resources, such as the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, are included. One local trail featured is a state-owned, 12-mile stretch of the former Ware River Railroad, from Route 122 at the Barre-Oakham line to Route 2A in Templeton.
• "Mountain Biking the National Parks" by Jim Clark (Bicycle Books, $12.95. 800-468-8233). This small volume has maps and short descriptions of 30 scenic routes, 2 to 53 miles long, in the West, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. Like Clark's earlier book, "Cycling the U.S. Parks," this is a more of an introductory sampler than an all-you-need guide. I'd use it to decide which park to visit, then seek more detailed information.
• "Bike Abroad" by Gerri Alpert (New Voyagers Trip Finders, $29.95, 800-639-8692). Beautiful color photos adorn this index of hundreds of commercial bike tours in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Central and South America. The introductory chapters on how to plan and prepare for an overseas bike tour, and what to expect, are good for first-timers who don't want to go it alone. The book tells which companies run trips in which places, and how much they charged in 1994, although it is far from comprehensive. The trip descriptions are excerpted from catalogs you'd be better off ordering directly, and you can get even more tour operators' names and addresses _ and a lot of other benefits _ for about the same price by joining the League of American Bicyclists (410-539-3399) or Adventure Cycling Association (406-721-1776).
• "Getting There: Strategic Facts for the Transportation Advocate" (Advocacy Institute, $11, 202-659-8475). This 36-page booklet came out of the Washington, D.C.-based Gas Guzzler Campaign, which helps communities reduce reliance on cars and build support for transit, bicycling, walking and alternatively-powered vehicles. It consists of statistics on traffic costs, pollution, oil dependency, land use, public transportation, electric cars, telecommuting and, of course, walking and bicycling. For instance: In China there are 250 bicycles for every car, while in the United States we have 1.4 cars for every bicycle.

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