Riding The Big One: In The Wake of My Ancestors

Two heroes—one ancient, one modern—cast off their mundane existences for respective adventures on the high seas and high ways. Whether by Viking longship or tandem bicycle, Riding the Big One is a humorous and poignant tale of discovery, ancestry and transformation.
Eyvind Haakonson is a twenty-year-old fisherman in ninth century Norway. On a bleak winter's day he decides that Valhalla is better than dying of boredom and goes Viking, boarding the next ship headed for Britain. He brings his sword, his fearless wife Hild, and an unwanted ghost.
Ian Owens is a thirty-five year old software sales engineer born eleven centuries after Eyvind. Faced with the tedium and minutiae that claim so many in his profession, he makes a choice similar to his distant ancestor's. Wielding a handheld computer rather than a sword, cycling across the USA instead of plundering Europe's coastlines, he and Jane, his plucky wife-to-be, meet with modern versions of Eyvind and Hild's Dark Age perils, and both men wonder if Riding The Big One can alter their inherited destinies.