After twelve years of school, many young people have an urge to do something new and different. They want to see the world before they embark on their future as adults. My father, Bob Sommerfeldt, was one of those people. After he graduated from high school in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in the fall of 1939, he and his good friend, also named Bob, decided to take a bike trip to visit Bob's sister in Seattle, Washington. It turned out to be an eight-month trip around the entire circumference of the continental United States. This book is a record of an eighteen-year-old's first adventure into the world. It gives a tiny window on the world of a very different time in our history.