The Road To Wellville: Bicycle Smile

The Road to Wellville is a terrific novel by T. C. Boyle. The book is fiction set in the John Harvey Kellogg's  1907 Battle Creek spa and it's a marvellous comedy examining our obsession with health, vigour and right living. The book was made into a movie in 1997 and while the movie has a first-rate cast (Anthony Hopkins plays Dr. Kellogg), the movie cuts, changes and dilutes the book. I enjoyed the book about ten times more than I did the movie.

While the book obsesses on food, the movie places a greater obsession on sex. This, of course, is not surprising. I guess the producers figured sex scenes are more interesting than food scenes. And what does this have to do with bicycles? Well, John Harvey Kellogg was a proponent of bicycles and there are some great cycling scenes in the movie. This particular (safe for work) one minute clip is something I don't recall from the book, but it is one of my favorite bits from the movie.

The whole movie can be found free on YouTube and it's probably worth a couple hours of your time. But I got a good solid week of pleasure from reading the novel and I'd say it's well worth seeking out at your local bookstore or Amazon.


Keep 'em rolling,
Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah, WA USA