Nobody Rides For Free: A Drifter in the Americas chronicles former bike courier John Hughes' rambles through Latin America on a bicycle. In this gripping mosaic-travellogue, readers are introduced to banditos, artists, grifters, would-be wives, dope fiends and attacking monkeys: a cast of characters who conspire to reduce him to alcoholic destitution. His last remaining $400 is spent sailing the Amazon, flying to Miami, and then hitchhiking across some of the most frightening highways in the United States with the goal of making it safely home to Vancouver. Throughout his adventures we learn about con-artistry, fear, and kindness set against the imposing backdrop of everything we think we know about the Americas. Nobody Rides For Free sheds light on obscure 1990s road culture while gearing itself to the needs of anyone with a desire to run from their demons on the open road.

John Hughes was born June 22, 1970. He is a long-time bike courier, reporter, adventurer, and now first time author. Reporting gigs at CBC and at Co-op Radio in Vancouver sharpened his pencil to a fine enough point that writing Nobody Rides for Free became inevitable. Travelling across India, riding boxcars across the United States and working alongside the strangest people in the world have primed the powder-keg for another swath of unusual chapters.

John Francis Hughes' profile page