Ian Klepetar leaves an encouraging message everywhere he goes: Save on Gas. Bicycle.

We caught up with Ian in the bookshop. Sweatband securing his long hair in 85 degree heat, he left Tillsonburg this morning ~ and before many people are awake, he had already bicycled to Cayuga. We didn't ask where he eats or sleeps. (He did volunteer that his mother wouldn't approve of his hygiene.) He filled up his water bottle in the bookshop.

Ian and his family, including his Mom, along with a few friends have an impressive program called Bicycle Benefits, advocating the benefits of bicycling. They have enlisted over 750 businesses in less than three years. Ian left Madison, Wisconsin a week ago ~ his destination, Ithica, N.Y. via Fort Erie.

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Sign up with Ian at http://www.bicyclebenefits.org/ Click on Our Team for pictures and profiles.

By the way, Ian's favourite book is Walden, H. D. Thoreau. "Thoreau is good company," he said.

"Critical Mess*," a phrase coined by a New York collector, may describe the habitat of most hopeless book lovers. In that particular collector's case, it was thousands of almanacs, old periodicals and booklets.

Herb Martindale, original owner of The Neat Little Bookshop, left us with only one wise piece of advice, "Don't accept everything that everybody brings to you."

We have stopped giving credit for books that are out of fashion and come a dime-a-dozen. However, being book lovers, a good clean book of any genre seems to deserve shelf-space. So we go on quietly making history on Cayuga Street ~ stepping over boxes and piles of books ~ looking more like the original Neat Little Bookshop everyday. Herb would be proud of us.

*A Splendor of Letters, The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, Nicholas A. Basbanes.Perennial/HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.