Tucked away in one of Brookdale Foundation House’s cottages lives 91-year-old author Evelyn Ruth Gibb.

While she’s written several short stories for Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul, Women’s Soul and a “romance one,” Gibb’s claim to fame is the book “Two Wheels North: Bicycling the West Coast in 1909.”

Published in 2000 by the Oregon State University Press, Gibb spent 20 years researching, perfecting the dialogue for a first-person perspective and transcribing recorded conversations. This was all so she could tell her father’s real-life story of how he and his best friend biked more than 800 miles from Santa Rosa, Calif. to Seattle in 52 days.

At the age of 19 in the year 1909, they were the first ones to make the trip by road.

“They decided they wanted to be explorers,” Gibb said, adding that it was a time when the North Pole was discovered a month prior and the Wright brothers were developing their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. “It was the age of adventure and dreams.”

In addition to her father’s stories, Gibb collected letters he’d sent to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

“Father decided his best friend and he had become men on that trip,” she said.

The two had worked all summer to save up money to have a blacksmith build a rack on their bikes and add kickstands to their very old bicycles. They also had to buy new brakes for steep mountain hills.

Together, they ventured out with $5.65 total.

Sometimes there were no roads at all and the two had to carry their bicycles alongside railroad tracks. Gibb said once they had to cross a railroad bridge and got caught in a tunnel in the Siskiyou Mountains.

Leaning their bodies against the walls, they made it out alive.

Because her manuscript was twice as long as the book, Gibb had to cut out a few stories such as the time her father and his friend encountered a tramp on a train.

“He was a wise fellow who taught them many things about the trade,” she said. “His nickname was ‘Going someplace.’”

When the two had finally crossed mountains, rivers and a lot of land, they reached the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, or the 1909 Seattle’s World Fair.

Arranged by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and Seattle Post Intelligencer, if they could make it to the gate of the fair, they would receive a $25 check.

“That paid for their train fare home,” Gibb said.

Although Gibb wrote the book for her father, she said it was a great experience getting to know him as a young man and encourages people to learn who their parents were in their youth.

Gibb grew up in California but moved to Vashon Island in 1960 to raise her family.

When her children left for college, she decided to take a writing class and had her first story published, luck that she says got her hooked to writing.

After 30 years on the island, she moved to La Conner.

In 2009, when Seattle celebrated the 1909 World’s Fair centennial, her book was made into a play by Book-It Repertory Theatre and was performed throughout November. During that time, the Seattle Times also published segments from her book every Wednesday.

“Two Wheels North” is now in its seventh printing with 5,000 copies printed each time.

It can be purchased for for $16 on www.amazon.com.