How This All Started

Almost 10 years ago, I bought my wife a tandem bike for her birthday. We spent many hours riding through the neighborhood, racking up countless miles, and creating memories. The bike became part of our identities. Often, we would run into people and be identified as, “The Tandem Bike Couple” or “That Cute Couple on the Bike”. The tandem provided much joy to both of us.

The bike is still used today, but the passengers rotate through our young family. On one occasion, my daughter Sophia who was 4 at the time, came up with the idea for writing a book about a bug and her friends riding a bike. Bug on a Bike was born! While riding through the neighborhood, she thought of the title and then hysterically went on a run of calling out where Bug and her friends would visit. Since we were on a tandem, the bike and the number of bugs kept growing. The bugs went to the park, met another bug, and then continued on with their ride. The bugs went to the pool, met another bug, and so on.

The idea struck a chord with me. I taught kindergarten for 15 years, I have raised 1 child and am currently raising a 6 year old and 3 year old. This just means, I have read hundreds (maybe thousands) of different children’s books.

Sophia’s idea had something. It was simple, repetitive, and cute. We could see it growing into new adventures too.

After our bike ride, Sophia and I sat down and put her ideas on a piece of yellow construction paper. It was very scattered, but we knew it was special. Our brainstorming paper sat in my work folder for almost a year and half. I had every intention of doing something with Sophia's idea. It was even stapled to a writer’s workshop flyer about how to publish a book. I never registered for the workshop. I never revisited the idea. That yellow construction paper just kept getting pushed back further into my folder. As so often happens, life got in the way.

It’s probably pandemic related cabin fever, but for some reason, I wanted to act on what Sophia started on that June 2019 bike ride. In October of 2020, Sophia and I sat down in front of my computer and put a rough draft together using Google Slides and free images from the internet. I definitely jumped the gun, and within 2 days, we had a copy of our book (and two sequels) sent to a print shop... formatting, continuity errors, and all.

After resetting a bit, I cleaned everything up, changed the bike from a tandem to a unicycle, found a freelance illustrator, and went through the process of editing and publishing our book. We hope you enjoy it!

-Michael James Triska