I’m a sucker for a good road-trip story.

“On the Road.” “Travels with Charley.” “Blue Highways.” “Not Fade Away.” The list goes on and on and on.

Here’s another one, from Colum McCann, author of “Let the Great World Spin.”

Headlined “The Church of the Open Road” — perhaps a riff on “The Church of the Rotating Mass,” which may be a Maurice “Dirt Rag” Tierney creation — it’s McCann’s recollection of a bike tour some four decades ago. On the road to nowhere, or so he thought when he set out.

A Catholic when he began, he encountered tiny Louisiana chapels and Texas megachurches, Southern Baptists and holy rollers (no pun intended). Slept in a pew, worked in a church camp. Inclined to listening, open to revelation, he collected stories as he went.

I won’t spoil this story by summarizing it. Give it a read.

Also, cast not your eyes upon the illustration. There may be some hidden meaning in there, but if so, it is obscured by a lack of historical verisimilitude. Forty years ago bicycles had neither integrated brake/shift levers nor disc brakes (especially not on the drive side). They did, however, have chainrings (and chains), freewheels, pedals, and external cables.

A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single pedal stroke. But for Christ’s’ sake, you gotta have the pedals.