Bruce Wood’s claim to fame is bicycling twice across the country. He must have a short memory for pain because lately he’s been thinking more and more about hiking the Appalachian Trail and trying to get a book out of it.

Coming out of high school in central New Jersey, Bruce’s goal was to go as cheaply as he could to a good college that would morph into a great school, thereby delivering what might be termed resume inflation.

He succeeded at the first, graduating without distinction – but also without loans – from Upsala College, a fine private school that his guidance counselor promised him was the “next-best school in New Jersey after Princeton.” (He has no idea if it was true at the time, but it’s a good line that he uses to this day.)

He failed miserably at the second part of the equation. To quote Wikipedia (please don’t tell his old professors he’s doing that), “The school maintained high academic standards for many years, gaining a fine reputation as an excellent small college, with a vibrant campus life. Unfortunately as the surrounding community became more urban, and the crime rate increased, the student enrollment at the college declined throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s.”

The result was a precipitous drop in standards intended to help boost enrollment. Ultimately, mercifully, the school closed in 1995, taking with it any hope Bruce had of seeing the English degree he sweated to earn (that’s an outright lie) swell in value.

After several years knocking around the country lugging furniture for Bekins Van Lines and wondering what exactly you do with a degree in English, Bruce returned to school to earn a master's degree in journalism from Penn State. He barely survived writing his master's on the treatment of Muhammad Ali in the nation's press.

He began his career in journalism in the fall of 1979 at the Valley News, where he’s pretty sure his first desk was stolen from a local elementary school. Within a few weeks he was promoted to the grown-up table. Uh, desk.

Feeling ready to leave the nest, Bruce left the VN after two years to become sports editor of a daily newspaper in Pennsylvania, where he kept a ridiculous clip-on bow tie in his desk as a protest against a rule that everyone in the office had to wear a tie, even when putting the paper together at 5 a.m.

He returned to the Upper Valley in 1983 to serve as assistant sports information director at Dartmouth where one of his responsibilities was to take action photos of the school teams. It would be no exaggeration to say that focusing a Nikon camera turned out to be something of an issue for Bruce. He still shudders at the memory of being asked by his boss, “What kind of drugs do you take before you shoot pictures?” The answer was none, but you couldn’t prove it by the pictures.

In 1988 Bruce rejoined the Valley News where, in addition to writing about Dartmouth College sports, he had a chance to write the kind of human interest features that he always dreamed of. Like stories about the 50th anniversary of Spam (the kind you eat, kids) and the growing popularity of bidets. (If you don’t know, grab a dictionary because you aren’t going to read any more about them here.)

Although he steadfastly refused to enter writing contests, Bruce won numerous state and national awards for his writing from the College Sports Information Directors of America and Vermont and New Hampshire press associations before seeing the typewriting on the wall for the newspaper industry and fleeing to start a freelance writing career.

He has since written for a wide range of magazines and newspapers and is the author of the Ivy League chapter in the  ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, another endeavor that he’ll readily admit nearly killed him. In addition to running a subscription website about Dartmouth College football that brings him an estimated 19 cents an hour (it’s a little more than that, but don’t tell the IRS), he’s currently working on a young adult novel. Don’t ask him how it’s coming because he gets a little testy about the fact that it’s still not finished.

Bruce, his wife Mary Ellen, and children Kelly and Matt live on the shoulder of Moose Mountain in the rural Hanover, NH, village of Etna with their golden retriever, Cooper who is blissfully unaware that the kids are getting near college age, a truly  frightening thought for someone trying to eek out a living as a freelance writer.

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