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Jim Malusa chronicles six solitary cycling adventures in his book "Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents."

He pedaled ahead of monsoons and into sandstorms, enduring hunger, fatigue and food poisoning.

He was stoned by children in both Africa and Asia.

Afoot in the cities, he risked hotels that lacked a single star, politely fought off prostitutes and reluctantly bought off a guy who wanted to steal his bike.

He emerged from all those experiences with his sense of humor intact and a big-hearted love for most of the people in all the places he traveled.

Malusa is a scientist, though he doesn't advertise it.

"Don't mention that I have a Ph.D.," he says.

Don't be put off by his credentials. The author of "Attack mode in a predatory gastropod" is a very funny, wide-eyed observer of all forms of life.

He can name all the birds, beasts and plants along the way, but he doesn't overwhelm you with his expertise. He is a genial guide to places you've never been and probably will never go.

Malusa has a flip rationale for pedaling to the lowest spots on six continents: It's downhill and it's warm. That doesn't explain why he started on the Chilean side of the Andes to ride to Argentina's low spot.

It started as a paying gig.

Malusa persuaded the editors at Discovery Online to pay for his first four jaunts — to Lake Eyre in Australia, the Dead Sea in Asia, the Caspian Sea in Europe and Salina Grande in the Patagonian tip of South America.

He bagged the final two on his own — Lac Assal on the horn of Africa and Death Valley in North America.

He traveled light and he traveled long. To get to Death Valley, he simply mounted up at his Midtown Tucson home and started pedaling.

His average trip was about 1,000 miles, though he was not a purist about doing it all in the saddle. When he met fierce weather or insane traffic conditions, he hitched a ride.

Typhoon Olivia gave him the opportunity in Australia to share a doorless jeep with Carl, Tess and a kangaroo carcass.

In the wilds of Down Under, he learned, you drive fast and you eat what you hit.

People give the book its charm and its message that human contact trumps cultural prejudice.

In Cairo, when the "world's oldest bureaucracy" confiscates the "spy equipment" he uses to transmit his stories, he wanders the city's back alleys, drinking tea with new friends and attending a wedding.

Everywhere he goes, he is taken in by strangers who feed him, shelter him from sandstorms, nurse him through fevers and erase whatever ill feelings arose on the road.

Unlike the folks who aim for mountaintops, he can actually savor his accomplishments — rolling out a sleeping bag that has insulated a cold beer, lighting his pipe and watching the heavens roll by the other- worldly landscapes he finds.

"There's something I like about the low points of the world," he writes from the shore of the Caspian Sea. "Gravity rules and all things come to rest. No farther. This is the place."