🚲 One man’s 52-year bike ride | Bulletin #160

This week: No such thing as an ugly dog 🐶

August 12, 2026

Coloane Library 📍 Coloane, Macau 📸 Alberto Chan

Hey Adventurers! Since 1971, one corner of Sonoma County has run the opposite of a dog show. No points for a glossy coat - the World's Ugliest Dog Contest rewards the snaggletoothed, the bald, and the gloriously asymmetrical. This year's contest lands Friday, August 14th, with the winner taking home $5,000, a coveted trophy, and a trip to New York for the Today Show. Most contestants come from shelters rather than breeders, so the ugliest dog in the world is usually somebody's happiest ending. PSA: AWA has never met a dog we didn't love - snaggleteeth and all.

THIS WEEK IN AWA AWESOMENESS

🫂 Community with a capital C
🚴‍♀️ Biking through hundreds of countries
🗽 New York through the years
💌 Stickers, anyone?

There's a reason we say “Community with a capital C”. An audience is one-way, but Community is a two-way street; you shape where we go and what we explore next. So in that spirit, here are some photographers we’re lucky to have as part of this incredible Community 💛

Mount Mayon 📍 Daraga, Philippines 📸 Heinz Stücke

THE LONG WAY HOME

In 1962, Heinz Stücke left his factory job with $300 and a three-speed bicycle. He'd return fifty-one years later, having pedaled through 211 countries - not because he was wealthy, but because strangers kept inviting him in. Ethiopian emperors. Haitian villagers. Families who fed him dinner and let him sleep on their sofas in exchange for his stories. By the time his wheels finally stopped, he'd cycled 648,000 kilometers and become one of the most-traveled humans on Earth…

Chicago Cultural Center 📍 Chicago, Illinois, USA 📸 Marjorie Becker Photo

THE PEOPLE’S PALACE

When the Great Chicago Fire turned the city to ash in 1871, Queen Victoria sent 8,000 books across the Atlantic (one was even personally signed!). They sat in an abandoned water tank for over two decades until Chicago opened a permanent central library in 1897 with a level of opulence that the emerging city had yet to see…

Empire State Building 📍 New York, NY, USA

EXPLORE NYC IN PHOTOGRAPHS

A rabbit hole worth falling into: OldNYC maps 50,000 historical photographs from the New York Public Library's Milstein Collection right onto the city grid. Drop a pin anywhere and see what your block, your subway stop, or your favorite park in the Big Apple looked like decades ago.

Stick with us here: this week’s Secret Link sleuths have the chance to win an AWA Locations sticker pack! Happy searching 🔍