The Observer Newspapers | Reston Resident Publishes Book About Travels

June 6, 2008

Reston Resident Publishes Book About Travels

By Leslie Perales
Observer Staff Writer

When he first started writing stories about his life, Reston resident Rick Fleeter said he had no plans to publish the collection—he simply wanted to remember the strange and funny incidents that had happened to him during his travels. "This whole experience with traveling just goes with being alive," Fleeter said in a telephone interview. "A big part of what we do everyday has to do with getting from place to place."

Fleeter said when he started to compile his writing collection, he realized he had more than enough stories to fill a book. So Fleeter recently released "Travels of a Thermodynamicist," a book containing humorous essays about his travels. Fleeter founded AeroAstro, an Ashburn-based company that specializes in small spacecraft, and he frequently travels for business. The scientist, who has a doctorate in engineering with a focus on thermodynamics from Brown University, also published two engineering books.

Fleeter said it is difficult to categorize his books, especially "Travels of a Thermodynamicist." He said "Travels of a Thermodynamicist" is about traveling, appealing to most people who like to visit other places, but the book also appeals to cyclists, business travelers and people who work in science fields. While the thermodynamicist and small-satellite pioneer travels mostly for business, he said he enjoys doing most of his traveling on a bicycle.

For example, while doing business in France, Fleeter decided to bike from Paris to a conference in Strasbourg, near the German border. "I got there the night before the conference at 11 p.m.," he said. "That was unnerving in itself." Fleeter said that soon after arriving at the conference, at which he was scheduled to deliver a lecture, he learned that the clothes he had shipped had not yet arrived. So he had to deliver his speech the next morning wearing his bright green cycling jacket, he said. Even after his luggage arrived, he was still known as "the guy in the bright green jacket," he said. "If that hadn't happened to me and I'd driven a rental car, I probably wouldn't remember the conference."

Fleeter said that is one of the many stories he recounts in "Travels of a Thermodynamicist." "It's fun to read and communicates the experience of being a thermodynamicist, but it's not really a textbook," he said.

In addition to writing "Travels of a Thermodynamicist," Fleeter also took photos for the 154-page book. He said the photography process helped him show what his travels and experiences are like. "I didn't want to communicate it all in words," he said. Fleeter took photos while biking from Virginia to Ohio and he also captured a few images while participating in an Ironman competition. "When you step back and look at the pictures, you think 'Why do people do things like this,'" he said. "I really thought about that after I did it. It's because it's just that need to move from place to place and the satisfaction in it."

Fleeter, who also teaches at Brown University, formerly served as a senior scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and vice president of the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, also known as AMSAT. He often competes in marathons and Ironman events and he travels more than 15,000 miles on his bike each year. "In a car, it's a machine and you put up with it and it's not pleasant—you just want to get there," Fleeter said about traveling. "On a bike, the whole thing is just fun from end to end. I'm happier on a bike."

Fleeter plans to donate 10 percent of the royalties from "Travels of a Thermodynamicist" to the East Coast Greenway Alliance, an organization that is working to develop an urban walking and biking trail stretching from Maine to Florida.