Robert M. Goldstein was born in Los Angeles, but grew up in Santa Clara, California, where he began his first bicycle forays. After graduating from Oregon State University in 1977 with a bachelors degree in Technical Journalism, he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Walla Walla Union Bulletin and the Bellevue Journal-American. In the late 1980s, his career took a different direction after he received his Masters degree in Public Administration from the University of Washington. Since that time he has held a variety of administrative posts in California and Washington. He has traveled extensively, and has published travel articles on Nepal, Bhutan, and China in the Seattle Times and Journal-American. His critically acclaimed first book, The Gentleman from Finland Adventures on the Trans-Siberian Express, chronicles a madcap journey across the Soviet Union. The book earned Goldstein the coveted Benjamin Franklin Award for best travel book published by a small publisher in North America in 2005. His most recent book, Riding with Reindeer A Bicycle Odyssey through Finland, Lapland and Arctic Norway, takes the reader along on a self-supported solo bike trip from Helsinki to the Arctic Ocean. Currently, he is the Chief Financial Officer of the Kitsap Regional Library. He lives in Seattle."