As Megan Timothy explains the string of events that brought her to Warsaw Monday afternoon, one gets the sense that she is a remarkable, strong-willed woman.

She currently is on the return trip to her home in Hemet, Calif., which she left Feb. 28 to travel to the east coast and return home - on a bicycle. She took back roads across the southern U.S. to Pensacola, Fla., and headed north to a major book festival in Washington, D.C. in mid-May. She headed east from the Philadelphia, Pa., area on her northern route home. She ventured into Michigan, then back down to Indiana.

To most people, the bicycle trip across the country and back would be a major accomplishment. Many adults don't own a bicycle, let alone consider a trip such as this. But there's more to the story.

A native of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), she moved to the United States when she was 19. Now an author and screenwriter, she is a former B-movie actress and even a Playboy Bunny. She has floated down the Mississippi in a homemade raft, traveled down most of the Amazon River, and in 1999 she made a solo bike trip across parts of North Africa, the Middle East and Europe - covering more than 10,000 miles.

Not only is she now 63 years old, but she said on Feb. 2, 2003, "My brain blew-up. I was writing a book, then went to bed one night. The next morning when I woke up, all I could see from my left eye was red, yellow and green stripes. I thought it was my imagination because there was no serious pain, and I could hear, see, think and understand.

"I soon learned that I could no longer read, and the only intelligible word I could say was 'chicken', the rest sounded like babble to others. I was taken to a regular hospital and diagnosed with arterio venous malformations."

Arterio venous malformation is an aneurysm of tangled arteries and veins in her brain, which she probably had since birth. She remained in the regular hospital for two weeks. Timothy said, " I thought I was dead at one time - because the people around me were floating around, I thought they were angels."

Facing financial difficulties at the time, she didn't have enough money to select a place where she could go to recuperate. Instead, she became a ward of the state and was sent to a rehabilitation facility. "The Place," as she calls it, actually was an institution for people who were damaged psychologically and no longer able to return to society.

Timothy describes the place as "very terrifying. I could hear everything going on, and realized that most of the other people weren't treated in a kind way. If you don't fight back, you're gone. As soon as something like this happens, you need to start constantly exercising your brain.

"Two of my friends visited me daily. They tried to get me out of 'the place,' but because I had no family and I couldn't communicate to people at the institution, I couldn't leave."

After two weeks and a great deal of effort by one of her friends, she was released from the institution. To regain her ability to speak and write, she had to start back at the beginning by learning the alphabet. She said, "Being a writer, I knew I needed to be able to express myself through the written word." It took her two months to relearn the alphabet.

"To learn how to speak, I learned the alphabet, then started by sounding out the letters to form words.

"The last 2-1/2 years strangely have been one of the best periods in my life. It's been an invaluable experience. I found I no longer stuttered, which had been a problem all my life. And I learned not to lose the ability to laugh."

Although she has some difficulty writing and her speech hesitates at times to sound out a word, there's nothing wrong with her thinking, reasoning and other brain functions, she said.

Timothy has translated her experiences and thoughts into a book, "Let Me Die Laughing - Waking from the Nightmare of a Brain Explosion," (Crone House Publishing, $16.95 signed, $15.50 unsigned). For more information or to order the book, visit www.cronehousepublishing.com

As she has traveled around the United States, she has participated in book signings and talked to doctors, nurses and others about brain injuries.

As she left the Times-Union, she headed out of town on Old 30E and said she planned to spend the night in Etna Green. Asked her where she planned to stay, she said, she carries a tent with her and camps out each night. She was quick to add that she always checks with local officials before setting up her tent.

She's content to travel with her bike and 34 pounds of gear as her companions. [[In-content Ad]]