metal cowboy: tales from the road less pedaled
By Joe Kurmaskie
Breakaway Books, 1999
304 pages, $23 USD
Metal Cowboy is the most entertaining book I’ve read in quite some time. Joe Kurmaskie tells tales of life learned during solo long-distance cycling trips, in North America and around the world. He is a raconteur of the finest order: optimistic, generous, cheerful, and adventurous.
He is also a fine writer. In 40 short chapters, he tells some memorable stories. Like the one about 78-year-old Gordy, who led him on a merry chase through the Colorado hills, riding a no-name bike with little more than a folded tarp and a skillet for gear.
Or of riding the hills of New Zealand with a 50-year-old Italian barber who once competed in the Tour de France (and may have ruined his hands in the process); of misadventures when he mischievously encouraged a campground clerk who was convinced he was Kiefer Sutherland, and what ensued when the rest of the town believed that, too; of having to sprint for a Greyhound bus in a hail of rocks and bottles because he’d entered a diner in a small town in Alabama “in the company of friends with dark skin.”
Of watching a kid named Fez jump off Half Dome Mountain in Yosemite with a BMX (and a parachute) just for fun:
“You only die once,” Fez told me. “And while I’m here, I’m looking for big air and a clean ride.”
“Even if it’s your last ride?” I asked. He answered me with a smile, then pedaled into space.
A night in a bar in the Australian outback found him losing a game of darts for a dollar a point. He thought he’d lost $13. They wanted $1,300. Think fast. He challenged his rival to a bike race the following day to give him a chance to win his money back. To even the odds, he offered to ride with all his gear aboard. Kurmaskie won that race, but only because his opponent crashed, and he kept going. His opponents caught up with him a few hours later, admitted they’d just been having a bit of fun with him, and gracefully allowed that he’d won that race “fair dinkum.”
This book is “laugh-out-loud” funny in spots, and sombre and moving in others. Its main lesson is that life is what happens when you keep yourself open to new things, and to the kindness of (most) strangers. Especially on a bike.
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