Detours: Life, Death and Divorce on the Road to Sturgis

by Richard La Plante

Overview

Author Richard La Plante had always wanted to ride cross-country to Sturgis, South Dakota--to the famous motorcycle rally that has become the mecca for the American biker. But at the age of 53, still bruised from a divorce, newly remarried, and a father for the first time, he thought the trip would remain an armchair fantasy. Then came the summer of 1999. Pressured by work, another baby on the way, and being temporarily homeless, he made a decision: Escape--out of the armchair and into the saddle. On a borrowed Big Dog motorcycle, he set off for the Black Hills of Dakota. Moments of crazed introspection mixed with the sheer euphoria of the ride all add up to the metaphor of a life's journey. Told in La Plante's humorous and self-deprecating style, Detours is a wild ride, all the way home.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940150882324
Publisher:	Escargot Books and Music, LLC
Publication date:	07/25/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	222
File size:	944 KB

About the Author

Richard La Plante began his working life as a special education teacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he spent a great deal of time playing the guitar and working on songs to the amusement of his students. Following his dismissal, he formed the rock band Revenge and toured and recorded till egos clashed and noses were broken.

His first book, Tegne, Warlord of Zendow, a fantasy-fiction novel, combined his longtime study of Japanese martial arts with his interest in metaphysics and love of adventure tales.

He wrote a sequel to Tegne, entitled The Killing Blow, then switched from fantasy-fiction to hardcore thrillers with a popular series featuring the characters Josef Tanaka, a Japanese-American medical examiner and shotokan karate master, and Bill Fogarty, an Irish-American police Lieutenant. Mantis was the first novel in the series, followed by Leopard, Steroid Blues, and Mind Kill.

A great deal of the money earned from his books ended up in the chrome and steel accessories that adorned his custom Harley-Davidson, a 1989 Springer, an obsession which became the inspiration for his motorcycle memoir, Hog Fever. Detours, written in 2002, continues the motorcycle theme and traces a solo cross-country journey ending in Sturgis, the famous motorcycle rally in the black hills of South Dakota.
Richard and his second wife, Betina, an accomplished photographer and mother of his two sons, built their first home from the ground up on a bluff overlooking Gardiner’s Bay in East Hampton, New York.

In 2004, the family moved to Ojai, a small town in the high desert of Southern California, where they built their dream home on a mountaintop, inspiring his latest memoir, Never Again.

Richard’s other interests include anything paranormal, western boxing, and competitive swimming.