A book for anyone with an adventurous spirit.
A book that will remind you what life is all about.
It’s as if Dave Barry and Charles Kuralt squeezed together onto a bicycle to pedal across America and around the world, filing outrageous dispatches along the way. Insightful, humane, sublimely amusing—Metal Cowboy finds nobility in the common man, explains true bicycle-love, celebrates the beauty of the country, and charmingly relates encounters with malcontents and misfits.
Most of all, Metal Cowboy is a quest. It is the record of a young man seeking meaning in the world, trying to find what is good in the people he meets, what is good in himself, and a route off the prescribed roadways of life. From the moment an old blind rancher in Pocatello, Idaho, tapped his cane over Joe Kurmaskie and his loaded touring bike, stood back, and said, “Ah, metal cowboy,” the quest had a name.
The forty essays in this book describe the highlights and low moments of Metal Cowboy’s cycling life: from his hallowed beginnings at age five, absconding with his sister’s bike, through five cross-country tours—sleeping in cemeteries, cycling through an Elvis-impersonator convention, being attacked by geese, meeting madmen (and enjoying their comp-any), meeting a 78-year-old cyclist (and struggling to keep up), following bad directions, eating anything not nailed down, being saved by real cowboys, being run off the road by real rednecks, meeting his future wife (while cycling), and a host of other trials, triumphs, and turns along the road less pedaled.
Joe “Metal Cowboy” Kurmaskie is an unforgettable, ebullient, inspiring, bighearted storyteller. His love for bicycles, and for humanity, is infectious. Metal Cowboy will bring a smile to the face (and adrenaline to the bloodstream) of anyone who has ever ridden a bicycle.
