Product Description

It's as if Dave Barry, Charles Kuralt, and Ernie Pyle all 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 comprise 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 company), 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 raconteur. He is a wonderful amalgam of writing talent, humor, athleticism, and travel. His love for bicycles, and for humanity, is infectious. Metal Cowboy will remind you what life is all about.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #282478 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Booklist
While cycling through Idaho, Kurmaskie met up with a blind man who, after tapping his cane over Joe and his bike, dubbed him a "metal cowboy." If these 40 essays are any indication, that's a perfect description. Like the cowboys of Old West legend, Kurmaskie drifted around the country (and the world), meeting up with interesting and eccentric people, bunking wherever he found a dry patch of ground, eating whatever he could carry or scrounge. Like the travel books of Bill Bryson, Kurmaskie's collection of essays focuses on the unexpected and the little known. Travelogues are a dime a dozen, but the ones that find something fresh and unusual to talk about are fairly rare. Here readers will meet Elvis impersonators and other eccentrics; live through a goose attack mounted with military precision; and see the countryside the way they've never imagined it. A thoroughly delightful excursion. David Pitt

From Kirkus Reviews
Fleet lessons, experiences, and absurdities, gathered from the saddle of a bicycle and mined for every identifiable nugget of humor or worthy apologue, from newcomer Kurmaskie. ``I'm just a Metal Cowboy piecing together the puzzle of life in my own time and way.'' What that means for Kurmaskie is tooling about on his bicycle, far and wide, keeping his eye skinned for the everyday encounters that, cobbled together, amount to a worldview. Occasionally these tales are tips for cyclers, such as what to do when teenagers target you for sport, or when dogs do the same, or weather, or geese. But most of the material demonstrates that the pace of a bicycle allows you to tap the fortuities of chance (e.g., joining up with someone willing to share knowledge of secret pictographs) and the pleasures to be had by throwing caution to the wind and volunteering to be the scarecrow on a bike in a small town parade, and why sometimes its the oblique vision of the eccentrics out there that puts things into meaningful perspective. Each of the 40 chapters is a self-contained unit, and they are best read in controlled doses, for while the episodes have a sort of Andy of Mayberry charm, a piece of homespun with common decency at its center and framed in drollery, the tone can cloy. Kurmaskie is also overly fond of trotting out a little hackneyed something for the reader's moral edification (``You give and take in this life, and you don't ask for anything back''). Worse still are the ones that sound like fortune cookies: ``Each day starts with the promise of what all of us might become in the time which remains.'' The metal cowboy is on a slow bike to nowhere in particular, and when hes not dispensing homilies, he knows how to enjoy the simple, immediate pleasures of two-wheeled freedom. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover
“Joe Kurmaskie’s stories are full of optimism, zaniness, and depth; a winning combination.” —Seattle Times

“Kurmaskie is possessed of an astute ability to channel his life experiences into stories with a universal element.” —Sacramento Bee

“Like the travel books of Bill Bryson, Kurmaskie focuses on the unexpected and the little known.” —Booklist

Customer Reviews

These 40 stories take the reader on a delightful ride.
Joe Kurmaskie's first book, "Metal Cowboy," is fashioned from loos, flowing prose, the kind that invites adjectives like "witty" and "insightful." But heart-warming, feel-good travel narratives are easy to find. It is more unusual to read one that fosters a deeper understanding of the overall experience and transcends mere outrageousness.

These 40 "Tales From the Road Less Pedaled" do not follow chronological order. Instead they jump around - from childhood sailing trips to crossing the Rocky mountainsto spending a season on the isalnd of Aruba - and focus more on developing a conversational yet intimate manner with the reader.

Most of the stories feature a quirky man or woman, somehoe alienated by society, who is living life on their own terms, determined to follow their heart. Either they live ina small town and share an experience with Kurmaskie, or they spend a few hours or days cycling with him. Elvis impersonators, a double lower leg amputee, a flamboyant Italian barber, overprotective geese, and a bomb-builder turned zealous rockhound are merely a sampling of the characters Kumaskie meets on the road.

However, Kurmaskie doesn't rely on extremes to keep his book engaging. He deftly tackles difficult subjects, too, and displays a remarkable aptitude for compassion and contemplation. For example, in "Doing the Hokey-Pokey," Ranada O'Ryan, a high-school drop-out turned factory worker takes Kurmaskie to her senior prom and he graciously plays the part of adoring boyfriend. He connects with parents who have lost their children to accidents or disease, assists a man suffering from AIDS, and struggles to make peace with both loggers and environmentalists.

Overall, he understands many readers crave a vicarious experience, one that satidfies their sense of adventure and enhances their understanding of people. His stories are full of optimism, zaniness and insight, a winning combination that will take readers on a delightful ride.

Metal Cowboy: Tales from the Road Less Pedaled
I love this book! From it's eye-catching cover to it's unique format. It's autobiographical yet reads like a series of fictional short stories. Sometimes touching, other times amusing, and always interesting. It's a great read!

Spectacular Read. Even for the non cyclist
This book will have you on the floor laughing. It will have so lost in thought that you won't realize that it is 1 am and you have to be to work by 6am.

I recomend this for anyone with interest in the things that make us human.