Momentum Is Your Friend: The Metal Cowboy and His Pint-Sized Posse Take on America [Hardcover]
Joe Kurmaskie (Author)
Product Details
-
Hardcover: 318 pages
-
Publisher: Breakaway Books; First Edition (stated) edition (September 1, 2006)
-
Language: English
-
ISBN-10: 1891369652
"Intimate, ironic, worldly, wise, and most of all, fun. It reads like a wild, downhill ride with lots of switchbacks." -- —Robert Ferrigno, author of Prayers for the Assassin and Horse Latitude
"Joe Kurmaskie rolls with a keen sense of comedy and a big heart." -- —Christopher Moore, author of Lamb, Fluke and A Dirty Job
"Kurmaskie treats us to a reader’s trifecta: a humorous travelogue, a stirring adventure tale, and a touching family story." -- —Bart King, author of The Big Book of Boy Stuff
Product Description
Most people bring their inner child on an epic adventure. Joe "Metal Cowboy" Kurmaskie actually took his two kids along. For a 4,000-mile bicycle ride across America, Joe’s seven-year-old son, Quinn, rides a tagalong bike attached to his dad’s; and behind that is five-year-old Enzo in a bike trailer.
Our hero the Metal Cowboy answers the question "What are you, crazy?" with a resounding and cheerful "Yes." Unassisted—with no support crew except his boys’ comic relief and the periodic kindness of strangers—he pedals hundreds of pounds of gear and offspring over mountain passes, across the wide plains, through thunderstorms, and into the heart of what it means to be a dad.
Along the way they encounter everything that makes up America—small-town kindness and inner-city heart, wild horses and highway roadkill, a bitter Vietnam vet and a hopeful young inventor, grizzly bears and bison roaming free, cyclists and monstrous RVs, a very peppy cheerleader and a visitation from the ghost of the author’s father, horrible traffic and serene dirt roads, a monastery and a distillery, baseball, and yes, lots of pie.
By the time they reach Washington, DC, two months after leaving Portland, Oregon, they’ve bonded in a rare way. Kurmaskie writes, "We share a secret, the three of us; one permanent summer in our hearts now, where we’re never apart."
Winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Writer Award.
