Product Details

After seventeen years, who would road test a perfectly good marriage by putting it on a summer-long, self-contained bicycle adventure across Canada?

Only the Metal Cowboy, of course. Beth Biagini Kurmaskie, the woman behind the manchild, has finally saddled up on her own volition, if only to bring a bit of parental supervision to the mix. She struggles a bit at first, while celebrating summer, speed, the simple pleasures of a road trip powered by one's own muscles, and family--what it means to be part of one stripped of the "comforts and noise" of the modern world, riding sixteen feet of bicyle train. With three sons aboard, one celebrating his first birthday, a nursing mother finds her inner Xena Warrior Cyclist and all the reasons why she's stayed married to a whirling dervish of a husband. And Beth's progression from newbie cyclist to totally ripped veteran will be an inspiration to anyone considering taking to the road on a bike.

 

Mud, Sweat, and Gears brings together absurd and sublime moments, introduces an American family to the wilds of Canada, uncovers choice characters (man and animal), and finds all the humor and pathos a Metal Cowboy adventure is famous for.

 

If Momentum Is Your Friend was about fathers, sons, and hometown heroes, Mud, Sweat, and Gears is about mothers, wives, family and the glue that holds the world together. With a extra twist: revealing and outrageous footnotes from Beth throughout, filling in the backstories to many previous Metal Cowboy tales and seventeen years of marriage.

 

From the Back Cover

 

"Mud, Sweat, and Gears is a romance and a thriller; an adventure tale, and a seriously funny book. Kurmaskie's chronicle of his young family's journey across Canada on bicycle is a story for all time and now, for bicyclists and for those who have never ridden beyond the end of the block. You will laugh. You will swoon. You will shake your head in wonder. Could Kurmaskie and his wife have really thought it a good idea to bicycle four-thousand plus miles with a baby and two children under the age of ten in tow? They did. And Kurmaskie has told the hilarious and moving tale of their trip like a master. You won't be able to put this beautiful book down."
--Cheryl Strayed, author of Torch and Wild

"Nobody roams--or writes--with more manic energy or enthusiasm for `the hard life' than Joe Kurmaskie. Topping that enviable accomplishment, Mud, Sweat, and Gears establishes the Kurmaskie clan as the first family of American adventure."

--Jay Atkinson, author of Paradise Road: Jack Kerouac's Lost Highway and My Search for America and City in Amber

"Joe Kurmaskie rolls with a keen sense of comedy and a big heart." --Christopher Moore, author of Lamb and A Dirty Job

"A rollicking tale that adds credence to the credo, `The family that pedals together, stays together.' (Having the kids on a combination tandem/trail-a-bike/trailer helps) The momentum of this wonderful family epic will launch you from page one into Canada's hinterlands. (From there, cheap flights home are available.)

--Bart King, author of The Big Book of Boy Stuff