Riding Outside the Lines: International Incidents and Other Misadventures With the Metal Cowboy by Joe Kurmaskie |
Momentum Is Your Friend: The Metal Cowboy and His Pint-Sized Posse Take on America by Joe Kurmaskie |
by Barbara Savage
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by Dave Stamboulis
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Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook: A Worldwide Cycling Route & Planning Guide by Stephen Lord |
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Editorial Reviews
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
IT WAS 5:30 A.M. IN POCATELLO, IDAHO, A THIN SHEET OF ICY rain masked sunrise, and I wasn't quite sure i was up for my latest bicycling adventure. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
joe kurmaskie, metal cowboy, cycling adventures, touring cyclist, touring bicycle, new rack, front bag, hacky sack Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Big John, Button Boy, New Mexico, Black Range, New Zealand, Animal Elvis, The King, Suwannee Country Tours, Albert Pantone, Comeback Elvis, Earth Firsters, Tour de France, Bryce Canyon, Desert Storm, Elvis Presley, Kiefer Sutherland, Mickey Mouse, New Hampshire, Silver City New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
IT WAS 5:30 A.M. IN POCATELLO, IDAHO, A THIN SHEET OF ICY rain masked sunrise, and I wasn't quite sure i was up for my latest bicycling adventure. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
joe kurmaskie, metal cowboy, cycling adventures, touring cyclist, touring bicycle, new rack, front bag, hacky sack Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Big John, Button Boy, New Mexico, Black Range, New Zealand, Animal Elvis, The King, Suwannee Country Tours, Albert Pantone, Comeback Elvis, Earth Firsters, Tour de France, Bryce Canyon, Desert Storm, Elvis Presley, Kiefer Sutherland, Mickey Mouse, New Hampshire, Silver City New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 2
books:
- John Lennon (Los Protagonistas) (Spanish Edition) by Raul Alberto Garcia on page 279
- Sleeping Beauty: Pantomime (Acting Edition) by Trudy West on page 154
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46% buy the item featured on this page: Metal Cowboy: Tales from the Road Less Pedaled |
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17% buy Miles from Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure $11.53 |
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14% buy Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook: A Worldwide Cycling Route & Planning Guide $13.57 |
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14% buy Momentum Is Your Friend: The Metal Cowboy and His Pint-Sized Posse Take on America $16.29 |
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