It's weird, because I'm usually one with deep empathy and compassion for people in general. Sadly it all caught up to him- which I did feel bad about. Am I the only one who placed him in the epitome of asshole category? A man who doesn't care about anything beyond his realm of interests and whose lack of social life and life experience has left him utterly alone (emotionally) and incapable of admitting in any circumstance that he could be wrong. A jobless, full-grown man who can't take care of himself and has no ambition to learn about anything but riding.
When I got to the end and realized only a year had gone by since the beginning of the main storyline, I was once again confuzzled.Īnd while his accomplishments are awesome, I absolutely could not bring myself to admire John Ryan the way the author does. I felt like the timeline was jumpy, and the flashbacks and flashforwards were choppy. I took my time reading this one (and maybe that's where I went wrong), but I found myself being unable to follow along at times.
Here were my issues with the book, though: I had no previous knowledge of the extreme sport, and for someone like me who’s into bikes, I was blown away. I can agree with one thing: this was a fascinating look at the world of long distance riding. But it often derailed into some strange- nearly obsessive- retelling of the author's encounters with the incomparable John Ryan. When the informative details were there, this book was great. In seeking to understand why people strive so mightily to reach a goal with no reward other than having gotten there, Pierson gives us an intimate glimpse of a singularly independent yet supportive community and a revealing portrait of its most daring member. But why? Melissa Holbrook Pierson, herself a longtime motorcyclist, chronicles the gratifications of long-distance riding as well as the challenges and solitude that accompany it. Perhaps the most determined of them is John Ryan, a diabetic and a man who even in late middle age loves nothing better than riding impossible distances at no small risk to himself. These men and women push the limits of human endurance, often in rides of more than one thousand miles a day. Here are the pleasures and perils of compulsive long-distance motorcycling-and one man's mission to outride everyone else.įor the 50,000 members of the Iron Butt Association-also known as the "World's Toughest Motorcyclists"-long-distance motorcycling is not a pastime but an obsession.
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