Have bike, will travel, will lecture - The Metal Cowboy

Mon February 05 2007
Posted Feb 5, 2007
4,789

[bikeiowa.com note: This in a little late. If you missed the Metal Cowboy at the Iowa Bicycle Coalition's Bike night, you missed a good show. He also came to BRR to freeze his spurs off the next day. I'll post what he write about us Iowans! http://www.metalcowboy.com/] By MIKE KILEN REGISTER STAFF WRITER A bit of "aren't-I-neat" infects Joe Kurmaskie, but Iowans can forgive. He's pedaled his bicycle 110,000 miles and he's only 41. Here's the neat part: He makes a living at it, which is bow-worthy to Iowa's pedaling crowd, trapped in a cubicle when they want to be on the road. Kurmaskie is known around the country as the "metal cowboy," a nickname dubbed by a blind Idaho rancher he came across on his bike. He writes lectures on his bike adventures, as he will do Friday night in Des Moines at the Iowa Bicycle Coalition's second annual Bike Night Celebration. What he really wants to say other than he is funny - "I'm Bill Bryson on a bike" - is to get out on the road, with kids, dogs, luggage, fishing poles, everything and anything in tow. He hauled his two boys across the country, one in a trailer, the other on a secondary bike, burning 8,000 calories a day, pumping 250 pounds of contraption down the road and then writing "Momentum is Your Friend: The Metal Cowboy and His Pint-Sized Posse Take on America." "Marry, start a career, but you don't have to settle," he said in a recent interview from his hometown of Portland, Ore. "You have to adapt and do everything with your kids. "The passivity we've placed on our children in hermetically sealed environments, over-scheduling and directing their play. We really need to let them explore the world around them and come to their own conclusions." He claims to have a cure for Xbox carpal tunnel: Hit the road. He'll take off across the country again this summer on a four-seat tandem with his wife, two road-wise boys and now a third son in a trailer. "Think Berenstain Bears," he said. Kurmaskie's other message, aside from bragging that he can still fit in his college jeans, is to advocate for a world of bike travel, both to save the environment and to clear the mental and physical cobwebs. "In Iowa, you've got the interest," he said. "It's all about making this place more bike-friendly. "Get people more aware of riding as a form of transportation and sharing the road. (Cyclists) shouldn't be in the woods on a path." The Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) is on his unfinished life list. But he's been busy riding across continents, starting a camp for kids, writing and lecturing. "I perform stories," he said. "Although I wouldn't call myself Carrot Top, most of my slide show involves humor and pathos. "My favorite part of the slide show is our photos of animal poop. My wife is a biologist and explains it." Reporter Mike Kilen can be reached at (515) 284-8361 or mkilen@dmreg.com