This is a book about the things that save a man's life, beginning with a motorcycle. At the age of fifty-seven, looking over his shoulder at heart disease, increasingly surrounded by his career as a writer, Gary Paulsen acquires his first Harley-Davidson. He decides to ride long - from his home in New Mexico to Alaska - and it turns out to be a trip in time as well as space. Through Minnesota and the Rockies to the Alaska Highway, Paulsen, the author of Winterdance, about running the Iditarod, travels through the landmarks of his life. There were the people who wouldn't let him give in, from the tough cop who kept him from becoming a juvenile delinquent to the whore who told him not to leave the army. There were the challenges that pushed him to the limit, such as high-stakes poker, wrangling a dogsled through the Alaskan wilderness, and packing horses into the foothills of Montana. And there were the days of pure sweat and muscle on farms in Minnesota or at the bottom of septic-tank pits in Colorado. Amid the silence and beauty of running the road on his Harley, Paulsen celebrates hard work, constant challenge, and ultimately the process rather than the product - not the destination but the ride.