Ghost Rider

By Neil Peart

Nothing to do with the skull faced comic book character, not even the dodgy Nick Cage film. This Ghost Rider is the drummer and lyricist of the band Rush, a band I am rather fond of, and a man very nearly destroyed by a series of personal catastrophes.

Happily almost married for twenty years, first his daughter died in a car accident and while still realing from that, his common-law wife was diagnosed with cancer from which she died less than a year later.

Emotionally scarred, and feeling the dire need to do something, Peart set out on an epic motorcycle journey, across Canada, through Alaska, down the Rocky Mountains into Mexico and ultimately to Belize. Or Guatemala, whichever is further. I forget.

Along the journey, over 50,000 km by the end, Peart learns how to re-engage with the rest of humanity, gets his rather heavy BMW motorbike into several places it really shouldn't have gone, and how to love and create again. Sounds rather trite that, but thats biography for you.

The book is half travelogue, half tragedy porn, though porn is unfair. There's probably a better word for such works, but I can't think of it. I don't think, no matter how justified, I would have stuck with the self pity, if I hadn't already got some emotional attachment to the writer, but the travel writing is good and at times left me longing for one of those mad rambling journeys i used to do. At times the idea of motorbikes has had a small appeal, but I've never acted on it, and i suspect I'm too old to learn now. Cycling though lets me get the same kinds of travel Peart writes about, though inevitably on a rather smaller scale. No way can you get in tens of thousands of miles at fifteen miles an hour.