Zero to Sixty: The Motorcycle Journey of a Lifetime

By Gary Paulsen

Book Overview

Nearing sixty, diagnosed with heart disease and feeling his mortality, Gary Paulsen buys his first Harley-Davidson and rides from his home in New Mexico to Alaska-and from the present into his past, through the landmarks of a singular life. Paulsen's journey is peopled with familiar faces, from the tough cop who saved him from juvenile delinquency to the prostitute whose career advice stopped him from quitting the army. And the work he does while on his bike-the work of mapping his life to find meaning-is of a piece with the pure sweat and muscle of youthful days spent on farms in Minnesota, or at the bottom of septic tank pits in Colorado, or wrangling dogsleds through the Alaskan wilderness. Amid the silence and beauty of running the road on his Harley, Paulsen celebrates the comforts of hard work, the thrill of challenge met bravely, and the peculiar joys of life lived to its fullest.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156007045
• ISBN13: 9780156007047
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Made for a great rainy day read

I so love this author ever since reading "Winter Dance". He's absurdly funny like...say...a Canadian sense of humor. This book was a good read. Quick. Hated to hit that last page.

Thanks Gary

If you'r intending to live over 50 you better read Paulsen's book. it'll make you understand that we live only one life, and we'd better live them right.

Its Not an Iliad nor an Odyssey but its a Pilgrimage

Gary Paulsen delivers a middle age memoir that strikes a sentimental and gentle chord as we follow him on his Harley from New Mexico to Alaska and back. It's not the Iliad nor the Odyssey but as Homer put it best the adventure is "in the journey". Take this book with you to an easy chair, prop up your feet, lean back and take it for a smooth ride. It is well worth it.

It's not the kill, it's the thrill of the chase.

After reading this book, you'll likely want to go out and buy a Harley, then make a run for the ages. Gary Paulsen certainly puts us in the saddle. More important to me, however, were Mr. Paulsen's intensely personal reflections on a life lived in search of experience. The road brings back memories: the smell of seagull guts cooking on a red-hot exhaust pipe (a real man's recherche du temps perdu!) takes him back to his North Dakota farming days; a chance encounter with a Kansas farmer whose home has been vaporized by recent flooding leads to ruminations on grunt work -- specifically, Paulsen's humorous stint as a septic tank technician. Eventually, Paulsen makes it to the Alaska Highway, where caravans of mobile homes unwittingly conspire to put him in serious danger (if you've ever made a long run out West, you know about mobile homes). How does it end? For Paulsen, it doesn't. He won't let it end, and that's why he's writing these books and we're sitting in cubicles staring at computer screens, tapping away, dreaming of making an epic run...