If you want to read all the professional, grown up stuff, OK, semi-grown up stuff I do to beat back the wolves from the door and fight off the financial dingos from eating my babies… I’ve put that puff piece in at the bottom.
But here’s what you really need to know:
(excerpted from the prologue of my latest book, Momentum Is your Friend – what… you thought I was gonna write something original on a Thursday morning before I’m fully awake?)
A few things you need to know about me; I’m involved in a rather unhealthy relationship with caffeine; it’s been going on for years, and I have no intention of breaking things off. Also, by my twenty-first birthday I’d quit more jobs than you’ll ever have, leaving me free to follow the only path left for a strapping young man of questionable aptitude and work ethic: I became a writer. When folks ask me what that’s like, I tell them to picture a super-hero with no special powers. You’re all Clark Kent, all the time. Worse, someone along the way, probably my mother, convinced me that I did possess God-like abilities. This will turn out to be in my imagination. What else? I don’t know when to say quit, especially around certain flavors of pie, or after I’ve climbed onto a bicycle. Often, combining my suspect intellect with my stubborn resolve makes for lively entertainment. Case in point, I once raced a greyhound on foot along uneven New Mexico sand teeming with barrel cacti. This, while an entire deck of partygoers looked on. I was not drunk or running for my life, nor was this a high stakes wager. I just thought it might be fun, and part of me actually believed I could beat this graceful animal, (see mom, and the special powers ruse) and because someone needed to wipe that cocky grin off its streamlined face. I would learn too late that centuries of breeding are responsible for its loopy smile, not to mention its incredible speed out of the blocks. Also, that there is no margin of error when running between barrel cacti. One more thing, I have what teachers euphemistically referred to on progress reports as socially excessive verbal proficiency. I’m chatty; my mouth runneth over.Let’s review. What we have is a jittery, unemployable scribe, a tenacious bastard to be sure, but lacking a certain intellectual curiosity, who wants nothing more than to ride his bicycle . . . and won’t shut up. I’m as surprised as you that it’s worked out this well.
The Grown Up Stuff:
Joe has been a journalist for two decades. He’s been a contributing writer to Bicycling Magazine, Details, Men’s Journal He worked as an editor for five years at an AP newspaper, before becoming and author and entertainer (mostly so he could sleep in later.) His work has appeared in Details, Midwest Bike and The SF Chronicle. He reviews books for The Oregonian and is a educator for Literary Arts Inc and Community of Writers – COW writer in residence at Portland State University. He lives in Portland Oregon with his wife Beth and his three boys Quinn and Lorenzo and Matteo. They attempt without much success to grow webbed feet during the “wet” season.