A Passion for the Edge: Living Your Dreams Now by Tim Tyler Edenscape Publishing
book review by Deborah Straw
"Quit moving through your life in automatic. Challenge everything you do. Like magic, it will produce new opportunities, new perspectives, and you will find significant improvements are possible."
Part memoir, part motivational tome, A Passion for the Edge by Alaskan writer Tim Tyler focuses on his solo three-week motorcycle trip from Alaska to Washington State and back. Tyler has been fortunate and made wise choices in his life: a supportive family, a satisfying career, several patents for his inventions, extensive foreign travel, and an ability to retire at age 50. After retiring, Tyler returned to an earlier passion—motorcycling. With his both wife's and children's blessings, he bought a bright red Honda Valkyrie and planned his itinerary, much of it on substandard roads through country teaming with bears and other wild creatures.
The most engaging parts of this book are descriptions of the remote towns and the people he met, color photographs, quotes about courage from dozens of famous thinkers, and his many correlations between riding a motorcycle a long distance and taking risks in general. The fact that you can only know by doing is as true of riding a motorcycle as it if of living a dream or succeeding in achieving an aspiration.
The notion that anyone can do anything in life is debatable. Making changes requires the ability to do said activity, adequate income, time away from work and family, good health, supportive people, and a well of personal strength to meet unexpected challenges. Most of us can make small changes in mid-life, but many of us are not in the position to make the kinds of changes Tyler has. Still, he accomplished what he wanted, which should never be overlooked. Also, his was not a hugely expensive dream, and he survived and had no rude surprises.
Read his book to learn more about Alaska and the Yukon, particularly, and to learn more about motorcycles on the open and back road. The audience for this book would include motorcycle enthusiasts, as well as those who are ready for, yet scared of, change.