{"product_id":"the-ride-of-our-lives-isbn-9780345481498","title":"The Ride of Our Lives","description":"\u003ci\u003eThe Ride of Our Lives\u003c\/i\u003e is the humorous yet deeply moving account of NBC journalist Mike Leonard’s cross-country odyssey with his eccentric parents, three grown children, and a daughter-in-law. Full of ups and downs, laughs and tears, the month-long journey becomes a much larger tale of hope, persistence, and valuable lessons learned along the way. A celebration of the ties between parents and children, as well as the unforgettable community of people one can meet across America, \u003ci\u003eThe Ride of Our Lives\u003c\/i\u003e is an inspiring narrative of self-discovery and self-fulfillment–and how one unique family found blessings and simple pleasures on the road called life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Touching, hilarious . . . should be required reading in every family.”\u003cbr\u003e–Tom Brokaw\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Poignant moments of questions and discovery, of truth-telling and memories.”\u003cbr\u003e–The Charlotte Observer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Often laugh-out-loud funny and sometimes heartbreakingly sad.”\u003cbr\u003e–St. Louis Post-Dispatch\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Delightful.”\u003cbr\u003e–Chicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Heartfelt and whimsical . . . a cross-country trek through life’s lessons . . . Mike Leonard is a storyteller at heart, and each anecdote . . . punctuates the family’s love, struggles, and triumphs. In short, this is one ride worth taking.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eRocky Mountain News\u003c\/i\u003e“Mike Leonard is a national treasure and his touching, hilarious, instructive account of a loving road trip with his parents and children should be required reading in every family. I’m sending it to all my children so they can share the laughs and the tears.”\u003cbr\u003e-Tom Brokaw, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Greatest Generation\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mike Leonard has generously invited the rest of us along for a ride aboard his land yacht, the \"S.S.Fiasco.\" And what a ride it is. Profound and profoundly funny, Leonard takes us on a journey deep into the heart of his family. He has been blessed with characters who are as bizarre, maddening, unpredictable and hilarious as any dreamt up by Hollywood -- and they are his real-life parents! \"The Ride of Our Lives\" reads like intimate dispatches from your funniest friend, and is as touching and whimsical as a series of home movies unspooling from an American childhood.”\u003cbr\u003e-Amy Dickinson, syndicated advice columnist, \"Ask Amy\"Mike Leonard’s entertaining video features regularly appear on NBC’s morning show Today. He and his wife, Cathy, are the parents of two daughters and two sons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTo schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau\u003c\/i\u003e at \u003cu\u003ewww.apbspeakers.com\u003c\/u\u003e  Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Walkie-Talkie #1: “Dad . . . where are you?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Walkie-Talkie #2: “We’re one minute away. We got caught at the light.   You’re at that gas station in the middle of the next block, right?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Walkie-Talkie #1: “Uhhh, yeah but . . . ummm . . . we have a slight   problem . . .”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Walkie-Talkie #2: “What problem?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Walkie-Talkie #1: “Ummm, Margarita didn’t swing wide enough around the   gas pump and we ran into a concrete thing. It tore out the bottom of   the RV. What should I do? Margarita’s sitting on the ground crying.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Walkie-Talkie #2: “Holy crap.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Less than a half hour into the adventure of a lifetime and the wheels   had already come off. Well, maybe not the wheels, but sizable chunks of   the rented Winnebago now lay scattered around a convenience-store gas   pump in Mesa, Arizona. Big pieces of splintered fiberglass, twisted   strips of jagged metal, and in the middle of it all, sitting on the   oily pavement, head buried in her hands, was my sobbing   daughter-in-law, Margarita.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was a distressing, stomach-churning sight. It was also moving.   Literally. I was in the driver’s seat of a second rented RV, a much   bigger rig called the Holiday Rambler, and couldn’t stop. The entrance   to the gas station was too narrow and I was too rattled. Rolling past   the accident site, the troubling scene swept by my eyes like a slow   panning shot in the movies. The wounded Winnebago was beached on a   concrete gas-pump island with three of my family members walking around   it in a daze. It was four-thirty in the afternoon on the second day of   February, rush hour in snowbird season. The street was clogged with   traffic and the drivers were getting pissed, mostly because of us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “That means the trip is over, right, Jack?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was the voice of my mother, eighty-two years old, with a Ph.D. in   pessimism, coming from the back of the Holiday Rambler.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Marge, nobody died.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That was my eighty-seven-year-old father, the patron saint of hope,   launching yet another flimsy balloon of encouragement into a howling   hurricane wind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Jack and Marge, the package of opposites, the plus and minus charges   still holding enough juice to light each other up after more than sixty   years of married life. They were raised in the same New Jersey   neighborhood, share Irish roots, and make each other laugh. Other than   that, Jack and Marge are polar extremes. My dad expects the world to   work the way it should. He bought into this life believing the sales   pitch that all people were made to be good but then he tears open the   package, rips away the bubble wrap, and finds another con artist ready   to take him to the cleaners. And it still shocks him. Every single   time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My mom, on the other hand, would’ve been looking out the window and   checking her watch wondering why the crook was late. By her   calculations the per capita number of creeps and jackasses on the   planet is the highest in recorded history, and most of them seem to be   in possession of my father’s address and phone number. To deal with   that distressing situation and to cope with all the other kinds of   inevitabilities, including but not limited to horrible diseases, fiery   highway collisions, plane crashes, killer bees, and Charles Manson–like   home invaders, my mother has developed a philosophy that she calls   stinkin’ thinkin’. By assuming that all of life’s encounters will   stink, my mother has managed to stay even keeled when in fact things do   end up stinking. When they don’t stink she’s pleasantly surprised. To   better understand how my parents’ opposing charges influence their   outlook on life, I have prepared this sample conversation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Jack: “We should have my new boss, Fred, and his wife, Connie, over for   dinner.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marge: “Fred’s an asshole.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Jack: “Come on, Marge, you can’t say that just because he wears Harvard   cufflinks. And why don’t you like Connie?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Marge: “Connie thinks her shit is cake.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Oh yeah, my mom swears. She also likes to down a little booze at the   end of the day. My dad hasn’t had a drop of liquor in his life. How did   they stay together for sixty-plus years? It doesn’t compute. Match.com   would’ve built a firewall between their applications. Vegas bookies   would’ve shut down the wedding-anniversary betting line. It’s the   classic mismatch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In the right corner, at five foot two, 105 pounds, wearing a white   floppy hat, denim jacket, denim shirt, denim pants, and white sneakers   over pantyhose . . . with an undefeated marital fight record of 973–0,   all but three of those victories by knockout . . . the pride of   Paterson, New Jersey . . . The Cynical Cyclone . . . Marge Leonard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    (crowd roars)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And in the left corner, also from Paterson, New Jersey, at five foot nine, 160 pounds, wearing a dark blue jacket trimmed in white   powdered doughnut crumbs and brown coffee stains, winless in sixty   years of fighting but still battling . . . The Smiling Slugger . . .   Sugar Jack Leonard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    (polite applause)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Another bout between my parents was the last thing I needed as I   gripped the steering wheel and scanned the road ahead for a suitable   exit route. The rising chorus of car horns was starting to unnerve me.   Mesa’s rush-hour motorists seemed to be having major problems with the   way my RV was taking up both lanes. We were now two blocks past the   crash site and in a desperate attempt to find a wide driveway, or an   empty lot or a cliff to drive off, I cut my speed again, this time down   to ten miles per hour. The car-horn octave level shot into the Roy   Orbison range. It’s not easy trying to navigate an ocean liner through   a rolling city sea of ticked-off people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I had picked up the gigantic Holiday Rambler only a few hours earlier.   It was thirty-six feet long, ten feet high, with a huge curved   windshield and a large, round, bus driver–type steering wheel. The   helpful folks at the dealership had given me an hour-long lesson on how   to operate a rig far bigger than the Winnebago, but all that went out   the window when the rubber met the road and hostile people started   shaking their fists at me. How were they to know that I’m not an RV   guy? I’m not even a car guy. I drive cars, but I don’t know cars.   Manifold? Carburetor? If it’s under the hood, it’s over my head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Last year the front headlight went out on our Volvo wagon. When I drove   it up to our small-town service station, two blocks from my Winnetka,   Illinois, home, the young mechanic asked me to get back in and pop the   hood. I didn’t know where the hood popper was. I really didn’t. Masking   panic with a cocky nod of the head, I found a lever and pulled it back.   My seat reclined. The mechanic, with disdain written all over his   grease-smeared face, walked over, opened my driver’s-side door, reached   down near my left leg, and pushed or pulled something. The hood popped.   Then he went back to the front of the car and yelled, “Switch on the   brights.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Crap.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Looking down at the two levers sprouting from each side of the   steering-wheel pipe, I flipped a mental coin and went with the one on   the right. Blue water sprayed onto my windshield. The mechanic told me   to get out of the car.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That’s the kind of idiot who was now at the wheel of the S.S. Fiasco as   it lurched through a raging urban shitstorm. With the lead vessel   already on the rocks, it was now up to me to somehow save the day.   Three blocks past where the Winnebago had gone down, I spied a   Doubletree Inn with a large driveway leading to what appeared to be a   nearly empty back parking lot. To guarantee a sufficiently wide turning   radius, I cut our speed to four miles per hour and edged farther into   the oncoming traffic lane before swinging the nose of the RV back to   the right. This maneuver caused the Roy Orbison car-horn choir to morph   into a deafening Phil Spector-esque wall of sound. Concerned about   clipping the elevated Doubletree Inn sign with the vehicle’s high back   end, I glanced over my right shoulder just in time to catch a glimpse   of my mother giving somebody the finger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We cleared the sign, made the turn, and rolled to a stop in a vacant   corner of the hotel parking lot, where I turned off the keys and rested   my forehead on the huge steering wheel. All was quiet. For five   seconds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Jack, do you think the man at the gas station can fix it?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “For crying out loud, Marge, those guys can’t fix a Slurpee. You know   that.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Of course she knew that. She also knew that my father would take the   bait and respond, as he always does, totally unaware that he had been   duped once more into becoming an unwitting mule for another load of my   mother’s stinkin’ thinkin’. Now he was the one mouthing those negative   words—nobody at the gas station can help us—and that’s when my resolve   started to weaken.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I had always prided myself on staying positive and toughing it out, but   these were extreme circumstances and the urge to feel sorry for myself   was overpowering. What harm could come from a small dose of self-pity?   Lifting my forehead off the steering wheel, I leaned back in the   driver’s seat, stared out the front window, and softly muttered two   simple words: “Why me?” That’s all it took. Within seconds I was in a   full-blown stinkin’ thinkin’ funk, convinced that our trip was doomed   and that I was a weapon’s-grade fool for letting a stupid dream take   over my life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At least I think it was a dream. It happened a few months earlier, in   late November, after going to bed feeling sad about my aging parents.   They aren’t wealthy and had just sold their condo outside San Diego,   moving to a less expensive rental home in Phoenix. They were going back   to familiar territory, or so they thought, having lived in Scottsdale,   Arizona, twenty years earlier. Two decades of explosive growth,   however, had rearranged the metropolitan area, changing it from top to   bottom. My dad signed a year’s lease believing the real-estate agent’s   pitch that the house was an easy walk to everything. Maybe for Lewis   and Clark. It was a disheartening situation made worse upon arrival   when my parents discovered that eleven moving boxes had been stolen, as   well as most of my mother’s jewelry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My parents didn’t deserve that treatment. They’re goofy but   good-hearted people, oddly matched yet oddly perfect for each other.   They raised four boys in a happy home, lived decent lives, had lots of   friends, and always went out of their way to be nice to people who   needed a lift. Now the tables were turned and they were the ones in   need of a boost. That was evident when they called on the evening of my   fifty-sixth birthday. I expected Mom to open the conversation with a   mention of my special day. Her first words, instead, were “This place   is shit on wheels.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As funny as that sounded, it hurt me to think that my parents, a couple   of silly, fun-loving live wires who rose above their humble Paterson,   New Jersey, beginnings to make it through a depression, a world war,   and more setbacks than they deserved, had now mistakenly steered their   creaky old barge into the wrong dock. Too old and too shaken to back it   up, they suddenly realized that they were stuck, one stumble away from   the nursing home with no one in their neighborhood to talk to and   nowhere to go.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sleep that night was difficult. I live thousands of miles away, have   four children of my own, a mortgage, and a busy life as a feature   correspondent for the Today show on NBC. What could I do to change the   facts? My parents were getting very old, and nothing good happens to   people who have lived past their expiration date.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then, at 3:00 a.m., my eyes snapped open. The solution had come to me   in the middle of the night, rumbling in from my subconscious from who   knows where. It was a gigantic RV and I was driving it. The dream   immediately turned into a plan. I would rent an RV—no, two RVs—round up   some of my grown children, drive to Arizona, pick up my parents, and   give them one last lap around the country. I would take them to places   they’d never seen before: the mountains of New Mexico, the bayous of   Louisiana, the ocean cliffs of Rhode Island. I would take them to   places they would never see again: their old neighborhood, their   college campuses, their parents’ graves. Finally, before circling back   and driving them into the sunset, I would take my mom and dad to   Chicago for the birth of my daughter Megan’s baby—my first grandchild,   their first great-grandchild.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I got out of bed that morning filled with excitement. Maybe I couldn’t   solve all of the problems caused by my parents’ ill-advised move, but I   could do something. I could give them adventure. I could give them   mobility. I could give them a month of my time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The hell I could.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    What was I thinking? I’d never driven an RV. Where would I get one? How   much would it cost? What if we crashed? What if one of my parents fell   or got sick? What if NBC refused to let me take the time off? What if   Megan’s baby arrived early?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I couldn’t do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    No, I had to do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At breakfast that morning my wife, Cathy, tried talking sense into me.   She used logic, listing all the potential pitfalls, from the age of my   parents to the financial implications for our children if they were to   go on the journey. Our oldest son, Matt, and his wife, Margarita, our   middle daughter, Kerry, as well as Megan’s husband, Jamie, are all part   of the family video production company. Taking them on the road would   mean shutting down the business and cutting off their source of income.   Brendan, our youngest son, would have to drop out of college for a   semester.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But Cathy knew that her logical objections weren’t making a dent. We   were approaching our thirty-fifth year as a married couple and she had   seen that look in my eyes before. Out of the blue, some career-altering   idea or lifestyle-changing concept would pop into my head and I’d take   the leap. There were lots of failures, some costly, but more often than   not things worked out, at times in a big way. It wasn’t just an urge to   be different, it was . . . and I hate to say this because it’s going to   sound like New Age self-help crap . . . as if I were being commanded to   take those chances.National bestseller Sometimes life's greatest lessons are taught by ordinary people.","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302309155045,"sku":"NP9780345481498","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345481498.jpg?v=1767741236","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-ride-of-our-lives-isbn-9780345481498","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}