Book Review - "The Masked Rider" by Neil Peart

The Masked Rider by Neil Peart is the author's first book, published in 1996. The book describes his month-long bicycle tour in Cameroon. Peart describes in detail the challenging riding conditions and "rustic" accommodations, in addition to his relationship with his travel companions and talks about the people he encounters. The book was an interesting, easy read. It is however the first time that I read a travel memoir that doesn't make me want to take the journey. It was difficult and uncomfortable and at times just nasty.

Although this is his first book, it's the third one of the four that he's written that I have read. Having already read his second book Ghost Rider - where he describes his cross-US motorcycle trip after his wife and 19 year-old daughter had died unexpectedly within a year of each other (accident and cancer respectively) - this was somewhat bittersweet. In this book he tells of how he can't wait for the end of the journey when he meets his wife in Paris to enjoy a vacation with her. At another point as he tells of the poverty he encountered and how the some of the children were underfed and sick, he says that he can't imagine the pain a parent must feel upon losing a child - little could he have known he would know that pain all too well the following year when he would lose his daughter.

It's also interesting to compare traveling conditions in that part of the world prior to 9/11. He complains about the inconveniences they had to endure at security checkpoints and when flying - it's nothing compared to what goes on now.

I'd recommend it to Neil Peart fans and to people who enjoy travel memoirs.