Ride The Lobster and The Metal Cowboy

By Carolyn Sloan

Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

It’s been dubbed as “the closest thing to the Tour de France for unicyclists.”* June 2008 will see the arrival of over 100 unicyclists from 17 countries who will be competing in Ride The Lobster, an 800-kilometre relay race from Yarmouth to Sydney, Nova Scotia.

On September 14, the official launch of Ride The Lobster took place at King’s Theatre in Annapolis Royal, with event partners from Tourism, Culture and Heritage, the Town of Annapolis Royal, SouthWest Shore Development Authority, Bedford Unicycles, and Britech present to offer their greetings.

“The focus for this race is to boost tourists so we extended it to five days,” explained Edward Wedler, the main organizer of the event. “These riders will be racing at 20 to 25 kilometres per hour for 800 kilometres, five stages, five days, through 80 plus rural communities of Nova Scotia, six tourist regions, 12 municipalities.”

Wedler noted that 25 to 30 international teams will be partcipating in the race from countries across four continents, with proceeds from the race to be donated to Ryan’s Well Foundation and the Nova Scotia Youth Conservation Corp.

Ride The Lobster will begin on June 16 when competing teams will begin the first segment of the race from Yarmouth to Annapolis Royal. With the help of technology sponsor Britech of Lawrencetown, each team will be tracked and mapped so that their positions can be known throughout the world via the Internet. In the end, one winner will be announced and will be receiving at least $10,000 in prize money.

At the launch, Annapolis Royal councillor Ron Boulding announced that the town would be a Stage Sponsor for the event.

“I’m also very pleased to announce that the Town of Annapolis Royal will be a Stage Sponsor,” he told the audience, resulting in a roar of applause. “We’re encouraging the entire community to take ownership of this new Ride the Lobster race and to show the world that community isn’t just about size, but about warmth and beauty.”

In addition to the official launch, Ride The Lobster presented the evening’s entertainment with comedian, adventure dad, journalist and author Joe Kurmaskie, better known as The Metal Cowboy.

Having toured the United States, and now much of Canada, on a tandem-style bicycle, with his young sons and wife peddling along, Kurmaskie has amassed a collection of stories from his family’s adventures on the road which he relives for audiences with animated, comedic flair. Soon to release his fourth novel, entitled Mud, Seat and Gears, the avid cyclist is also a promoter of getting children off the sofa and into the great outdoors. With his kids on the road, the adventure dad takes as many opportunities as he can to get them off the bicycle and give them a chance to play.

“So this is not a greuling exercise in child endangerment,” he explains. “What it is, is a Huck Finn summer for these kids. It’s a chance to get them off the couch.

“My theory is that we’re cheating our children out of their own childhoods… We’re hermetically sealing them in SUVs, we’re driving them back and fourth, we’re helicoptering, we’re parenting over them and we’re overscheduling their lives… Our kids are capable of so much more. They’re capable of playing outside of a schedule.”

From pictures of roadkill to light saber duels that become a family affair, the Cowboy showed slides of his trips to accompany each story about the sights and experiences of life on the road. With a family that seems up for anything and everything, the wacky and sometimes surprising twists and turns of their adventures left the audience in Annapolis Royal bursting into laughter.

For more information about Ride The Lobster, visit www.ridethelobster.com. For more information about the Metal Cowboy, Joe Kurmaskie, visit www.metalcowboy.com.

*Andy Cotter, long distance unicyclist, Minnesota, USA