Scraping Pegs

The Truth About Motorcycles

By: Michael Stewart

Narrated by: Drew Hodgens

Length: 6 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Hang on! With an off-beat sensibility, this bike ride may be bumpy.

From the deserts of the Middle East to the US and Canada, Michael Stewart has chased the allure of motorcycles for much of his life. Through them came a wealth of experience, and this question: What is the truth about motorcycling?

Told with humor and wit, Scraping Pegs is a bold narrative; including “rules” to help you survive the art of riding and life. Press an experienced rider beyond their glory stories, and they’ll tell you about the miles of nothingness. While showing off their road rash, they may share special moments, cruising down the road to joy, accelerating out of a corner, riding across desert sand, or up a mountain trail. The shift that happens before-motorcycle to on-motorcycle. The constant swing between nothingness and awareness that can happen when riding.

The perfect ride doesn’t last long, and life is like that. There are disastrous mechanical failures, broken bones, weather battles, monotony, soured relationships, bad attitudes, and even death in store for some who seek to tame their wild beasts on iron horses. The worst rides make the best stories, they say.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an inquiry into values. Scraping Pegs is an inquiry into the other two fundamental questions of our time: how not to die and why ride?

Riding is a quest, like life condensed in time. Is that the truth about motorcycles?

Kickstands up. Enjoy the ride!

©2021 Michael G. Stewart (P)2021 Michael G. Stewart

A fantastic ride!

Great book! An autobiographical guide to riding and motorcycle mindedness. Kind of like the "On Riding" to Stephen Kings "On Writing." Humorous and enjoyable throughout, was rapt the entire listen.
As far as narration goes, this narrator was the perfect choice. Great to listen to and flawlessly performed. Whether you ride or not, this was a very satisfying listen. Highly recommended!

The audible version makes me want to have read the book instead

I think I would recommend the book instead of the audible book. The narrator has an interesting voice, and does some interesting accents to portray different characters, but early on he seemed to fade from old country cowboy into Russian or a third one I forget what it was. It wasn’t a character switch, just an odd transforming accent - like how my wife does accents and they all end up as Indian eventually.

Too, he seems to have read the book literally, including a couple spelling/grammar errors. A couple of other errors were similarly amusing - pronunciation of usurped, and MI6.

The book as written seems good, almost but not quite flow of consciousness style. The riding tips are legit - can’t fault a single one, really, in concept. Though I would have used some different descriptions and metaphors, I didn’t write the book and he did. I could still understand what he meant even if my understanding of cause and effect differs from his.

The personal stories are what really make any book like this. The author seems to maybe have had more than his fair share of bad things happen to him, but the way he also tied in other people’s stories makes it all the more interesting.

Again I would’ve liked to have read the book instead of listening, so I could really look at a paragraph or sentence and get the sense of it, rather than the narrators sometimes awkward word/syllable use. This is actually why I’ve only ever listed to a few audio books - I can tell from the wording that sometimes the author meant something different than the tone/word stress that the narrator chose. Adding a narrator that isn’t the author is adding a layer of interpretation. A short game of Telephone, if you will. It just would be better to get the story from the source.

A Story of Intrigue and Lighthearted Motorcycle Wisdom

The storyline of Scraping Pegs has a richness and depth that I had not anticipated, which resulted in me listening to the audio book twice.

Initially, it took awhile for me to become accustomed to the intonation of the narrator, however the story was brimming with nuggets of “motorcycle wisdom” and amusing “ramblings” that almost any motorcyclist would relate to, including female riders such as myself. Not to mention the authors light humour, an array of interesting characters, and moments of truth introduced along the way.

This is an audio book that I’m sure I’ll dust off from time to time and listen to again. If you are a motorcyclist, I think you’ll enjoy it too.

Fantastic audiobook

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I don't even ride motorcycles and probably never will, but if I do, it'll be because of this book. the narrator was the perfect touch. Best nonfiction audiobook I've experienced.

1/2 of it's good...

the book should be half as long. 1st half very good. 10 rules of riding good stuff. 2nd half is just filler. Stories of his 2 brothers and the authors accident. snooze.

Interesting

Not quite what I was expecting. This book offers a lot of insight and information while being comical and plenty of personal stories.

Scraping the bottom

This book was too much about him not as much about motorcycling as it should’ve been didn’t really care for the hokey voices that the narrator used and if he’s writing another book he obviously hasn’t read this one

Great narrator. Subpar book.

The narrator was very good, especially to be reading such a mediocre book. The author seems to think the total truth about motorcycles is that they will be involved in your death if you ride them. He cannot seem to see any larger purpose or benefit in riding other than to consider your eventual mortality due to them. He gets hurt pretty bad and writes a book about how afraid he is and how afraid you should be. He glazes this encouraged fear in "curmudgionism" but can't seem to find any appreciation for what so many other riders find in the saddle. His "rules" are not bad advice in general, but he does not seem to have the depth to consider the benefit of other rules like "make friends with those that want the best for you."

While the book does contain some truisms about motorcycles, it amounts to a long winded version of what could be said over a cup of coffee. So much of the truth about motorcycles is missing from these pages. I will not look for the advertised sequel to see if any truth is there.