Posts Tagged ‘sam manicom’

The Moment Collector is an anthology of short stories from motorcyclists traveling the world. The collector of these stories is Sam Manicom, himself a world traveler on two wheels.

Sam collected twenty tales from intrepid motorcycling travelers. As with all anthologies some stories are more engrossing than others, some writers are better than others. Yet overall, I enjoyed the book greatly.

I was familiar with a few of the authors, Tim Notier for example, but most were new to me. Mr. Manicom provided each writer’s social media information with their stories. A subtle but impactful touch that allowed me to see more about each of them.

As noted above, it is difficult for any collection of stories, or moments, to have every tale a hit. I am giving this book a 4-Star review because it is an anthology and not all the stories were great.

However…. It should be part of your motorcycle book library!

Ride On, Ride Safe

Other books of Sam Manicom I have reviewed: Tortillas and Totems

Full disclosure Sam authored a guest post on this blog, and I paid for this book and was not paid for the review.

Photo provided by Sam Manicom

Sam Manicom’s fourth motorcycle adventure book tracks his and his partner Birgit travels through Mexico, the United States and Canada.  While I have never toured the world like Sam but, he lays out the work involved while making it a fun read.

I say work because he is not reliant on sponsors or doing “viral” things to get attention and “followers”.  He sells stories and does “odd jobs” while touring to have the money to move from point to point.  He does rely on a network of friends and friends of friends to reduce his costs of traveling. The “work” part of global motorcycle touring comes out well in the book.

This book has been in my stack for a couple months and now I wish had moved it to the top when it came in.  It is an easy, fun read that I can readily recommend.

I particularly enjoyed the sections on the border crossings.  I found it funny how it seems that the crossing guards are pretty much the same just with different languages, overworked and underpaid and less then helpful. However, of all the places to cross into the US, Tijuana would be at the bottom of my list.  But no one asked me LOL!

I was a bit surprised that after traveling through the many third-world countries that they travelled, that they were worried about travelling back into the first world.  I understood the worries on cost of travel in the US/Canada but, as their trip unfolded, I like to think that the other worries were abated. 

Full disclosure Sam wrote an unpaid article for this blog a few months ago and I paid for the book.

I liked this book enough that I am going to buy his other books!  4 Stars