Updates july brad newsham

The late 60s and early 70s was an amazing time. In a trip across the U. I would see literally thousands of hitchhikers — and we were all pretty chummy. For several years running, at the University Avenue on ramp in Berkeley, there was always a minimum of about 50 hitchhikers. In I left North America for the first time. Instead, seven months later, at the tender age of 22, I wandered into Afghanistan.

The month I spent there irrevocably changed my life. My father praised a birthday poem I wrote for my grandmother when I was five or six years old. And ever since then I think I look to writing although I almost never write poetry to get my strokes, my validation from the world. Sometimes I think this might be a shame, a tragedy. Am I simply living my life trying to recreate the experience of positive feedback from my father? In my first wife told me she wanted a divorce.

When I came back to San Francisco, I rented a tiny apartment in the Haight-Ashbury and spent nine months doing literally nothing but writing a book about that trip. Eight, ten, sixteen hours a day — writing. I always come back with tons of notes. The other big challenge, I find, is staying healthy.

Some people can go anywhere, eat anything, have no problems. I have a five-year old daughter now. Writing has taken a back seat to child rearing. My biggest challenge is finding the time to write. I feel like I must put in the parental disclaimer here: I, of course, love my daughter more deeply than anything in the world.

But I was totally unprepared for the enormous change that parenthood has brought into my life. Until I was 45 I had oceans of free time. Now I encounter occasional puddles. And for me, writing requires oceans of time. I have to sneak up on it. I cannot flip a switch and suddenly be writing. When I was young I assumed that all authors were rich. Now I know the sad truth. I invested about nine years of my life and at least thirty or forty thousand dollars in cash into writing and researching them.

My dream would be that one of them — well, both would be nice — would have become a runaway bestseller, and that I could afford to have my wife stay home and raise our daughter, and that I would be freed up to write. And if I had the money I would hire an assistant. Pretty typical fantasies, I suppose. Free Ride , given the biting rancor of our national conversation if you could call it that and all the nasty crap on social media, will encourage you to go about your life a bit differently.

It will also let you spend time with a good guy doing good things every day and thinking deep and interesting thoughts about his life and his upbringing and everything else in-between.

The difference in Free Ride is that the world comes to Newsham, in the back of his cab. It was during the alone time that he questioned his life choices and his worth as a person. So Brad started swooping into bus stop waiting zones and offering people a free ride. He soon realized how good it made him feel to be helping someone, rather than driving around empty. I have come to regard each as a living entity, a unique member of a species of my own invention: Free Ride.

It probably exceeds two thousand. Three thousand? Maybe, maybe not. Thus Free Ride is one year in the life of Brad Newsham. The fares, as one might imagine, are colorful. The iron worker who is a would-be fashion designer. A woman on her way to painting class. A stripper. A recruiter for Blackwater. A software engineer from New Delhi on his first visit to the United States. A professional baseball player. Every trip brings a new wrinkle, a fresh perspective, or triggers an insight from Newsham, who never pretends to have all the answers.

Quite the opposite. Brad and I knew each other, from a distance, at Principia College where he was a long-haired, easy-going star on the college basketball team. He was a couple of years ahead of me. Free Ride is a meaty, hefty, meaningful book that deserves to be widely read. The colorful photographs are an added bonus and the care for the prose and editing sets an impeccable standard for any writer contemplating the self-publishing route.

The writing is frequently spectacular but never over-wrought. Substance over flash. Detail over show-off. Newsham has one of those easy-going writing styles that goes down like a cool drink of water. But by the moon has already become a distant memory, replaced by a ragged sky full of high cauliflower clouds, warm wind gusts, and occasional sprinkles. I have just dropped a fare at St. Her name is Whitefeather, and I remember that when she rode in my cab several years ago, we discovered that we were both from the same tribe, the Olehippies.

A meticulous sculptor has shaped her legs. The long leather thongs of a pair of Old Testament sandals are lashed tightly all the way up her perfectly tanned calves.

The gay man is directly in her path. He looks her up and down and up and down again. Little Miss Smoking Hot? How did I ever delude myself that it was possible I might ever do something original? Save the world? Make some difference? Newsham draws on all his experiences to pepper each tale with reflections and observations. In particular are the sections about building a house in Idaho with his mates and the harrowing interactions with his mother, who suffered from mental health issues. Not on Page Of course Brad carries the bags to the top of her steps.

It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations … I want to be thoroughly used up when I die … If I should slip, if I should falter, tie the pen into my hand. This may be my favorite of all your interviews yet, Mark. You and Brad Newsham have created a work of art in itself.

Eckhart Tolle would be proud! You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account.

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Email Address:. Don't Need A Diagram. Book reviews by Mark Stevens. Mostly mysteries. Some other fiction and non-fiction, too. Skip to content. When I was done, I wanted to go back to the beginning and start all over again. Free Ride is a piece of work. Question: If people want a copy of Free Ride — how can they get one?

No surprise—Brad has given away all copies. I got one. On and on. Like this: Like Loading This entry was posted in Books and tagged eckhardt tolle , memoir , non-fiction , san francisco , taxi.

In Newsham married Rhonda Gillenwaters, and they had a daughter in Upon their return the couple moved to San Francisco, where he became a secretary at Wells Fargo Bank. The marriage ended in and Newsham traveled to Japan, China, and the Trans-Siberian Railroad before spending nine months writing about the journey. In he first drove a taxicab—a job he has continued part-time ever since.

After a brief spell as an asphalt paver and then the driver for a touring concert harpist, he spent seven months touring Morocco, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan in For the following eight years he worked as a dishwasher, school bus driver, construction worker, waiter, underground molybdenum miner, and small town newspaper reporter in Colorado, Idaho, and Arizona.

In , he built a log house in Idaho, with two friends to whom he later sold his share. Born the second of four children in Washington, D. Louis, Missouri, before attending Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, where he gained a degree in history and sociology in Brad Newsham. Brad Newsham fans also viewed:.

Kaori Manabe. Jang Seung-jo. James Aspey. Joel Neoh Eu-Jin.