Bouncing off Guardrails: Somewhere in Life Between Victorious Triumph and Horrific Annihilation

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More About This Book

Overview

This book is part tragedy, part success story, and part lab notebook documenting the psychological activity during a roller coaster of physical and mental transitions. After bouncing from one extreme to the other in numerous facets of life, Axe finds himself learning to cope with his pending death. He survives humble and weak, but still alive. As his health slowly returns, he captures observations, thoughts, and memories that help him to understand the world and people around him. More important are the internal lessons he learns as he creates an improved version of himself who's healthier, happier, and more appreciative of life's pleasures. Debauchery of the past becomes temptation of the present, while pure passions like guitars and motorcycles are fully realized in his celebration of freedom and life. This book is above all else a very honest look at human nature through a scarred perspective, and the blunt thoughts are a testament that the intent is not to please everyone. Reading these memoirs will test the reader's ability to put aside the brainwashing of the world, to think independently, and appreciate the sincerity and effort to objectively evaluate and evolve while maintaining internal integrity and beliefs.

Editorial Reviews

The Coloradoan
Written in diary form, we follow Axe through thin and thick. In the end, he bounced off the guardrails and straight into a positive life. Hats off to Axe and anyone else who can pull that off.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
Axe is all about hardcore living and loving -- readers may be surprised by his salty language deftly entertwined with soft thoughts and lofty questions. He is edgy and doesn't mince words about any subject or any person...After a couple of chapters, Axe develops a rhythm, one readers will enjoy as he writes about buddies, family, friends, mending, growing, changing -- and bikes, lots and lots about bikes:

"The Ape is back together except for this stubborn rear fender. .¤.¤.The matte clear took to the front fender fine, but this rear piece keeps getting fish eyes on me. .¤.¤. The Goat has a new alternator and lower radiator hose, so that should be good to go for our trip south tomorrow," he says, hoping to have two complete bikes on the road again. Axe's story is hard to read, not because of his writing but because of how difficult everything seems to be in his life. If it weren't for his motorcycles and his woman, Sunshine, I don't see how he could have made it.

"As Sunshine enjoys a glass of wine and I have an alcohol-free Mojito at the hotel bar, we somehow get on the subject of marriage and why people resist it. I ask her if she'd ever take a job knowing she had to keep that job forever, and she agreed that would be a hard decision to make. .¤.¤. I'm glad we can always openly discuss such issues to help each other understand the other's perspective, but I do fear the day those differences become an issue for us."

Axe and Sunshine hang out in Florida plenty in this segment of his life, and readers will take to all the names and places -- Daytona, Deltona, Clearwater Beach, Juno, Miami Beach.

"I do miss the beautiful ocean, beaches and girls of Florida, Cousin Reno and all the friends and co-workers back in the Sunshine State, but I couldn't be happier in life than where I am right now." After all, Axe is a Texan and that's where he and Sunshine call home for now.

I'd love to sit and have a beer or three with him, but then, he doesn't drink -- anymore.

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
The Globe Gazette
He said he didn't have anything to worry about except surviving the surgery, and since he couldn't control whether he would survive or not, there wasn't any point in worrying about it. Surviving surgery taught him to enjoy life and its experiences to the fullest, he said.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781450242363
  • Publisher: iUniverse, Incorporated
  • Publication date: 7/28/2010
  • Pages: 224
  • Sales rank: 570,711
  • Product dimensions: 9.00 (w) x 6.00 (h) x 0.51 (d)

Meet the Author

Axe was born two days after Christmas and the day before "The Exorcist" opened in theaters. Even at birth he began to balance the extremes of human behavior. His parents soon moved him from the trailer in Ft. Lauderdale to their small town in northern Iowa. In Axe's four years of high school he gained investments, marksmanship, 75 lbs of muscle, straight A's, and ultimate discipline. In six years at Iowa State, he acquired a 3.65 GPA in engineering, a love for the guitar or 'axe,' a taste for beauty, and an unquenchable taste for whiskey. Over the next decade Axe found and lost a house, jobs, girls, and toys. He almost lost his freedom too facing 3-5 years at Illinois State (not the University). After finally pulling himself out of his crack neighborhood in Florida, accepting defeat in his motorcycle shop, Y Chrome Customs, and going back to white collar America, the next blow came. A week before he had to have open heart surgery in Colorado, he began writing everything that came to mind, while trying to untangle his mind. Over the next two years, these notes told the story of how facing death made Axe appreciate every experience life offers, eventually moving back to Texas with a new job and a new life. He may have replaced alcohol with adrenaline, but he's still an extremist. The memoirs of this physical and psychological transformation were published as "Bouncing off Guardrails."

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Posted May 31, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Highly Recommended

    Bouncing off Guardrails falls into the must-read category. The book can't be thrown into a single category. Yes it's autobiographical, yes it's "adventure filled", yes it's a life story, yes there's - Insert Book Category Here - ... The book chronicles a life; and just like all real life, it can be simple, complicated, beautiful, ugly, painful, pleasant, empty and full. Axe did things most only dream about, took chances that most don't have the courage to take, and wound up paying a price most of us couldn't pay. All of it is served up in Bouncing off Guardrails without sugar coating a bit of it. Read it. You'll like it. You might even learn something.

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  • Posted April 26, 2011

    Great read!

    This book takes you through the highs and lows of a man who has truly lived. It is almost a tragedy, but comes out good int he end. Axe's one off writing style really tells it like it is and does not hold back. I would put him down in the book for a real man's man. One who lived the crazy life and then realized there must be an end to the craziness. This book will open your eyes and make you slow down a little and enjoy the simple things. Great read. Not too heavy, but enough to make one think.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 4, 2011

    Take it from Nutsack!

    By far this is the best book that I have ever read if not just this year, hands down. I didn't pick it up until last year despite all the hype around the book. I can only hope that the author gets an opportunity to go on Oprah and discuss his journey before she stops doing her show. I think even the hardest critic will find that it was so touching and inspiring and will rush out and get the book. Since reading it I have recommended it to every woman I know (though I do know a few men who have enjoyed it as well), who also loved it! Please do yourself the favor of reading this book!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 12, 2010

    Sobering and entertaining...at the same time!

    After getting my hands on one of the first copies of this book, I was prepared to grab a cup of hot coco and cuddle in to my snuggie for a good read. What I began reading instead made me want to down a bottle of whiskey and sky-dive into a pile of strippers, but know that that would still pale in comparison to what this man has gone through. "Bouncing off Guardrails" carries with it a style that recalls Hunter S. Thompson-esque adventures, which, while also written in a narrative-fashion, also carried you along in a deeply introspective thought process while undergoing thoroughly horrific and wildly entertaining stop-and-go escapades. It becomes quickly apparent that "Axe", the author and protagonist, is pretty damned bright, but he's out there and has an unquenchable thirst for living on the edge. That is clear, but he's has a wit and writing style filled with metaphors that will have you damn near falling out of your chair at times with laughter. (Note to Hollywood- your missing out on a writer here). While it's also clear this is an apparent first effort at writing, it was easy to read and left me fulfulled and wanting even more. I hope Axe decides to follow up with a sophomore publication as I'll be plunking down the cash I had flagged for a stripper's g-string to join him on another wild ride!

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