The Ride Of Our Lives

'The Ride Of Our Lives' is the humorous yet poignant account of NBC journalist Mike Leonard's cross-country camper trip with his elderly parents. But this is no ordinary road trip tale - rather, it's a jumping off point for a rich and wonderful journey into memory, family and home-grown wisdom. Leonard's parents are 'world-class eccentrics cut from the same bolt of Irish immigrant cloth'. Jack is a pathological optimist while Marge has a Ph.D. in pessimism. Married to each other for a lifetime, when they're not needling each other, they're laughing. 'That childish streak has helped keep the old wheels spinning,' says Leonard. 'But for how much longer? Their tread has worn dangerously thin. That's why I decided to drop everything, rent the RV [recreation vehicle], and give them the ride of their lives.' The author felt it was time to allow his parents to see for one last time the things they found so dear from their past, ending in Chicago in time for the
birth of their first great-grandchild.
As the story unfolds, the four-week adventure turns into the journey of a lifetime. Along the way, his parents, in their own unique style, reminisce about their loves, their losses, and their rich and heartwarming (and sometimes heartbreaking) lives, sharing and arguing, laughing, crying - the bottom line is that family is what truly matters most. Mike Leonard tells a story which resonates with our own lives, with our own family - and he helps us to appreciate the positive influences and subtleties that are passed down from one generation to the next, sometimes without us really noticing.
Although this is a stand-alone book, the journey was originally filmed and shown in four parts on NBC's TODAY SHOW, to a rapturous response. The series ended on a Thursday and on the following Saturday the Weekend TODAY show re-aired all four segments in one program - something that has never occurred before. As Mike says: 'Strangers stop me on the street, telling me how the stories affected them. Nothing in my career has sparked the kind of reaction that was generated by those four brief segments, totalling just 16 minutes. The TV version only scratched the surface of a tale that stretches way beyond the timeline of the journey. 'The Ride Of Our Lives' will tell the full story of how my
parents came to be such characters, dipping back in time to reveal a very Angela's Ashes type of narrative about the struggles and triumphs that shaped their eccentric personalities.'
Film rights have been optioned by Disney.