35 concerts. 17,000 motorcycle miles. Three months. One lifetime. Now in paperback In May 2015, the veteran Canadian rock trio Rush embarked on their 40th anniversary tour, R40 . For the band and their fans, R40 was a celebration and, perhaps, a farewell. But for Neil Peart, each tour is more than just a string of concerts, it’s an opportunity to explore backroads near and far on his BMW motorcycle. So if this was to be the last tour and the last great adventure, he decided it would have to be the best one, onstage and off. This third volume in Peart’s illustrated travel series shares all-new tales that transport the reader across North America and through memories of 50 years of playing drums. From the scenic grandeur of the American West to a peaceful lake in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains to the mean streets of Midtown Los Angeles, each story is shared in an intimate narrative voice that has won the hearts of many readers. Richly illustrated, thoughtful, and ever-engaging, Far and Wide is an elegant scrapbook of people and places, music and laughter, from a fascinating road — and a remarkable life. “The art he draws with his young daughter is heartwarming; his refusal to bend for a Rolling Stone photographer is hilarious … Rush fans feeling nostalgic about the end of the band’s touring days will likely enjoy the ride.” — Publishers Weekly “No surprise about Neil being a gifted writer after all the amazing Rush lyrics that he’s written, but the pictures really put his books on the ‘must have’ list.” — WNCX Cleveland 35 concerts. 17,000 motorcycle miles. Three months. One lifetime. Now in paperback In May 2015, the veteran Canadian rock trio Rush embarked on their 40th anniversary tour,  R40 . For the band and their fans,  R40  was a celebration and, perhaps, a farewell. But for Neil Peart, each tour is more than just a string of concerts, it’s an opportunity to explore backroads near and far on his BMW motorcycle. So if this was to be the last tour and the last great adventure, he decided it would have to be the best one, onstage and off. This third volume in Peart’s illustrated travel series shares all-new tales that transport the reader across North America and through memories of 50 years of playing drums. From the scenic grandeur of the American West to a peaceful lake in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains to the mean streets of Midtown Los Angeles, each story is shared in an intimate narrative voice that has won the hearts of many readers. Richly illustrated, thoughtful, and ever-engaging,  Far and Wide  is an elegant scrapbook of people and places, music and laughter, from a fascinating road — and a remarkable life. Neil Peart was the drummer and lyricist of the legendary rock band Rush and the author of Ghost Rider , The Masked Rider , Traveling Music , Roadshow , Far and Away , Far and Near , and, with Kevin J. Anderson, Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives . “Begin as you mean to go on” is an old English expression that comments amusingly on this photograph. I am poised to go onstage to start the second set of a show on the Rush fortieth anniversary tour, R40 , in the summer of 2015. The glowing lights at my waist are the radio pack that drives my in-ear monitors, which will fill my head with musical information and consume my “interior world” for the next ninety minutes or so. The blazing lights ahead of me are an arena filled with something like ten thousand people. The heat and light of their joyous excitement is an utter contrast to my cold fire of determination and will—as it should be. It is my job to reward their anticipation—to be all they expect and more. Beginning as I would go on, my energy is tightly coiled in anticipation of that challenge before me. Even the first song in that second set, “Tom Sawyer,” remained a mental and physical ordeal after thirty-five years and thousands of performances. In the reverse-chronology setlist we followed for that tour, each song led back in time, album to album, year to year. Thus I would have to replicate drum parts conceived and executed when I was a child —barely into my twenties. As a harsh-but-fair critic (like myself) might describe how I played the drums back then: “More energy than skill; more ideas than technique; more influences than originality; more enthusiasm than accuracy.” Since then, with the benefit of many years of practice, dedication, and the guidance of three phenomenal teachers—Don George, Freddie Gruber, and Peter Erskine—I have balanced those scales a little, at least. And at almost sixty-three years of age, I was glad I could still do all that—bring the energy and enthusiasm of my twenties to the somewhat improved technique and accuracy of maturity. But . . . it was a battle—a battle against time , in more than one sense. Another edge to that waiting-offstage mindset was a visceral awareness that so much can go wrong, human and technical, in one’s immediate future. And in front of a lot of