King of the Road: True Tales from a Legendary Ice Road Trucker
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"Nighttime is when truckers get talkative. It's lonely out here. Guys get on the radio and start telling each other stories. They're like little kids in a bunkhouse after the adults have put out the lights. Everybody is keeping each other company. I'm one of the most devoted storytellers on the ice road, and I'll keep the other truckers entertained for hours. I used to think that I should write down my life story one day—because I've had so many scrapes and almost been killed so many times that I can't believe I'm still here. I'm sure the other truckers would enjoy hearing about some of my hair-raising adventures. There are so many stories that I hardly know where to begin. But I guess the best way is to just imagine that it's nighttime and we're rolling along on the ice road. The headlights are poking through the darkness. The heater is purring away. I've got a hot cup of coffee in my hand, and I'm going to start where all stories start—at the beginning." If you ask Alex Debogorski how he made it from Alberta farm boy to star of Ice Road Truckers, he won't tell you a long story. He'll tell you dozens of wild, hair-raising tales that make you realize he's not lucky to be on TV—he's lucky to be alive. Working-class hero and bona-fide celebrity, Alex takes you for a ride through his lifetime of adventures in King of the Road. He's been stabbed and burned, hit by a train, run over by a truck the size of a house; he's broken his nose eight times and almost frozen to death. Before a harrowing career driving across frozen lakes, Alex tried his hand at everything from club bouncer and taxi driver to coal miner and oil rigger. When he wasn't working, young Alex was either trick driving one of a string of beat-up junkers or pulling off some outlandish prank with his buddies or chasing thirty bears at the town dump. Alex tells the breathtaking story of his epic battle with a Ford Bronco whose driver seemed bent on turning him into a hood ornament and reveals how a guy he nearly drowned in a bathtub got his revenge. Alex could never leave behind a damsel in distress and tells the tale of how he helped a girl escape from the back of a speeding car—in true Hollywood style—without stopping. Before you think these are tall tales, Alex's friends and family drop in to give their own versions of some of his most outrageous stories. Finally, Alex spins amazing yarns from his twenty-two years as an ice road trucker, both in Canada and Alaska. You'll find out how he saved a rookie driver who was trapped inside a wrecked truck as diesel fuel poured from its ruptured tank, how a road grader almost crushed him to death, and why he's still here to tell the tale. You'll never meet a trucker with more amazing stories to tell than Alex Debogorski, and you'll never find a book more packed with them than King of the Road.
Acknowledgments. Prologue. 1 Early Days. 2 The Open Road Beckons. 3 TimetoGrowUp. 4 Life Is a Cabaret. 5 A Driven Man. 6 Into the Kingdom of Ice. 7 Hollywood Comes to Town. Credits.
