Books
Snowmobiling Across America - A Fritz Sprandel Adventure
In 1977, a well-known adventurer, Fritz Sprandel decides to travel coast-to-coast on a snowmobile, something which has never been done before. Fritz has never even driven a snowmobile before. Neither has his spotter and mechanic, Ed Kasmerski, who was to drive an uninsulated box truck with his dog, Shannon. Bored with their jobs in a bar, they begin planning, and getting excited about promoting all-American Made Products. As the talk becomes reality, Fritz starts soliciting sponsors. Almost everyone tells him, this trip is impossible to complete and cannot be done. Fortunately, he does find one or two people who take the gamble and Fritz is able to attract some cash and equipment, including a brand-new Scorpion snowmobile. They then decide to start on the West Coast, in Westport, Washington and travel East, ending in Eastport, Maine. The little planning they did was on the back of a napkin from the bar where they both worked at the time. Some key planning information was missing. For example, missing was the fact that Westport, Washington never gets snow, only rain. Something else that was missing was maps and any awareness that some places—like suspension bridges—didn’t allow snowmobiles to cross. They were going to wing it.
What could go wrong?
What they did have was a lot of nerve, a spirit of adventure, the certainty that anything that went wrong they could fix, and everything would turn out okay in the end. Not only was it OK but, They actually did set a new world record. SNOWMOBILING ACROSS AMERICA: A FRITZ SPRANDEL ADVENTURE, tells the story of Fritz’s and Ed’s record making feat and what happened next.
Finding Fritz: The Heart of an Adventurer is the eagerly awaited sequel to Adventure on a Dare.
Fritz Sprandel made history with his canoe trip down the east coast of the United States and this journey, culminating in his arrest and incarceration in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, is detailed in Adventure on a Dare. Finding Fritz is about Fritz’s subsequent adventures, hitchhiking, riding solo in canoes and a snowmobile over uncharted territory, across country, and into the record books. These are exploits most people only dream of, and Fritz telling the tales makes for great fun, vicarious reading.
But what makes Finding Fritz distinct from other adventure books is the rest of the story, what happened when Fritz hung up his sneakers and the cheering crowds went home. A chance encounter with Doug Kemmerer, the son of one of his old benefactors, causes Fritz to both revisit his glory days as well as reflect on a life lived pointing forward. As Fritz says, “A canoe can only go in one direction. I think that’s why I liked it. You can’t go back.”
But when Doug convinces Fritz to partner with him to make a documentary of Fritz’s adventuresome life, the past comes barreling in. Old friends who abetted his journeys, as well as people he met along the way and forgotten, come forward to testify about the lasting influence he has had on their life just by being himself. There are bittersweet moments too. His dance with, and eventual conquering of, alcohol addiction is relatable in his re-telling as is his rocky relationship with his family. You can’t go off for months at a time leaving your wife and child behind and expect them to be there when you get back. And then the unexpectedly sweet happens: his son, who is now grown up with sons of his own, contacts him after 40 odd years.
Finding Fritz is an unusual and candid look at an American folk hero and adventurer finding meaning in his extraordinary life, culminating in planning, at the age of 80, his next big adventure.
Adventure On A Dare
Adventure on a DARE is the first in a series of true-life accounts describing Fritz T. Sprandel's journey into himself in which he discovers his capricious nature and raises questions about the nature of faith.
During the course of his adventure, Fritz visits a variety of natural wonders, small towns, and fascinating people on a budget of ten cents and his own amazing resourcefulness. After over-coming the challenges of the wild, he finds himself in a foreign country, falsely charged with espionage. Then he faces, and incredibly survives relatively unscathed, a revolutionary tribunal trial in Castro's Cuba.
The people he meets, the experiences he encounters, and the lessons he learns all become part of him. They form steps in his journey to meaning, although it's a voyage that contains a deeper significance he doesn't fully comprehend while he's traveling.
