Book excerpt: Riding With the Big Boys is a real-life account of an aspiring novelist trying to support his family by driving an eighteen-wheeler across the country, while waiting for publishers' response to his first U.S. novel. It is written in the shape of a diary, as a mixture of daily duties, falling hopes, financial stress, and panoramic sceneries shifting one after another, from Big Planes to the Rockies, from Newark Airport to Columbia River. It also reveals the parallel world of one of America's most impressive sub-societies, the life of the Big Boys - long distance truckers who spend the best years of their lives living inside their "sleepers."