Joseph Pucci

Joseph Pucci was born and raised in the New York City in the borough of the Bronx. The youngest of four siblings, separated by seven years to his next oldest brother, he grew up essentially an only child. He was well suited for this, even as a young child, he was a loner in many respects. Preferring, often to observe the world around him, rather than participate in it. He often spent months at a time developing imaginary worlds with an array of characters. Within those imaginary worlds, adventures sprung to life, filling his days and nights with wonder for what would happen next in those worlds.

He had few close friends growing up, but was always well liked and many would say had a naturally charismatic personality, that exuded leadership qualities. In public, some would even mistake his temperament for outgoing. This was far from the truth, as he was never comfortable around people and explained this conundrum to simply be his public persona. This might explain his gravitation to the sport of bicycling. He has said, “Cycling not only invigorates the body, but it clears my mind and fills it with fresh solutions and ideas. Whether on my road bike, gliding through the streets and speeding around curves or on my mountain bike, navigating the woods, rocks and dirt, it always lifts my spirits.”

His school years were difficult as he suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia. As is often the case with dyslexia, Joseph excelled at exploring all things mechanical, while ferreting out the inner patterns which laid hidden to others. His first car was more a vehicle for learning, than a vehicle for traveling. The result, a transformation of a street car into muscle car.

It wasn’t until he began college that an English professor at LaGuardia Community College, where

Joseph was studying Computer Programming, that his dyslexia was identified. Discouraged by this news, but undaunted, he increased his efforts.

It was not long after this discovery of his dyslexia that he was stricken with walking pneumonia. He had stretched himself too thin. Going to college, while holding down a full-time job and running his own Automotive Alarm Installation business, had taken its toll. At the age of twenty-one, his right lung filled with fluid and collapsed. This should have been a wakeup call, but youth often blinds you to mortality. After three hours of writhing in pain on his couch, the lung re-inflated on its own, but this reprieve would not last and his refusal to heed to his condition would alter the path of his life forever.

Soon his coughing would become continuous, preventing him from holding food down and sleeping. Three weeks after the searing pain of the collapsed lung, he would find himself at two doors. The first was the doors of Saint Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. The other was deaths door. He had lost over fifty pounds and passed out moments after being admitted at the ER. The admitting doctor later commented after seeing Joseph’s chest x-rays, “It astonishing he was walking at all!” He remained in the hospital for three weeks, while demanding of his then, first wife, that nobody but his business partner know of his condition. After his release from the hospital he could no longer keep his illness a complete secrete. He informed his parents that he had been sick, but not of the graveness of his condition.

It took another eight months to recover enough that he could return to his job at the bank at Two World Trade Center in Manhattan. After only two weeks he was let go with a generous severance package, with a year extension of his health insurance and salary for the next six months. Reality was finally setting in that he needed to reassess his decisions. With nothing but time on his hands and no job, he was forced to take incompletes in all his classes. Physical strength still absence from his body, he closed of his Automotive Alarm Business and pondered his path forward.

The Early Years

Like a forest after a fire, new life would spring forth. After six months of contemplation, he decided this was an opportunity to start over. He would not return to college, but instead would attend a technical school to study electrical theory and computer hardware. This landed him a job in a large tech firm in New York City as a field rep. After one year he was quickly promoted and collected many accolades in the years to come. But, he felt his life was still incomplete. While trying to find what would make him feel complete, he would change many things in his life; his marital status, his home, friends and hobbies.

Now at the age of thirty-two, he again found himself in the midst of transformation. He had found something he had somehow lost, his passion for bicycling. Instead of returning to road riding, mountain biking became his obsession. So much so, that he became very knowledgeable in everything having to do with the activity. In the early days of the internet, before Google, finding information was like an Easter egg hunt, if you got lucky you might find what you were looking for and it might be accurate. Joseph assembled his own website to share what he had learned and found, which in turn led to an offer to write content for a startup company who had a novel idea. A digital magazine that presented articles about product reviews, advice and information on a variety of subjects. Joseph saw it as the perfect opportunity to share his passion, but was unsure whether he could due to his dyslexia. After reassurances by his girlfriend, decided it was a risk worth taking. From 1996 to 2000, he was the Contributing Editor for Mountain Biking at Suite 101.com. Towards the later part of his tenure he discovered an appetite for writing fiction. It took another ten years and persuasion by his wife Diana, that he should and could document the numerous stories he shared with her.

If you'd like to see Joseph's latest project and planned release dates, go to http://www.josephpucci.com