Rick Steelhammer is the author of West Virginia Curiosities (Globe Pequot Press). During his more than thirty years as a reporter and feature writer for The Charleston Gazette, he has traveled by car, plane, helicopter, raft, towboat, canoe, kayak, train, speeder car, horse, skis, snowshoes, snowmobile, ATV, mountain bike, zipline, and on foot to file stories from all corners and both panhandles of West Virginia. Steelhammer also writes a weekly humor column for the Sunday Gazette-Mail, which the National Society of Newspaper Columnists once judged to be the second-best in the nation among large-circulation newspapers.