I've had a very long riding career, built a house, became a financial advisor for many years and even having my Freedom Cycle business for a decade.
Unlike many, I didn't take a few years off to raise kids, or have a job that tied me down. Including my 10 year stint and 20 years in total in the industry I pretty much did what I wanted to.
I've done virtually every type of riding including water craft, snowmobiles, ATV... racing MX or ice ovals or riding one of many trials bikes I've had through the decades.
I was doing "Adventure" travels long before anyone coined that name.
I've ridden a YSR 50 from PEI to T.O. for the '89 Yamaha dealer show, my DT 50 around fire ravaged British Columbia and again Baja California.
Eight years ago, I sold up in Calgary and moved back to P.E.I. to kinda retire.
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| Crossing the Tropic of Cancer |
I lived on the Island during the '80's and through my Freedom Cycle shop first in Summerside then Charlottetown and finally Riverview (Moncton), sold thousands of above named vehicles.
Seems every time I'm at Canadian Tire, some restaurant, or the bike shops, I run into someone that was a customer back then.
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| Roadside break and stretch. |
There is always a conversation about those days and never have I been accused of "ripping someone off" or treating someone badly, nope... just lots of great memories for a lot of people.
When getting my driveway worked on the equipment operator, who had been a customer, told me I was the "Father" of motorcycling on the Island. Lofty praise indeed.
The other day while stopped for a lunch in Borden, I met somebody again. He was a young guy back in the day and the first bike they'd bought from me was a YZ80... yes I was into building MX tracks back then too. He told me that he had read several of my riding story's printed in various magazines over the years and always had a good memory of his own reading about my current adventure.
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| Twenty four hours before taking this photo you could not pass due to high, fast water. |
After a brief chat while Brenda (who's used to this by now) smiled patiently, we talked about memories for half an hour in the restaurant. As we were yakking he asked me an unusual question. In the fast moving conversation I shelved it but on the drive home (it is winter here) I thought about his question to me.
He asked me, very nonchalantly, what my most favorite ride was?
Now if you are a motorcyclist or an owner of an ATV or sled... you know that if you asked yourself such a question you'd likely have a bugger of a time to answer it to yourself much less someone else.
His ? left me scratching my graying head.
Since that day several weeks ago, it's popped into my conscious mind a number of times.
I think I have an answer.
Now before I share it with you, let me say this... in 53 years I have done amazing things, went to amazing places, met amazing people, have amazing memories. Picking one is nearly impossible.
But I'm going to take you back to what was a brutal winter in southern AB. I was working at BOW Cycle in Bowness (Calgary), a long time family motorcycle business. I sold machines, did all the advertising and recovered tens of thousands in Co-op dollars, and organized rides for customers.
It was January 1998. At that time I was living with a woman I'd known since high school. Originally when I set up the National Motorcycle Training Program, she was one of my first students. Deb had talked about her previous trips to Mexico and I had always had a hankering to ride the Baja peninsula. We had flexible jobs so...
I had 2 Yamaha XT 600 E model motorcycles at the time (I also had twin YSR 50's 1 each TY trials Yamaha a 250 and 175 and two XT 225's) in my large garage. The 600's were rare bikes, only imported into Canada as 1990 Models. We planned a drive in my propane powered Dodge van, XT's in the back. Once the bucket mid seats and rear bench bed were stored in the garage, we headed south to Mexico. Specifically Baja CA.
You see Deb's Mum had a part time home in Surprise AZ. We would drive up and down for 3 days over the Rockies several times through Montana, Idaho, Utah... into Nevada and finally arrived at Nadia's place in AZ.
Plan was to take a few days to sort the bikes and luggage since Alberta was in deep freeze and we weren't able to do it at home.
We were going to ride from Surprise via as many back roads as we could find like Old US 80, eventually passing over what amounted to a trickle of the Colorado river and into the fabled Baja peninsula.
We planned 6 weeks riding leisurely to Cabo San Lucas returning to Phx only after a short stop over in Hollywood to visit her sister.
We'd ride Baja's route 1 right down to desert tracks, some still with SCORE Baja race markets still intact. There was no camping in the plan just exploring and stopping at hotels and motels and hostales.
I can't tell you here everything on the trip but suffice to say we did nearly 7000 km, including lane splitting in California.
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| Jose's family lived in the desert and provided coffee and simple food from their homes on the roadside. He wanted to come to Canada, wonder if he ever made it? |
One of my toughest problems has always been to find someone to ride with. Not everyone could take 2 months off work and ride thousands of kilometers in beautiful scenery, braving harsh sand tracks, steep rocky climbs and L.A. traffic on the return, but we did it. Deb was brave, falling down once or twice (me too) and her riding skill level definitely moved up the scale during that trip.
That ride was pre digital age so photos are rare but I'll hunt my photo albums and boxes and see what I can show you.
What I can say is, going back to my encounter with that old friend, got me thinking and, all I can say is in tens of thousands of miles riding motorcycles has been not only the highlight of my life... but it's been my life.
Okay... I often encourage people I meet to cross the ordinary and enter into the extraordinary. I encourage everyone to take a chance. Live a life worth living. There's still time.
One last thing, we were detained at the Sweetgrass Alberta border on our return, while two Cdn border agents (a man and a woman) went through every suitcase, under every seat, our gear... looking for contraband or drugs. They seemed completely baffled by our having taken the time off to do that first (out of a dozen) Baja trips and easily the most memorable. Like I said to the woman in answer to her question as to how two forty somethings could take that time off work and head south to ride motorcycles...
"I do this now because at 65, I may not be able to..."
Sorry about the quality of the photos. They were taken with disposable camera in 1998 and have lived their lives in an album,
