It's about time...

YOUR time.



As far as I know, I'm only going to live this once.  When you think of the BIG picture, you know what I am talking about, if you can look beyond today, the kid's screaming, you car getting towed, or the T.V. all of a sudden going "Fffffft..." it all goes by so fast.  When you're a teen, you think you're going to live forever that you are Invincible as the movie line goes.  Sadly you are not.  I often say to people, friends and strangers alike, if you can live to 50... anything beyond that is a bonus.  After all, you could die from dozens of diseases, accidents, drive by shootings, that fish bone stuck in your throat, all kinds of things. 

Take me for example, at 17, while riding back from Fort Mac on my then new Suzuki T 350 Rebel, I was hit by a station wagon full of Plamondon's, going in the opposite direction on a very dusty gravel road, the 18 year old daughter attempting a pass of a car which just a second ago went by me creating this massive dust cloud.  As was my custom, I was hugging the right tire track, had I been 5 feet to the left or even a foot, I would have been a very dead grill ornament!  As it was we just squeezed by one another at a closing speed I'd guess to be close on 100 mph.  What the net result was, a broken finger smashed up foot and kneecap and some stitches on my back.  Oh of course a smashed bike. Could have been worse, could have been dead, and you wouldn't be reading my wit and charm today...

That's only one very close call, there were more during the years including two heart attacks 6 months apart, the second one nearly got me.

I don't dwell on such things, I don't listen to doomsayers telling me the world is going to end tomorrow at 4 17 Atlantic time,  three hours later in Edmonton. I mean what's the point?  I'm writing this while at my home in the USA, Donald Trump just made a mockery of the US Presidential elections, burying first one then all of the Republican competition(?) and then Hillary Clinton in a major upset.  Nobody took him seriously, the hair, the Apprentice ("you're fired!!) the arrogant attitude, yet here it is, the 45th President of the most powerful nation on earth.  I bet 'Arnie' is wishing he could have been born in the USA... Trump wasing sitting twiddling his thumbs (well maybe he was I don't know)

All these events are bigger than I am.  In the space of time, we as humans singly or even collectively live for what... a brief grain of sand in all the grains of sand in the Universe...

So, if we get 50 or 70 or even 90 years on the planet (see above) what are we doing with it and by it I mean your life?

I used to watch a documentary television program hosted by Clive Cussler. Regardless of what you think of him as a writer you can't argue with the fact that his books have been published in the multi millions.  The show he hosted was called "The Sea Hunter's"  It featured several people that were based in Canada.  It's a well known fact that Cussler has an affinity with the world's oceans and anything nautical as many of his books illustrate.  I myself while having a bite to eat at Berthe's cafe on Bahia Conception, have read some of Dirk Pitts adventures as he and NOAA battle the goons and come out smiling.  Anyway... one of the things I like about the show was the few minutes before the news cast, Cussler himself comes on camera and invites the watcher to 'get up off the couch and find something adventurous to do themselves.'

Now I was riding my small two strokes like the aforementioned Suzuki long before I knew who Dirk or Clive were, in fact some of my earliest adventure were by pedal bike like traveling 15 miles to fish the Sturgeon river outside St Albert Alberta.  As I got bolder and had a motor in the frame, small at first but gradually getting bigger I took on more challenges and now decades later, I'm still doing that.

Clive had it right when he urged the watcher to do something they would look back on as the lights were fading and go out with a smile on their lips.

That's what I hope to do, go out with a smile, but not yet!  :)

SO, here I sit at my little desk 5000 km from (my other)

home in a foreign country (yes ma dear, the USA actually IS a foreign country) riding an old old cooled Yamaha in the mountains, in the valleys, in the desert, racking up not just miles and smiles but memories.



I urge everyone to do the same.  You don't have to claw your way 6000' up a switch-backing mountain trail to Crown King, or even travel to Arizona at all. There must be something you would love to do but have always been too chicken to try, well I'm saying scope it out, plan it, talk to yourself about it and just (like SkiDoo says) just do it!