A bus driver. I was always impressed by these guys because if my car-less family went anywhere, it was by bus. I was always interested enough in grades 1-5 to sit upfront where I could see the drivers and their routines. In my only-child fantasy life, I would pretend to be a bus driver and ride my mother’s bike, making stops, pretending to have a route of my own. (As a paperboy, incidentally, I eventually fulfilled one of the bus driver dreams, acquiring a belt-attached coin changer for collecting on my route.)
One of the most interesting bike trips I ever made was with my mother from St. James, Wpg. to East Selkirk, MB one weekend in grade 7 after I finally got my own bike (a three-speed gift out of the blue from my grandmother as a graduation/start of summer present). I mapped out our route via a city map, taking main streets across town to the north end before connecting with Main Street and the highway north to Selkirk. (We did not travel on Portage Ave.)
We left around 5 and got to Selkirk around 9 before crossing the Red River bridge in the dark to the dusty stone road to East Selkirk several miles away. Dangerous to say the least, being passed by cars kicking up stones in the darkness, but the journey kept us going. (My fit mother was in her thirties and had probably worked that day earlier. I had energy, but she was given quite the workout on her old bike which clicked as it was pedalled.) We made it by 10 and phoned home to my Dad who was shocked that we had made it, We stayed at my mother’s sister’s place Saturday, then started back early on Sunday, getting home around supper time.
My mother at seventy, after my father’s death, could be equally audacious, riding by herself on #1 out to Portage la Prairie, 55 miles out of Wpg. one day on a bicycle, cars whizzing by her. A whim of some kind resembling my earlier childhood whim to go see my cousins in East Selkirk, to see if such a thing could be accomplished on bike despite the many miles. Her feat, though, was accomplished in one day so hers was the far more nuttily remarkable.
These days, at almost 70, I confine my rides to the neighborhood and know my limits unlike my mother who often put herself in risky situations throughout her life. Of that, more in another blog entry down the road.
Going back to Winnipeg last summer, I shook my head to recall such unique boldness and determination in making such unsafe, unconventional, daredevil trips.