once I got my Eaton’s CCM bicycle as a birthday present going into grade 5 in 1960. No longer did I have to depend on my mother’s old bike with the hitch in every revolution. I had paid my dues until then!
That was the year (in the fall described earlier in the blog) when, amazingly, my mother and I cycled across town, then rode on the gravel beside the highway out to (West) Selkirk, then on a dust-cloud gravel road to East Selkirk–a total of about 40-45 mi. each way on a weekend.
One noon-hour on a school day, I pedalled a total of 4-5 miles in an hour to the old Winnipeg Arena (from Wallasey St. to Polo Park) in order to buy a ticket for myself to see for an exhibition game between the Montreal Maroons and the Russians. I got back just in time for afternoon classes. That is the sort of thing I did when I was young, pushing my imaginings and conceptions into reality.