YAOGBB

There are people who ride bikes because they like to ride bikes and there are people who ride bikes because they like to go fast.  I  fall into both categories, but as I grow older, I am leaning more to the former.   Go fast bike riders will sooner or later find themselves on the race track.  Back when I was more of  a go fast kind of guy I did a bit of road racing, racing on a paved track with left and right turns.   Not much needs to be said about my not so illustrious racing career other than I  never earned a kiss from the trophy girl.   The one thing that always stay with me though, is that it was the most intense fun I ever had on a bike, and perhaps off one as well.  Oh, one other thing, I never wrecked more bikes and bike parts racing than before or since. Mercifully for my bank account and bikes, my career was cut short by having all the nearby tracks made sacrificial offerings to the great god Urban Sprawl....

The North Saskatchewan River flows through the center of the Edmonton Alberta.  The entire river front and most of the river valley in the city is park.  Edmontonians, including me, spend a lot of time watching the waters of the North Saskatchewan flow eastward.  I would take my boys down to one of the many parks bordering the river, and whenever we threw sticks and stuff into the water, the boys wanted to know where it would end up.  I alway said it was going to Hudson Bay.  The North Saskatchewan was once the original Trans Canada Highway for the Hudson's Bay Company's fur traders. Few Canadians have stood on the shore of Hudson Bay. It is a defining feature of our Country.  A vast inland sea that covers more than 10% of Canada.   I wanted to see  Hudson Bay for myself after throwing all those sticks in the river.  I had considered doing it the old way, paddling all the way in some kind of boat or canoe, but my preferred method of t...