Reason for the bike trip

Zoe asked why I did the bike trip.  After I told her, and we both stopped tearing up, she mentioned if I put it online, she could repost it in one of her building community'' posts.

Here it is- well part of it anyway:

At my Zaidah's funeral, someone told a story about my Zaidah, Harold Speevak, and bikes.  There was a man who lived in my Zaidah's neighbourhood named George Cohen, who did all of his errands on his bicycle. When my Zaidah was about 19 years old, and George in his 20s, George lost his eyesight.  My Zaida bought a tandem bike so he could take George on all of his errands and the man could still bike.  I thought that was so admirable and spoke to some of the character traits I love about my Zaidah.  He was such a great role model.

I decided that learning about bike maintenance and becoming more dependant on my bike was something I could do to feel close to Zaidah and also be a reminder to try to be as giving as he was.

I like sports and adventure and camping.  Those are enough reasons to want to bike across Canada.  I also thought it was a fun way of getting in better shape in case the fire department hires me, but I wanted to do a bicycle touring trip because of this story.

An extra tidbit to this story is that my Gramma remembers, before knowing my Zaidah, having seen George every morning take his guide dog onto the street car she rode to work.