Robert says that access to the internet is difficult to find at times but he will do his best to keep us updated. His most recent report is below. For a day-to-day update of the ride from start to finish click here.
August 8th
We left Dryden at 9:00AM as we had scheduled. The distance to Winnipeg is just under 350kms. My sister Shelley wanted to experience the ride on the bike and was my passenger for 3 hours. She enjoyed seeing the country side from a motorcycle perspective. Who knows, she may purchase a motorcycle and we could have all my siblings take a motorcycle trip together.
We took a rest stop in Kenora that took much longer than expected. Again the scenery was impressive. We saw our first buffalos en route to Winnipeg. These buffalos were waiting to become buffalo burgers as per the road-side sign. We still have not seen other any large wild life on this trip!
We finally reached the Ontario/Manitoba border at 11:50am. We took many pictures at this border and couldn’t believe we were finally out of Ontario.
Shelley came back into the chase vehicle and Jacob got back on the bike as we made our way into downtown Winnipeg. We reached City Hall at 1:59pm, one minute ahead of our planned arrival time. Nice job. The media was already in place and filmed our arrival to City Hall.
The Lions Eye Bank of Manitoba and Northwest Ontario, Transplant Manitoba, Gift of Life organization, The Kidney foundation and the Manager of Protocol from City Hall were waiting out front for our arrival. It is a great feeling to see all the hard work that the team has put into planning the ride come together. This was a very nice welcoming!
We met with Councilor Jeff Browaty and he was very gracious in his introduction. Marilyn & I outlined the ride and its mission to the assembled cameras and then we gave our individual speeches. Jacob also did an interview with CTV. Winnipeg is a much bigger city than I thought with a nice mix of new and old buildings.
The Lions Eye Bank, part of the Lions Foundation generously offered to lead us to a hotel and paid for our accommodations. That was a very nice surprise and helps us a great deal. We all went for a swim to relax and Abbey conquered her fear of the waterslide. Then it was a battle to get her to leave.
This was Shelley’s last night as part of the chase-driver crew. She flies back to Toronto tomorrow…we will miss her! It has been a great bonding time for our children to spend some time with their aunt. Carolyn will be the sole driver until we reach Regina. We went out for supper and recounted the adventures on this leg of the ride.
Tomorrow the team heads to Brandon MB, where we will be greeted by our good friends Charlene and John. There will be many more opportunities ahead to talk about our ride message.
Thanks for all your E-Mails, your encouragement energizes us. I will try to answer them all. Robert Crawford.
E-mail Robert.
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