The Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra

My bike and I - ready for the road!

Ever since my family moved to Canada I’ve wanted to travel across the country. So when my awesome sister-in-law Sara and her fiance Lindsey invited me to their wedding in Saskatoon I thought this was a great chance to do it. Over the past couple years I’ve been doing a lot of long-distance cycling, and also running an occassional bike-salvage, repair, and give-away racket from my back porch. So I think I’m physically ready for the ride and know enough about bike repair to get there.

I think it’s right to combine this opportunity for me to do what I’ve always wanted to do with raising a little bit of money for these guys:

Because they’re a secular, apolitical organization that consistently does really great work. Some people think biking a long way is somehow heroic. It’s not: it’s a lot of fun and some hard work. But it’s also fundamentally self-indulgent. So I’ve set up this PayPal donate button to raise money for Doctors Without Borders and I hope you’ll drop a bit of money into it to help people who are doing something genuinely heroic:

…or you can donate at the Doctors Without Borders Website (where they can send you a tax receipt for your donation).

Here’s the route I’m taking:

Starting from Toronto I’ll be going northwest and taking the ferry to Manitoulin Island, and crossing to the north shore of Lake Huron. Then I’ll be following the curve of Lake Superior to Manitoba. From there it’s straight west to Winnipeg and then northwest to Sastaktoon. It’s about 2600 km in all.

As often as I have a chance I’ll be writing about the trip and uploading pictures to my blog. So come back and visit!

If you’d like, you can contact me by posting a comment at the bottom of this page or by sending an email to (ben@parkdalerevolutionaryorchestra.com).

Ben