Ride James Ride!!!

I'd like you to meet James. He's a pretty normal nine year old, but he is on the Autism Spectrum and struggles. After a summer spent at therapy camps and treatment centres, I thought he could use some Dad time, so I asked him what he wanted to do for the last week of summer vacation. James told me he wanted to go and play at Canada's biggest playground in Ottawa. I thought that sounded fun...

Then he told me he wanted to ride his bike there.

From our home to Ottawa is about 450km. I took him for a test ride of about 70km. He did fine. We decided to give it a go. A friend suggested we see if we could fundraise for a local treatment centre along the way, so we opened up a donations page, and after a month of 50 - 70 km practice rides every weekend, off we went.

VIRAL EDIT: Wow folks - thanks for being so kind. Once you finish reading the story here, you can see our arrival in Ottawa on CTV News' site (Sorry to outlink): http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1200409 if you are motivated to help out Grandview you can find their fundraiser here: https://grandviewkids.myetap.org/fundraiser/jamesrides/ but please, no pressure. He's already raised $10,000 and our goal was only $1500.

We were surprised by how many local people wanted to cheer us on before we even left! The mayor came by the house, as did our MP and MPP. There were 3 news interviews and a couple photo shoots! James' autism meant he didn't make a very good media star, but he did his beast not to shut down completely under the pressure of being interviewed with cameras and lights on him.

One news reporter came to our house. Instead of interviewing him, she had James and I pack our bikes for the trip, and then she just interviewed me. I think she understood how hard things can be for a kid like James.

Finally on the day of our sendoff, everyone came to see us leave at a park near home. Clif Bars had heard of us, and they sent a backpack full of snacks! Grandview Childrens Center (our charity) came with a big banner the kids there had made! Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Charles even drove down to see us off! There was a big crowd there! Before we had even left, we had hit our fundraising goal, but as the media shared our story, more people donated. If I weren't a tough Dad, I'd admit that I was overcome by the support we got.

This picture was one we sent home to Mom along the way so she'd know we were OK. Its only about 30km into the ride.

We took breaks along the way wherever we saw a playground. This one is in Bowmanville, I think - just near Bowmanville harbour. There was another Grandview family here playing when we arrived, so I talked with the Dad while James played. Often the town parks had spots to fill our water bottles. That made us happy because cycling 50 - 90 km a day is thirsty business!

On our first night out, we camped in the backyard of a family whose Grand-daughter was another Grandview kid. They were really friendly - and they had ice cream for dessert! We ate a lot of ice cream on this trip. Usually twice a day!

We saw some pretty cool stuff on our bike ride too - like in Cobourg, they have pianos EVERYWHERE! and you can just sit down and play them. We really liked this polar bear piano.

For the first 3-1/2 days of our trip we followed the Waterfront Trail. It was really good. The signs everywhere meant we never even needed a map.

On the second day, we met with James' Scouter - his wife and friends made a bunch of autism puzzle pieces for everyone to pin on, and they rode with us for a while until they got tired, but Scouter Howard stuck with us all day long.

On our second night out we camped at Presqu'ile Provincial Park. When we got there, a bunch of people who had been following our ride on Twitter were waiting for us at the checkin counter... and then they decorated our campsite for us! We got invited to dinner by FOUR different families!

James had fun playing on the beach with all his new friends, and we stayed up too late by the fire eating marshmallows and having fun. The next morning a radio station called us at 6:30 to talk about our ride and how we were doing, and Scouter Howard brought us breakfast!!

Another friend came to ride with us on our longest day of the whole trip... 90 km!!

I don't have any pics from our really long day, but it was a toughy. We went on a trail that was for dritbikes and ATV's, and it actually tore apart the saddle bags (Panniers) so they fell right off my bike. We tied them on with a bungy cord from the side of the road, and carefully biked to the nearest bike shop. There we got fancy new red bags.

There we a lot of cars today too, and hills. James started singing little red wagon to get up the hills. It worked really good.:

You can't ride in my little red wagon,
The Front seat's broken and the axle's saggin!
Chug, Chug, chug a luglug
Second verse, same as the first. A little bit louder and a little bit worse!

At the end of the day, we rode the Glenora ferry and then spent the night camping in another backyard on Hay Bay. We camped next to a super-funky school bus. I'm a little jealous of the bus.

The family we stayed with had a big drum in their house. They taught us how to do Chinese drumming. it was fun.

In the morning we got up early again and rode into Napanee. There we had an interview with the local newspaper (The Napanee Beaver) and then got back on our bikes to keep going. Today we switched from following the Waterfront Trail to following the Cataraqui Trail. Where the waterfront trail had a lot of road miles that were signed, the Cataraqui Trail is a 100 km long rail trail that has everything from chipseal to singletrack and mud pits along it. Today we would ride it from the 100km marker to the town of Sydenham.

As we rode the trail we found stashes of snacks and water bottles that people had left for us under Autism Puzzle pieces. Nothing perks up James like a food cache after a few hours of bike riding!

When the trail got long and tiring or tough, we played Star-Wars, and pretended we were racing speeders. Lucky for us the Emperor never caught us. Or something.

Because the Cataraqui Trail is on an old railbed, there are a bunch of old bridges along it. One even has a sign about a troll - and a logbook you can sign. The bridges are a good spot to look for frogs and fish. We saw a lot of frogs, and some fish. Too bad we didn't have anything to bring one home to Mom in.

When we reached Sydenham, the Kingston Whig, and two other newspapers were there to take pictures and interview us. James had a hard time again, so I answered their questions. We ended up getting a full page in the Kingston paper - right on page 2!!

We stayed with another scouting family in Sydenham. They were really kind to us, and let James sleep in one of their kids' rooms instead of the tent. We had pancakes for breakfast with REAL maple syrup... and ICE CREAM! So crazy! Especially since we had to get up super early in order to get on the trail in time! Today we were riding the rest of the Catarqui trail all the way to Smith's Falls.

The Catarqui trail was one of my favourite parts of our trip. It had beautiful scenery, and often was cut from stone right on the edge of a lake or ravine. It was really nice... but it was also really remote sometimes, so when we found an outhouse... with toilet paper and soap... we were very impressed!

There aren't many towns along the Cataraqui trail, and in some sections there is no cell service either. Finding places to let Mom know we were OK was tough. We left the trail and rode into this town to get a message out. The whole ride was "An experience to remember."

Even though I really liked the whole Cataraqui Trail, the last 30km of it were rough. Much of it was on grass and it was hard to ride over it. And some parts were overgrown with weeds - but mostly it was awesome!

The trail ends at Harvey's Hamburgers, and we were starving. I told James he could have whatever he wanted off the menu - he got chicken fingers and fries and a drink. Then when we left, Uncle Steve met us... Milano's Pizza had heard about our ride and sent us TWO FREE PIZZAS!!! Uncle Steve got us the pizzas and we had that too!

In Smith's Falls we spent the night sleeping at the Old Sly Lock Station on the Rideau Canal. It was a great spot to camp out, and there were some guys there who were kayaking the whole of the Rideau waterways. We had a good visit and then went to bed for the night. I don't have a picture of the Smith's Falls locks, but here's Chaffey's instead.

The next morning we started our final phase of the trip, following the Rideau waterway from Smith's falls to Barrhaven on the edge of Ottawa.

For breakfast we rode into Merrickville and James had a waffle - with berries and whipped cream AND Hot Chocolate! It was a chilly day with really strong wind. A cold, damp uncomfortable day to be out on bikes.

This picture was taken at one of the roughest parts of the trip. Poor James was cold, tired, and hungry. We were climbing up to Ottawa from Smith's Falls, and he just wanted the trip over. It was hard to get him to ride more than 8 km/h, and he had been crying not long before we reached the Ottawa City Limits. I thought this would be a high point for him, but he was miserable.

We rode our bikes to a nearby restaurant and were talking about the trip and how we needed to just keep going when two old guys - maybe farmers - dressed in overalls and work boots overheard us. They started asking James about his ride. About where we had stayed, and about Grandview and the money we raised.

James may have felt uncomfortable answering those questions to a reporter, but these guys made him feel like a star, and by the time we had eaten our lunch, James was good to go again - even bragging about how great he had done. We were so close, and he finally realised how proud he should be of riding so far.

We rode the rest of the way into Barrhaven, singing little red wagon whenever things got tough.

And here we are - crossing the Rideau River on the Veterans' Memorial bridge on our way to Mooney's Bay Park and the Giver Playground. I don't have a lot of pictures from this last day of our trip, because James wouldn't stop long enough for me to take one.

As a Dad, there are very few times I've had as emotrional of a connection with my kids as I did on this day. We flew through Ottawa as if we had wings. Coming down into the park, James was whooping and jumping on his pedals. His feet couldn't pump fast enough.

Mom and Grandma and Grandpa surprised us by being there at the finish when we arrived - I didn't even know that our boss had given Mom time off work to be there. And Uncle Steve was there again!

The City of Ottawa was happy we made it - the Police Tactical squad - and the fire chief (he came with a truckful of firefighters) were there to see us, and we were even tweeted to by the Prime Minister of Canada! James received gifts and praise, but the main thing for him was that three of his friends from when he was tiny had come to play at the park with him.

We started this trip off as a Dad and his boy riding their bikes to the park. It ended up as just that. And it was perfect.

(If you want to follow the nuttiness that was this ride from start to finish, hunt down #RideJamesRide on twitter or Facebook... its all there.)