Member Bio: "2Bike" Mike McKinnon

It has taken me 60 years to get here from there. I was born in the north-eastern New Brunswick town of Campbelton, but shortly thereafter moved to Grammie's house in a smaller east coast village of Jacquet River NB about 40 miles south of Campbelton. It is all country there on the NB coast. Summers were nice but the winters were harsh with huge snowfalls, kinda like they have had the last couple of years but more. There wasn't much there, but at the time it was our whole world. All we had was a battery operated radio for music. One day I asked how the man talking in the box could be so small and why he never came out. I was told he was actually 16 miles away down the road, and that created a life long quest to figure out how that could be true.

Kinda like Little House On The Prairie, the school was a mile away. Guess what? There were no school buses out there. Didn't even know they existed. I walked to school each day both ways summer and winter along the side of a rural highway #11 at the time. When my sister turned six we went together hand-in-hand. Mom said I had to take care of her. When I turned nine, mom said we were moving away and going on a long train ride. What seemed to take forever (about 18 hours with all the stops) was a long ride to Montreal. In '59, trains were not as fast as today. As we approached Montreal I could not believe my eyes at the size of buildings I could see.

Getting out of the train station there were so many streets, cars and really stinky diesel buses. Smog was not talked about back then, but for a nine year old that spent all nine in the clean country air, I was sick for a couple of weeks from the smells.

A life very different from what I knew grew out of that move. Back in Jacquet River, every so often there was a small silver glitter in the blue skies and sometimes a white line followed behind it. I was told they were airplanes. I could not imagine what that was until we got to Ville St Pierre where we lived in an apartment that was only 5 miles from Dorval airport and I got to see an airplane fly over the house at about 4000 feet on approach to land. I was in awe of this huge hunk of metal that glided through the air and didn't fall down. This created a second quest in me to figure out why it didn't fall from the sky.

So the two quests shaped my interests in school to get to the bottom of these anomalies. After getting past all the formal primary school stuff I got to some interesting high school classes like physics that began to form a plan on how I would figure out radio and eventual television that I saw for the first time about 1964. Finally got to go to college and learned electricity & electronics. I finally knew how radio worked. Then in later years after working a few years at Northern Electric (that's what Northern Telecom was called in the old days), I went back to night college to learn digital logic technology and computer systems. That got me into several series of jobs in manufacturing of power supplies for mainframe computers and then the mini and micro computers were born to change the world as we knew it.

In there about 1973 I got married at the ripe age of 21. Two years later I was a dad. Oh those years of toil and trouble to make ends meet. Keep this dad part in mind for later. In 1984 I was recruited to move to Brampton to work again for Northern Electric, now as a manager of a field return group of 35 people repairing and updating telecom equipment installed all over the world. Yeah, that was the good old days also in the telecom business. Two years into that I found an opportunity to work for deHavilland Aircraft in engineering. Well I figured I was going to find out why those aircraft didn't fall out of the sky now. I was there four years doing electrical work on aircraft systems but didn't find out why they can fly. 1990 another opportunity came up in where else, Montreal again at Canadair where they were going to develop a new aircraft called a regional jet. So, off I went again to the new adventure. Two years in designing electrical and avionic integration stuff I noticed a flyer on a board next to an elevator one day that said, "Join the Canadair flying club and we'll pay 75% of your flight training". Well you know by now what was going through my mind. Right, I am going to become a pilot and learn why aircraft don't fall out of the sky. Well I did it and I found out and it was an enormous rush every time I pulled back on that stick and the hunk of metal took to the air and I could control it back to the ground safely. There is another long story about all the training that will need to wait for another time, or just ask me about it some time when we are out somewhere at lunch or supper on a ride.

One day my daughter said to me, "So dad, now what are you going to do with your life after all you've done and become a pilot?" Just then a motorcycle went by us and I just blurted, maybe I'll get a motorcycle. Yeah, she said, as she had heard me say for years how dangerous they were as I was frightened to crap when I was in high school on the back of one and that was it for me. Well not two weeks later a flyer was on the cabinet in the kitchen at work. Motorcycle for sale, $1200.00 with a pic of a 1983 Yamaha Maxim on it. I figured this was a sign so I called the girl's number on the post. She rode it to my house from the east end of Montreal to the west end of the island and parked it in the driveway. "You wanna try it?", she said. "Ahh, me? Aah, no, I don't ride", I told her. Never have. I told her it seemed to be ok since she drove it 25 kilometres to my place. I agreed to by it. It didn't look like much but if I didn't like riding it was only $1200 bucks to find out. I enrolled in a training class that weekend. Went to the course and by noon we were riding around a parking lot on bikes. I went home, got on the Yamaha and went to the Canadian Tire parking lot to practice some more. I rode it till the sun was gone and I was hooked forever. I just kept going forward with bikes. One day a buddy at work asked me if I wanted to buy his VFR. Right, I had no idea what that was. We met on the weekend and exchanged bikes riding through the Laurentians north of Montreal and that was it, I wanted it. In the end he never did sell it to me, cuz he couldn't do it in the end but he helped me get the one I have now and put it into perfect condition. Was a mess when I got it.

Four years ago I was working on the development of the CSeries; that came to an abrupt halt one morning and all 475 of us were told to go find others jobs 'til the CSeries might be restarted. Well I guess you realize that I moved back to Brampton by now and was transferred to deHavilland division that Bombardier bought a few years after I went back to Montreal. Another development program on business jet this time.

I found the OntVFR club on a Google search for some info about the bike. After being in the VFRQC club for a few years I decided to join here as well.

Remember back a bit I told you to remember the dad part, well this is why. Almost five years ago I became a grampy for the first time and my granddaughter is crazy about my bikes. She always wants up on them and plays with the buttons. Dec 30th 2008 I became a grampy for the second time with another granddaughter. How sweet it is.