Arnie Bauman
A. Bauman Construction Ltd.
Selwyn, Ont.
Many of us enjoying bike riding in our free time. Sounds like most of us wouldn’t enjoy doing it with Arnie Bauman…!
In my late-40s, I decided to start carving out time again for some of my former passions that had gotten shuffled to the back of the deck as my family and business responsibilities grew. One of my former pursuits was trail riding on my bike. I like to find the most backwoods routes from Point A to Point B.
One trip was a two-day adventure with a buddy to our hunting camp. The route included a variety of roads and tracks, including a seemingly easy 4 km straight-line bushwhack to get from one road to the next.
We started this “off road” portion of the trip at about 2:30 pm on a Friday afternoon. Little did we know that it would take us through some of the roughest bush country Hastings County has to offer. We dragged our bikes and gear over, under, around, and through deep gullies, marshes, unbelievably thick bush, and rivers.
At around 8 pm we decided it was time to call it a day and set up camp for the night. We still hadn’t made it through the 4 km straight-line to the next road.
The next morning we got going again at around 8 am. After two hours of more slugging through the same stuff, as the previous afternoon, we came to a very thick groove of cedars. After pushing our way through we climbed over an old stone and cedar rail fence and couldn’t believe what we were seeing. Behind us was the dense bush and in front of us was a beautiful, plush, manicured fairway of a golf course.
The property we stepped onto belonged to a retired golf course owner. When he sold his former golf course and retired to his dream cabin away from the city, he built a three-hole course on several acres of cleared land that came with the property. This man was sitting on his front porch watching us walk our bikes across his fairway, to the road we’d been looking for for the past 20 hours.
When we told him our story he could hardly believe us. He keep exclaiming, ‘You came through there? With bikes? I can’t walk 100 yards into that bush before I’m lost.’”
Arnie Bauman won a Ridgid 18V hammer drill and impact driver combo kit, courtesy of Ridgid.
We’d like to make sharing our readers’ passions an ongoing part of the magazine. If you think you’ve got a better tale to tell, send it to Allan Britnell: allan@renocontractor.ca .