Three generations burn rubber across two continents
Granddad, dad and sons take a motorcycle trip of a lifetime through 15 different countries
Metro Kopansky has ridden motorcycles for 71 years.
In 1946, he rode his Indian bike from Selkirk, Man., to begin anew in Toronto. He used to race on dirt flat tracks, until a crash in 1959 took him out. He once rode on the “wall of death” — a wooden cylinder, where audiences watch riders perform on a vertical wall — in a travelling circus.
“I bought my first motorcycle when I was just turning 16,” he says.
More recently, the 86-year-old rode his Goldwing motorbike from his Bancroft, Ont., home to British Columbia and back — solo. But no trip compares to the one he took last year.
With his son and two grandsons in tow, Metro rode all the way to South America.
“I told my wife, ‘I’m going to Brazil on my bike.’ She said ‘You’re crazy.’ I said, ‘I know.’”
Metro, Mike, Matthew and Mitchell — three generations of Kopansky men, ranging in age from 23 to 86 — crossed 15 countries and two continents by motorcycle, on a 45-day adventure from Scarborough to São Lourenco, Brazil.
“My friends told me I’d never live through Mexico, that we’d get killed before we got through,” Metro says.
“Everyone said we were crazy, we weren’t going to make it,” adds Mike, 53.
There was the question of age (Metro was 85 at the time). There was also the question of experience; the youngest Kopanskys hadn’t clocked much road time.
“I had done some riding at the cottage on a dirt bike,” says Matthew, 25.
The timing worked well for all. Metro is retired. Matthew had graduated from university. Mitchell took a semester off. Mike, a senior manager at Miller Waste Systems in Markham, had been approved for six weeks vacation. He handled most of the planning — including buying BMW motorcycles, arranging for donated heated undergarments from Gerbing and route mapping. On Feb. 3, with 10 centimetres of snow on the ground, the group set off.
There were early snags: Metro couldn’t find his passport, buried in his things, at the U.S border. (“I looked at the (officer) with my sad eyes and said, ‘I’m an old man,’ ” he recalls). There was an unlikely snowstorm in Alabama, a bout of pneumonia for Metro and a spill on a Mexican highway by Matthew.
“You’re riding over 18,000 kilometres. Stuff is going to happen,” Mike says.
“I think the whole trip was glorious because every day was different,” Metro adds. He recalls a moment in Texas when Matthew debated going home. “I said ‘Matthew, you get one chance in your lifetime.’”
The ride continued, through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina. They updated friends, family and followers on a Facebook page they created called, aptly, “2 Continents, 3 Generations.” They stopped for a day or two along the way — snorkelling in Belize, exploring ruins in Guatemala — but otherwise covered anywhere from 200 to 900 kilometres daily.
There are a novel’s worth of stories — including friendly Mexican police escorts, an encounter with a Polish man riding his bicycle around the world and Metro occasionally taking off solo. “My dad had it in his mind that he was going to ride the way he wanted to, at the pace he wanted to do it at, and be damned everybody else,” Mike says.
“I’ve rode for 70 years and these young guys are trying to tell me that you can and can’t ride like this. It was pretty hard to take,” Metro counters. “Maybe we should listen to granddad a little bit more.”
The trip concluded on March 20, 2014, when they arrived in São Lourenco, home to Joelis Sanches, a close friend of Metro’s.
“Him and my dad are very similar characters in terms of loving motorcycles,” Mike says. “Motorcycles and women,” adds Metro, happily married for 61 years to wife Sylvia, with whom he raised eight children.
The plan was to fly, not ride, back to Canada. Things changed for Metro.
“I never fly back on my trips. When I start an adventure, it’s a challenge for me,” he says.
So the kids flew home, while Metro stayed on in Brazil for a few months. To his family’s dismay, he decided he’d ride home.
“I did not support my father riding back alone and told him I would not give him my GPS and mapping to get back if he tried it,” Mike says.
He tried and succeeded, riding with Luis, a new friend and fellow motorcycle enthusiast. They arrived on home territory July 11. Metro had been away for five months.
Matthew says the trip brought him closer to his grandfather.
“We have such a big family,” he says. “As much time as you spend with your grandparents, you don’t really get that alone time. It was great to talk to him, get to know him, hear all his stories.”
“I think it was a bit of an eye-opener for my boys to see some of his quirkiness and personality,” Mike says. “My dad’s an unbelievable guy, an unbelievable adventurer and not afraid to take chances and risks.”
Metro will be 87 in September and is plotting another motorcycle trip to Winnipeg this summer for a family reunion.
“I still feel young,” he says. “When I get on a motorcycle after a long winter, I feel like I’m 20 years old again.”