Ottawa's Andrew Penny, president of Kingsford Consulting, has just returned from a road trip most people wouldn't attempt in a modern car, let alone a nearly 60-year-old British roadster.
A 17,000-kilometre round trip
The round trip covered more than 17,000 kilometres. He wasn't alone for the drive: his three sons accompanied him the whole way.
The route
The journey took the group through Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson, Watson Lake, Whitehorse, Dawson City, Eagle Plains, Inuvik, and finally Tuktoyaktuk, tracing a line across the country from Ontario through the Prairies, into the Yukon and up to the Arctic Ocean.
Trouble almost before it started
The trip nearly ended before it really began. About 30 minutes in, the MGB suffered engine failures that forced Penny and his sons to improvise a repair using alligator clips as a bypass just to keep the car running. For an old car heading into some of the most remote road conditions in the country, it was an early test of how the rest of the drive might go.
Why he does this
Penny told Ottawa Business Journal that pushing himself into uncomfortable situations is deliberate. "I try to do something every year that scares me a bit (and) puts me in an uncomfortable feeling because, if you get that uncomfortable feeling, that's where you learn, that's where you grow," he said.
The Tuktoyaktuk drive wasn't his first self-imposed challenge. Penny has previously taken singing lessons that built toward a recital performance, and he completed "Bring on the Bay," a three-kilometre open-water swim near Britannia Bay in Nepean, right in Ottawa's backyard.
The Ottawa connection
As the head of Kingsford Consulting, Penny is part of the city's business community, and his annual challenges have played out close to home as often as far from it.
Whatever he picks next, Penny's track record suggests it won't be an easy one. Between a recital, an open-water swim, and now an Arctic road trip in a temperamental 1968 roadster, the throughline is the same: pick something that scares you, and go do it anyway.
Sources: Ottawa Business Journal
