WATCH ABOVE: Jessica Kent has the story of 95-year-old Roy Gale and his adventure in a car that’s been around almost his entire lifetime.
EDMONTON – After spending more than a year restoring the car of his dreams, a 95-year-old Alberta man has checked another task off his bucket list.
Roy Gale set off early Sunday morning on a two-day road trip from Medicine Hat to Edmonton in a 1927 Ford Model T. The road trip in the classic car has been on his bucket list for years.
“I’d taken it in several parades and it had run pretty good for me so I thought well maybe we’ll try out something a little more difficult,” Gale said from Edmonton Tuesday.
With help from his neighbours, Gale built the car from scratch, starting out with just a frame, wheels and an engine.
“Somehow we came up with the idea of building a car out of parts and pieces they had laying around in their yard,” he said. “It was just something to do.”
After a year-and-a-half of hard work Gale was ready to hit the road. With a friend in the passenger seat and a truck and trailer following closely behind, Gale left Medicine Hat at 8 a.m. Sunday.
The classic car only reaches a maximum speed of about 40 km/h, so Gale took the road less travelled, so to speak, driving mainly on back roads. The first leg of the trip took the pair northwest to Suffield then up towards Patricia.
“We ran into construction and rain, both in the same place. So we got into a real soupy mud for about a 30-mile stretch,” he explained. “That was pretty iffy.”
With no roof on the Model T, the exposed men got more than a little bit wet.
“We got very wet. I hit one mud puddle that just splashed over the whole car,” Gale said with a laugh.
Gale and his group spent the night in Hanna before making the final trek to Edmonton Tuesday. While they had a bit of car trouble along the way, and Gale wasn’t sure the old classic would make the entire journey in one piece, he says the adventure was everything he dreamed it would be.
“It drove along just as nice as could be,” he said with a smile.
Gale celebrated his 95th birthday on the road on Monday. His Model T will made the ride back to Medicine Hat on a flat bed. Gale and his car are scheduled to appear in a parade in Medicine Hat this summer.
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