4,200-mile motorcycle trip only to end up Floriduh'd

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Palm Beach Gardens man who just finished 4,200-mile motorcycle trip killed in West Palm Beach crash
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By ELIOT KLEINBERG

Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

WEST PALM BEACH — Jon Canaday just finished a 4,200 mile ride across the United States on his motorcycle, returning home to Palm Beach Gardens Saturday night, his business partner said.

On Tuesday, he was hit by a car and killed in downtown West Palm Beach.
Canaday, 69, cofounded ViewWay Mobile Media seven years ago with Kevin Todd, Todd said this morning.

The national company employs rolling advertising by mounting billboards on trucks.

"We've been good friends," Todd said. "He was a wonderful father."

Canaday was riding westbound on Evernia Road from a stop sign when his 2007 Yamaha motorcycle collided with a white 1992 Mercury Grand Marquis driven by Thomas Dvorak, 32, moving northbound on Quadrille Boulevard, police Lt. Michael Roggin said this morning.

Dvorak, a Fort Lauderdale-based foreclosure attorney, declined to comment.

Canaday died where he fell, on a grassy median between traffic lanes on Quadrille. He did not wear a helmet, Roggin said.

Canaday, a widower, had two sons and a daughter, Todd said.

Last year, Canaday made his fifth foray into the annual Key West Ernest Hemingway look-alike competition.

He told The Palm Beach Post that he'd been in Key West for a party in 1989 when he saw a flyer for the contest.

"I grew a beard - history was made!' he recalled.

Canaday said he did see a bullfight in 1959, but other than that, "he (Hemingway) writes great books, I write great e-mails," he said.

His strategy: "Laugh, drink rum and Coke with twist of lime, raise as much money as possible. I no longer go to win. I have already won just going."

Staff writer Michael LaForgia and staff researcher Niels Heimeriks contributed to this st