New Years Day, the first day of January 2006 and we didn't have a ride scheduled, but Bob and I ended up doing a short spur of the moment ride just to get out on our bikes.  The weather was decent and we both wanted to do something outside, so we went for a quick bike ride.

Bob came by my house and we decided to ride to the Village Shopping Center at Adams and Walton.  Bob's tires were low so we went to the Shell gas station on the corner for air.  Turns out my tires were a bit low as well.  We each took a turn filling our tires before continuing our ride.  There weren't many people out this day.  I guess most people were at home relaxing or taking a nap after staying up late the night before at new years eve parties.  I don't particularly care for new years eve parties, never have.  But I'm not much of a night person so the idea of staying up late to see midnight just never made much sense to me.  I like up getting up early and going outside to start enjoying the day right away.  I feel like if I sleep in much past 8:30 am I'm wasting the whole day.  It is amazing how much you can get done when you get an early start.  When Diane and I went to Chicago with Pete and Elaine this past fall, I think I saw more of Chicago when I went out walking by myself early Sunday morning while everyone else was still sleeping.  By the time everyone got up and we went out for breakfast I felt like I was eating lunch because I had already eaten breakfast a couple hours earlier.

After leaving the gas station we rode down the main road of the Village Shopping Center.  There were only a few people out walking around and Bob and I owned the road as we cruised through on our bikes.  I noticed a few of the people looking enviously at us wishing they were riding a bike like us.  This shopping center is relatively small so it doesn't take long to ride through.

Instead of heading home back north on Adams we decided to take some of the side streets west of Adams to make the ride a little longer.  We knew it wasn't going to be a long ride, but we weren't ready to head straight home.  By taking the back roads we were able to stretch out the ride by a few extra miles.  We rode up and down a couple streets even going the wrong direction a couple times.  After meandering for a few minutes we started to head toward home.

Even though it was a short ride it felt real good to be out on my bike for the first time since my Christmas day ride.  I think I'm going to try and set a new trend of riding on all holidays when ever possible.  Bob and I have been trying to go out and jog at least once per week as well.  Bob actually has been doing a lot more running than one day a week, but I am trying to make a point to join him at least once per week.  We have been doing between 2.5 and 5.0 mile stretches depending how we feel.  Usually we end up running about 3.5 miles at a time.  This distance makes for a good workout and doesn't take too much time.   

Following are the statistics for this first ride of 2006, not a long ride by any means but certainly better than not riding at all, 6.5 miles, 15.6 max mph, 10.3 average mph and 38 minutes of time on bike.   
David Lindquist