Tuesday April 11, 2006 Pete called me after work to see if I was interested in doing another evening ride.  This makes two weekday evening rides in a row and including our Sunday ride it makes three days in a row, which is nice.  Pete and his son Paul were planning to ride again tonight and I saw no reason not to join them.  I can't remember for sure, but I think this time I may have ridden over to meet them at their house before this ride, or maybe we even met half way somewhere before starting out.  I guess it really doesn't matter where we met.  I do know for sure that we did a bike ride.

After riding around Oakland University campus last night, tonight we headed toward and past downtown Rochester.  Pete had a gift certificate that was burning a hole in his pocket and he was bound and determined to use some of it up tonight.  The gift certificate was for Borders book store.  The borders around us is located on Rochester Road just south of Avon, which is a good location that creates a nice distance for an evening ride.

On the way to the book store Pete took us down through the side streets south of Walton to the dead end where we have to carry our bikes through the brush and at one point over our heads on the way to the Clinton River Trail.  I think Pete was trying to impress Paul how tough we are on our bike rides, I don't think it worked.  Paul doesn't ever complain or even show much effort at whatever Pete throws at him.  We rode along the trail a short distance before coming out and back onto the bike paths along the main roads.

Pete was setting a fairly good pace on this ride, faster than normal.  Pete has a hockey tournament coming up in Toronto shortly so I think he is working on increasing his stamina by riding fast for short spurts and also maintaining a higher than normal pace.

We rode out to Borders where we all three went inside for a few minutes while Pete did his shopping.  I think Pete ended up getting a couple music CDs.  Book stores sell a lot more than just books anymore.  Pete still had credit left on his gift card so I am sure he will be visiting again.  Paul and I just looked around, we didn't buy anything. 

The ride home was also at a decent pace.  We took one of our regular routes and not much happened during the ride home, just a nice enjoyable ride.  Since we are well into spring now it isn't getting dark until much later which makes it nice for doing these evening rides.

Following are the statistics from this ride, 16.6 miles total, 24.5 max mph, 1 hour and 25 min time on bikes and 11.6 average mph.
David Lindquist