Saturday June 3, 2006 Pete and I were the only ones available to ride.  We had the Tour de Cure ride coming up in little over a week and we wanted to be sure and get out for a few rides before doing this ride for Diabetes.  Most of the rides we have done over the past few weeks have mostly been going south.  We decided for a change of pace to head north this day. 

I rode over to Pete’s house around 9:30 am and we started off for the Paint Creek Trail (PCT).  We planned to take the trail all the way to its current end in Lake Orion.  Once in Lake Orion we were going to ride over to the old business district and check out the progress of the rebuild of the Sage Brush.  We finally saw substantial progress, the building is well along its way to being completed.  There was a sign hanging nearby that said opening summer 2006.  It has been a long time since the fire and the closure of the Sage Brush, it will be nice to have this place back in business.   

The burrito basket on the back of our bicycles got its name from eating lunch at the Sage Brush very early in our bike club’s existence.  Bob was the first one to get a basket for the back of his bike and one day we were eating lunch at the Sage Brush in the middle of a bike ride and Bob ordered the super burrito, which is quite large.  Bob only finished about half of the burrito and put the leftover in the basket on the back of his bike for the ride home.  And from that day forward we have always called them burrito baskets.  Just recently Pete tried to change the name of his burrito basket to a chili basket when he stuffed it full of Skyline chili during a bike trip and shopping stop at Meijer’s.  It is going to be difficult to change the name of Pete’s basket from burrito basket to chili basket, but I will try.  The basket on my bike will always be known as a burrito basket.   

Once we finished checking out the Sage Brush we rode around the area for a couple minutes before heading home.  Instead of having to tackle the Dutton Hill at the end of the trail if we took that way home we decided to stay right on Lapeer Road for the return trip.  We have taken Lapeer Road many times in the past.  Even though there aren’t sidewalks or bike paths along this road it still is a good route.  The shoulder on the west side of the road is paved and fairly wide making it relatively safe for bike riding.  It is still a little intimidating having cars and trucks flying past us anywhere from 50 to 65 mph, but at least they are a distance away.  

We were going to take Lapeer all the way to the new section of road that just recently opened where Dutton goes straight out to Lapeer.  When we got close we changed our minds and took the industrial road to Dutton instead.  This section of Dutton heading east toward Squirrel is down hill and you can really pick up speed.  We started going fast but the light at Squirrel forced us to slow down which ruined any chance of a new speed record this day.  We still got up to a good speed, but no where near our record. 

Following are the statistics from this ride, 18.2 miles total, 32.50 max mph, 1 hour and 36 minutes time on bikes and 11.2 average mph.  
David Lindquist