Saturday July 1, 2006 Pete and I again rode to the Hamlin Pub to watch another World Cup soccer game.  Today’s game was going to pit England against Portugal.  Bob and his son Mark considered riding with us to watch this game, but they decided against the ride, but still planned to join us for lunch and to watch the game. 

This day we planned to ride directly to the Pub, so we didn’t need to leave until around 9:30 am.  This would allow us plenty of time to make the relatively short 8 mile to ride to the Pub and arrive a half hour or so before game time. I rode over to Pete’s house and we left from there.  We arrived at the Pub right around 10:30 and it was already quite crowded.  There were only a couple open tables.  Pete took a table near the center and we sat down next to two groups of English guys wearing their red jerseys on both sides of us.  I noticed the guy directly to my right had two packs of cigarettes sitting on his table and he already had filled one ash tray with used butts.  I knew sitting this close to a chain smoker wouldn’t be pleasant so I suggest to Pete we try to find another table.  Luckily there was one other table still open with four chairs that we took.  We were saving two chairs for Bob and Mark. 

It was obviously a pro-English crowd this day.  If there was anyone rooting for Portugal I couldn’t tell by looking around at the sea of red almost everyone was wearing.  This large group of English folks had been there a while.  The Hamlin Pub serves a traditional English style breakfast on certain days, and this was obviously one of those days.  

Pete and I were seated right in front of a wall on the front of the building where one of the large projection TV images is projected.  There are many TVs all over the place so we weren’t blocking anybody’s view.  While we were sitting around waiting for things to get started the manager stopped by and sat at our table.  He was carrying a large roll of raffle tickets.  He told us he was having a raffle and selling tickets for $1.00 each.  All the proceeds were going to go to the Leader Dogs for the Blind.  They had two shirts and Hamlin Pub windbreaker pull over as the prizes.  Pete bought ten tickets and I bought five.  The raffle was going to take place at half time of the game.  Bob and Mark showed up right around 11:00 am which was start of game time.  The manager stopped by to see if Bob wanted to get in on the raffle.  Bob bought a few tickets as well. 

The game was interesting, but not as good as the Germany Argentina game the day before.  Both England and Portugal seemed tentative.  The large throng of English fans really got into the game.  They let out big yells when ever England got even remotely close to a scoring opportunity.  England had this one guy on their team named Wayne Rooney, we kept calling him Andy Rooney because we couldn’t remember his name.  This Andy Rooney guy looked like he was on steroids.  He did not look like your typical soccer player, he was stocky and very fast.  He was also a mad man, all over the place playing very aggressive. 

It was  a very low scoring game, I know it was tied at half time and I think it was nil to nil.  Pete went to the bathroom to relieve himself of the five or six large diet cokes he drank during the first half.  Pete wasn’t back to the table yet when the drawing started for the raffle.  Pete was out of the bathroom and he stopped right by the table where the raffle was taking place to check his tickets as the numbers were called.  The first number called was mine, I was the first winner.  I looked at my tickets and then I looked at Bob and Mark still sitting at the table with me and I said I won.  They thought I was just kidding.  I told them I really won.  They still thought I was kidding even as I got up to go claim my prize.  They thought I was just going to pretend to turn in my ticket on the way to the bathroom.  I wasn’t kidding at all, I had actually won.  This might have been the first time I have ever won any kind of raffle.  Pete knew I had won because he checked his tickets and he could see my winning number came shortly after his numbers which he purchased just before me.  Later I told Pete he should have just bought a few more tickets and he would have been the winner instead of me.  I picked out a nice red with white trim Adidas soccer jersey with the word Beck on the upper left of the front of the shirt.  It was a nice quality thin wicking material, I couldn’t go wrong. 

The second half was not too exciting, but it was entertaining.  About half way through the second half Andy Rooney got red carded for stomping in the groin area of a Portugal player while he was down on the ground at the end of a play.  It was quite a dirty play and Andy Rooney definitely deserved the red card.  When you get a red card you are kicked out of the game and your team then must play short handed because they are not allowed to put in a replacement.  Shortly after the red card England made a substitution and brought in this very tall lanky guy to play up front in the forward position.  I can’t remember what this guys name was, but we just called him Big Bird.  Big Bird was all over the place trying hard, but his skills just weren’t that good.  They obviously were trying to get Big Bird the opportunity to head in the ball for a goal, they just couldn’t get him in position.  He was at least a head taller than everyone on Portugal, but he just couldn’t put his height advantage to good use.  Big Bird appeared to be a liability near the end, he just couldn’t make anything happen for England.  He even lost a few balls that looked like he should have been able to control.  The game ended in a nil to nil tie, even after the two 15 minute overtime periods no one scored.  The outcome was going to be decided by a shoot out. 

The Portugal goalie, who I think was named Ricky Ricardo, played great in overtime, he made three saves in a row which is virtually unheard of and he ended up being the hero for Portugal.  Overall it was a fun time hanging out at the Pub watching yet another World Cup soccer game, especially since I won a really cool shirt in the raffle. 

Bob and Mark headed home in their car and Pete and I did nice relatively fast paced ride home.  Pete and I continued our recent trend of riding at a bit faster than normal, which I really enjoy. 

When we got the to intersection a few blocks from Pete’s house where we split up with Pete heading toward his house and me heading toward my house I made my usual left turn and shouted out a “see you later” to Pete.  Just a couple hundred feet later I noticed two baby deer walking in the street ahead.  I got out my phone and pushed a couple buttons getting it ready to take a picture of the two very young deer.  I slowed down as I approached the deer.  They froze in place and I was able to get quite close.  I came to a stop and I was taking my feet out of the pedal toe clips so I could stand on the ground.  Just as I got my self balanced I noticed the mother deer off to the side.  She was not happy to see me so close to her babies, she slowly started to approach me.  She stopped about 30 feet away and started to snort at me.  I have never heard a deer snort before, but I think that was my warning to stay away.  Then she flicked her tail at a rapid pace and the two young deer ran across the street to the side of the mother and stood next her.  After I was sure I wasn’t going to get charged I took a couple pictures of the deer, but at this point they were about 50 or 60 feet away, so the pictures aren’t as good as I was hoping for.  See the bottom of this page for the couple pictures I was able to get with my phone. 

After the close deer encounter I rode the final mile and a half to home. 

Pete invited me and Diane over to his house that evening to hang out with him and Elaine and Gary and Judy who were already planning to come over for dinner.  While we were at Pete’s house we told Gary about some of our recent rides and Gary expressed interest in riding with us again.  We made plans to put our bikes in the back of my van and drive over to Gary’s house in the morning for a ride around Royal Oak and the surrounding area.  Since we were sitting around talking about biking this following story qualifies to be shared at this point, even though it isn’t directly biking related. 

Earlier in the week Diane had told me a story that I thought was funny about Pete and Elaine and I figured Pete wasn’t going to share this story with Gary so I decided to tell it myself.  I’m not sure if I got all the facts straight, but close enough considering I was repeating this story second hand.  Apparently Elaine had recently obtained some flowers and plants and redid the landscaping in an area just to the end at the top of their driveway. When Pete got home from work Elaine wanted to show Pete the result of her hard work making the area look nice.  Elaine finally convinced Pete to follow her outside so she could proudly show Pete.  Well, when they got outside and walked over to the area Elaine quickly noticed it was partially covered by Pete’s car which he had pulled up to the very end and actually part way right on top of the freshly done landscaping.  I thought it was funny when Diane told me this story, just the fact that Pete not only hadn’t noticed the new landscaping when he got home, but he actually parked right on top of it.  Anyhow, while I was in the middle of telling this story Pete was taking a big drink of diet coke from a can and something struck him funny because the next thing we saw was diet coke shooting out of both sides of Pete’s nose as the result of laughing while trying to drink.  Pete had diet coke all over the front of him, it was actually dripping off the end of his nose, and he got up and walked away from the table where he had previously been sitting with me and Gary.  Pete was now in a little pain, the type of pain you get when you shoot diet coke out your nose.  This gave me and Gary a much bigger laugh than the parking the car on the landscaping story ever would have, thank you Pete for the entertainment.  

Following are the statistics from this ride, 16.1 miles total, 21.5 max mph, 1 hour and 17 minutes time on bikes and 12.6 average mph.  
David Lindquist