Thursday evening on July 6, 2006 Pete and I did a nice ride after dinner.  I can’t remember what prompted us to ride this day, other than it was a nice evening and neither one of us had anything special planned.   

I rode over and met Pete at his house around 6:30 pm.  We started out by heading down the Dutton hill to the Paint Creek Trail (PCT).  We took the trail south into Rochester.  We rode over to the Dairy Queen on Rochester Road and stopped for a treat.  At first I thought this might just be a quick ride for ice cream and then back home, but we both felt like riding more so we just kept going. 

We went south through downtown Rochester and we picked up the Clinton river Trail (CRT) heading west.  We stayed on this trail all the way to Crooks Road.  Pete needed to stop and see our pinball friend Rick who lives right on Crooks.  We rode over to Rick’s and Pete called him using his cell phone while we rested on the bike path right near Rick’s house.  It didn’t look like anyone was home and when no one answered Pete’s call we came to the conclusion no one was home. 

After this short stop we started heading back north toward home.  We rode through a few subdivisions until we came out on Adams Road.  Almost to Tienken we tuned off Adams heading west on Palm Air Street.  We then cut through another group of subdivisions on our way to Squirrel Road.  We decided to stop by and visit Pete’s Mom and Dad as one last stop before heading home. 

Pete’s parents were home and we went inside for a cool drink and a quick visit.  They showed us a blank spot on the half wall that divides the kitchen from the family room.  There used to be a small couch or love seat that they recently moved out and they have a new small couch being delivered the next day.  Next time I visit I will have to check out the new piece of furniture.  While we were visiting the topic of a nephew of Pete’s from Ohio came up.  Apparently this young fellow is new to bike riding and he made the mistake of riding out into the street from his driveway without looking for cars.  A lady happened to be driving by at the same time and he was hit by the car.  Luckily nothing serious happened to the boy, but this is an example how important bike safety and cautious driving is when driving through residential areas.  If I remember correctly the lady was driving relatively slow, like around 15 mph.  Even at that slow speed she was not able to avoid hitting the boy, but maybe driving so slow is the reason the boy wasn’t hurt.     

After our drink and visit with Pete’s parents it was starting to get dark.  I turned on my light up spoke reflectors and my head light for the short ride home.  We rode the short distance from Squirrel to my house and Pete continued on to his house. 

Pete and I have been doing quite a bit of riding again lately.  I feel like I am building up my length strength and lung capacity.  It had dropped off a little when our rides became a little less frequent.  Pete has been talking about doing another 100 mile ride in the near future.  I was concerned I wasn’t in good enough shape for another 100 mile ride, but I think I am getting close to being able to handle this again.  For this next 100 mile ride Pete has the crazy idea of doing it overnight.  We would start out in the evening and ride all night and finish in the morning.  I am not so sure about the sanity of a ride like this.  I have to admit it would be unique, but I am going to have to give it some more thought before I fully commit to this type of ride.  We had trouble getting people to join us on our previous 100 mile ride when it was during the day, I can only imagine it will be near impossible to get people to join us when we do it overnight.  Stay tuned I will have more on this subject as the planning progresses. 

Following are the statistics from this ride, 18.1 miles total, 23.0 max mph, 1 hour and 36 minutes time on bikes and 11.2 average mph. 
David Lindquist