Friday July 14, 2006 Pete and I did another evening ride, this time with Pete’s cousin and our first out of state club member, Mark.  Mark was in town for Pete’s son Paul’s high school graduation party taking place on Saturday.  Pete was planning to borrow some chairs and a table from me for the party.  Now that Pete no longer has a van when he borrows stuff he also has to borrow your van, which is certainly convenient for Pete.  I think Steve fell for this trick as well. 

Pete and Mark rode their bikes over to my house to help load the table and chairs into the van.  There was too much for one trip.  Pete and Mark took the van to unload the first group of stuff.  Then they drove back over while I finished my dinner.  We loaded the rest of the chairs into the van and left it in the drive way.  We planned to go for a short bike ride and then come back to my house.  I would drop off my bike and then drive over to Pete’s house while Pete and Mark rode back.  We would then unload the van and I would drive back home. 

On our bike ride we went to the 7-Eleven on University just west of Squirrel.  We rode through the sub to Tienken and along the bike path past Pete’s parents place to Squirrel Road.  We went south on Squirrel for a short ways before cutting through some more side streets that eventually dumped us out on to University very close to the 7-Eleven.  It started to rain on the way and based on the look of the clouds it appeared we might get very wet. 

We were only in the 7-Eleven for a couple minutes to get slurpees.  I used my coupon from the Tour de Cure to get a free small slurpee.  In the short time we were in the store it started raining harder.  There was no getting around the fact we were going to get wet, very wet on our ride home.  No big deal it was a warm day and the rain actually felt good.  It was also starting to get dark so we turned our lights on to help be seen on the ride home.  We pretty much went the same way we came.  The rain was still coming down, but it had let up to a light drizzle by the time we got back to my house.   

Pete and Mark took off for home and I was going to wait a few minutes before driving the van over to empty the second load of chairs.  Then van was back in the garage, I know I left it in the middle of the drive way.  I opened the rear hatch to check and see if the chairs were still there.  The van was empty, Diane must have driven it over and unloaded while we were on our ride.  I called Pete’s cell phone to let him know I wouldn’t be coming over, he didn’t answer so I left a message.  Apparently Pete didn’t get my message and he and Mark sat under an umbrella in the rain waiting for me to show up with my van with the rest of the chairs.  Pete hadn’t noticed that the chairs were already there even after he and Mark moved them under the tent.  

About an hour later I got a call from Pete asking me where I was, they were still waiting for me to show up to unload.  I told him the chairs were already there and that I had left him a message.  Now I knew Pete never got the message, finally they knew I wasn’t coming so they both jumped into the pool to cool off.  I told them I would see them later tomorrow at Paul’s party.  After letting them borrow ten chairs I better have a place to sit at the party, just kidding.  I actually ended up sitting in some of Steve’s chair while at the party, under one of the two canopies that Pete borrowed from Steve.   

Following are the statistics from this ride, 10.9 miles total, 27.0 max mph, 58 minutes time on bikes and 11.3 average mph.    
David Lindquist