Saturday July 29, 2006 was another perfect day for a bike and that is exactly what I did.  Pete and I ended up riding north this day to Lake Orion.   

I met Pete over at his house at 8:30 am.  Even though it was early it was already quite warm.  It felt like it was going to be another one of those hot days we have been experiencing so far this summer.   

For the first time in a long time we went north once we got to the entrance of Paint Creek Trail (PCT) off Dutton Road.  We were riding at a decent pace while heading up the gradual uphill ride north on the trail.  We saw a deer shortly after getting on the trail.  It used to be unusual to come across deer, but lately there seem to be as many deer running around as squirrels.   

We were riding at such a fast pace we were passing everyone.  We slowly came up behind a couple riding a tandem bike.  It was a man in front and woman in the back.  They had a really nice tandem bike and they were decked out in full biking attire.  They looked like serious bikers.  When Pete and I passed the tandem riders I noticed they sped up like they were surprised to be passed, I don’t think they were used to being passed.  Once we passed the tandem riders we had to maintain our fast pace to make sure we didn’t let them pass us back up.  After a couple miles we stopped for a minute to take a drink of water.  I looked back and the tandem riders were approaching quickly so I made Pete get back on his bike and start riding quickly.  It didn’t take much encouragement to get Pete riding.  Pete never wants to lose, even if it is a race against tandem riders on PCT that don’t know they are racing.  We quickly got going again and we maintained our fast pace and we slowly pulled away from the tandem riders again. 

Once we got to the end of the trail in Lake Orion we rode over to the downtown area.  The Sagebrush is looking good.  The building looks complete from the outside.  The sign on the front said opening summer 2006.  We are all looking forward to the reopening of the rebuilt Sagebrush. 

Even though it was too early for lunch Pete and I both agreed a small snack would be nice.  We stopped at my favorite sandwich place in Lake Orion, the Poppy Seed.  We ended up splitting a breakfast sandwich.  The sandwich was outstanding as usual from this place.  I had a grape juice to drink and I think Pete had a grape juice as well.  The young lady at the Poppy Seed is very friendly and she didn’t seem to mind at all that I used a coupon from Diane’s entertainment book.  She even suggest I buy something else to maximize the value of my coupon, so I bought a slice of lemon poppy seed coffee cake which Pete and I also split. 

On the way home we went back to PCT and we maintained even faster pace heading south which is easy to do since the grade is slightly downhill.  We got off the trail at Dutton and instead of heading up the Dutton hill we went south on Livernois which is a dirt road in this area.  We took Livernois to Tienken before heading toward Pete’s house.  We typically don’t ride on Livernois in this area.  It was a difficult uphill ride all the way to Tienken and based on Pete’s comments I don’t think he is looking forward to riding this stretch of road anytime soon. 

The temperature continued to rise and by this point it was very hot.  Pete was nice enough to invite me to cool off in his swimming pool after our ride.  I hung around Pete’s house in the pool allowing my body temperature to become lower after our hard ride.  The 2.3 mile ride to my house from Pete’s house was much more comfortable after a short dip in the pool.   

Following are the statistics from this ride, 25.0 miles total and 35.5 max mph.  I forgot to write down the other statistics from this ride, so this is all I have to report.  I wish I would have written down at least the average speed because I know we maintain a really fast pace on this ride.  I would estimate we averaged at least 12.5 mph on this ride. 
David Lindquist