Monday August 14, 2006 Pete and I decided to do an evening ride sense neither one of us had plans for the night.  Pete rode over and met me at my house.  I had made a copy of a pinball schematic for Pete and he wanted to pick it up, that was the original reason he came by.  Once he got there we both decided to do a short ride over to the 7-Eleven in Auburn Hills.  Our intent was to get slurpees at the 7-Eleven.   

We rode through the back of my sub out to Tienken and eventually to Squirrel where we cut through a couple side streets to get out on Walton where the 7-Eleven is located.  When we got there we each made up our drinks and we were walking to the check out counter when Pete realized he hadn’t brought any money, big surprise.  This wouldn’t be the first time I would have to buy for Pete.  Pete tends to forget his money quite often.  At least I know Pete is good for it and he will reciprocate and buy something for me in the future. 

We took our drinks to go and rode with them on our way home.  It was already relatively late and it would be getting dark soon so we pretty much headed straight back to my house.  On our way home we enjoyed the cool refreshment from the slurpees and the occasional brain freeze they tend to give you periodically if you drink too fast.  

As we were heading north back on Squirrel again retracing our route from just a few minutes earlier we saw a bunch of police cars and an EMS vehicle in a parking lot ahead.  It was in the parking lot of an apartment complex right off Squirrel on the west side of the road.  We rode past slowly to see what was going on.  I was a little cautious at first, the last thing I wanted to do was ride my bike into any gun battles that might be taking place.  As we got closer we noticed what appeared to be a drunken guy already in handcuffs leaning up against a police car with a few officers surrounding him.  They must have just recently cuffed him because one police office still had his gunned pointed at the suspect.   

I looked over at Pete and he had this silly grin on his face.  I was hoping he wasn’t thinking about sounding off his air horn as we rode past.  No such luck, Pete timed it so that right when we were riding past the police he blasted his air horn.  I think the loud blast of the air horn startled the policeman holding the gun because he pulled the trigger of his gun and shot a hole in the tire of the police car the suspect was leaning up against.  All the police started looking around to figure out where the loud noise came from.  Both Pete and I started looking around too, acting like we were trying to figure out where the loud noise came from.  Luckily none of them ever assume a noise that loud could come from two old guys riding their bikes drinking a slurpee and we just kept slowly riding away as the police continued to look around trying to figure out where that noise came from.  The last thing we wanted to do was stick around long enough for them to notice air horns mounted to the handle bars of both our bikes. 

My heart was still beating fast as we pulled into my subdivision.  The last thing I wanted to do was go to jail because Pete honked his air horn at a couple policemen.  After we left the scene of the police arrest the rest of the ride home was quite uneventful, but I have to admit every time I heard the noise of a car nearby I would look around to see if it was an Auburn Hills police car .  Within a few minutes we were back at my house and Pete continued on to his house.  I looked in the local paper a few days later to see if this incident was reported, I never did see anything.  Maybe they were just too embarrassed to report they shot a hole in their own tire while arresting some drunken guy.   

Following are the statistics from the ride, 11.5 miles total, 22.5 max mph, 49 minutes time on bikes and 10.9 average mph and one police car flat tire. 
David Lindquist