Wednesday November 22, 2006 Pete and I took this day off work as a vacation day to make the holiday weekend even longer.  Thursday was Thanksgiving and we both already had Thursday and Friday off as holiday.  By taking a vacation day on Wednesday it gave us the chance to do a nice medium length bike ride and take our time. 

We started out relatively early, I rode over to meet Pete at his house around 8:15 am.  Pete wasn't home, he had gone out early to get new tires for his daughter Laura's car.  Elaine answered the door and let me in to wait for Pete.  Elaine and I visited for about 15 minutes until Pete got home.  Apparently the tire store opened later than Pete thought.  He got there a half hour before they opened, but at least they got him in and out quickly.

We ended up leaving shortly after 8:30 am.  Our plan for this day was to head north toward Lake Orion.  We hadn't taken the trail north in quite a while and we weren't in a hurry so we both agreed it would be fun to hop on the Paint Creek Trail and ride the gradual uphill grade all the way to downtown Lake Orion.  It was a bit chilly, but not cold, overall a nice day for a bike ride.  The trail was a little soggy in some areas, but still very passable.  We just stayed on the edge where the trail was in slightly better shape.  On the ride Pete got a phone call and he figured out if he stuck the top half of his cell phone under his ear muff it would stay in place without holding it with his hands.  I took one look at the phone set up and gave it the name "Goof Tooth" as a parody of the term "Blue Tooth".  I took out my phone and snapped a couple pictures of Pete using his Goof Tooth.  See the bottom of this page for all the pictures I took during this day.  We made good time on our ride north.  Once we got to Lake Orion we headed to the old town area.  The Sagebrush was progressing well, we checked it out as we rode passed. 

We decided to go to the Poppy Seed for breakfast sandwiches.  The Poppy Seed is the best deli around.  Pete and I both ordered breakfast sandwiches with a drink.  We sat down at a table and took our time enjoying our meals.  Pete got a phone call on his cell phone from someone at his work.  After taking a couple phone calls it appeared Pete had everything under control and didn't have to worry about work anymore.  Then Pete got another phone call from a guy that works for Pete and his name is Pete as well.  Both Petes work in Sales and they get tickets for entertaining customers.  Well it turns out the customers that the 2nd Pete was planning to take out canceled at the last moment and 1st Pete wanted to use the tickets so 2nd Pete was going to drop by the Poppy Seed with the tickets.  We weren't in a hurry and I was still eating so we just sat around and waited for 2nd Pete to show up. 

While Pete waited for me to finish eating and the tickets to show up he got back on his phone and started making calls trying to locate Elaine's iron.  Yes, he was trying to locate his iron from home.  Apparently Pete took the iron from home to his last hockey game.  I'm not sure why he took the iron to hockey, but he did and he ended up losing it.  I'm also not sure how you lose an iron, but Pete did.  He called the ice arena to see if anyone turned in an iron to the lost and found.  I couldn't help but laugh as Pete explained to me how he lost the iron.  After a lot of messing around it turns out the iron was in Pete's hockey bag the whole time, so technically it really wasn't lost even though Pete couldn't find it for a while.  Before we left the Poppy Seed I put a bike club sticker on the advertising bulletin board inside the restaurant.

After Poppy Seed we suited back up and rode our bikes back down the trail heading south.  It had warmed up a little outside and the trail was starting to get even more soggy than earlier.  This time it was more difficult to find a dry path to ride.  Pete pointed out that my new mud flap wasn't doing a very good job keeping the soggy trail surface off my back.  Pete's back was still clean, he was doing a better job of avoiding the soggy areas than I was.

We kept riding south on the trail all the way to the Rochester Library.  We stopped at the Library to use the restroom.  I took off the fleece vest I was wearing and brushed off the dried dirt and mud on the back.  Most of it came off fairly easy.  Right then and there I decided I needed to change to a slightly longer mud flap on the back of my bike when I got home.  If you're going to have a mud flap hanging off the back it might as well be functional.  My old mud flap did a decent job of protecting me, but when my old rack broke on our last century ride I threw out the rack including the mud flap.  Apparently this new one was a little too narrow and short.  It would be easy to make a new one and re-install it on my new rack.  

After the Library we went to the Ace Hardware on Rochester Road to pick up a couple items.  After the hardware store Pete wanted to make one more stop at Walgreens on Livernois.  We each took a turn in the drug store to get our items while the other one stayed outside and watched our bikes.  I needed a new battery for the key fob of my PT Cruiser.  The key fob had recently stopped working and I figured a new battery is all it needed.  The sun was shinning brightly so it felt good to lean up against the brick wall of the store while Pete was in the store.  I just stood there absorbing the warmth on my back from the bricks and the warmth of the sun shining on my face as I stood there with my eyes closed relaxing.  I was so comfortable standing there outside the store waiting for Pete I almost fell asleep.      

After the drug store we rode straight home.

Following are the statistics from the ride, 25.6 miles total, 22.0 max mph, 2 hour and 36 minutes time on bikes and 9.9 average mph.
David Lindquist