Sunday December 2, 2006 was starting to finally feel like winter.  It was cold outside.  The temperature was in the low 20’s with a decent breeze making the wind chill even lower.  There was also a light snow falling.  This was all adding up to a perfect morning for a bike ride.  Normal human beings would stay inside their safe warm house on a morning like this, but not Pete and David the most faithful of the PCT bike club members.  We decided to start out this Sunday right with a refreshing breakfast ride.  It wouldn’t be a long ride, but just long enough to get some breakfast and run a quick errand at a hardware store. 

The day before this ride Pete and I traveled to Royal Oak to stop by my parent’s house and also stop by and visit our friend and fellow club member Gary.  I installed a short hand rail in a section heading to the attic that never had a rail.  I was intending to also install a full length rail on the opposite side, but it turned out there was either cement or block behind the drywall on the opposite side.  I didn’t have the proper tools to drill into the hard substrate so we ended up with just the one short piece getting installed.   

I addition to installing the hand rail I also gave my Dad a haircut.  Among my many talents I have to admit I am pretty good at giving haircuts.  My Dad had just recently gotten home from the rehab place he was staying after recovering from his hip surgery.  He wanted a haircut and I was more than happy to accommodate.  Pete was actually helpful during the hand rail installation and he was very patient during the haircut.  It was good to visit with my parents. 

Next stop was Gary’s house.  Gary had recently purchased a Garmin iQue M3, which is a windows based palm device as well as a full blown GPS.  Pete and I both highly recommend the Garmin iQue M3, for the money it is the best device with its capabilities on the market.  But, you better get one soon since Garmin has discontinued its production.  Garmin plans to concentrate on add on GPS attachments for other companies products and get out of the PDA business.  Pete planned to help set up Gary’s new Garmin software on his computer while I gave Gary a tutorial on how to use the device.  Overall it went quite well.   Pete made progressing on the computer while Gary picked up how to operate the unit very well.  Again, it was good to visit with Gary and Judy, not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 

Back to the bike ride.  I rode over and met Pete part way to his house.  From there we headed straight to the Greek Island.  You’ll never guess what we ordered, yep you’re right the breakfast special.  After breakfast we got back on our bikes and headed over to a ACE Hardware store on the north side of downtown Rochester.   

We wanted to pick up a few new foam brushes to use on the Jubilee pinball machine Pete and I were in the middle of restoring.  We were to the point of applying multiple coats of varathane to the playfield surface.  The varathane dries to a hard shinny surface.  This extra step of coating the play field is a fair amount of work, but it sure makes the game look and play great once everything is put back together.  ACE had what we needed and after our purchase we were back on our bikes again. 

Next we rode straight home with plans for Pete to come over to my house to work on the game using the new foam brushes we just obtained.  We took our time riding home and even though we never got our pace very fast it was still a decent workout due to the fact it is mostly uphill this direction.   The snow never amounted to much this day.  The flurries were too light and infrequent to accumulate on the ground.  It did warm up a little for the ride home, but not much.  The weather wasn’t a problem because we dressed appropriately for the weather.  

Following are the statistics from this ride, 10.3 miles total, 19.4 max, and almost exactly 1 hour of ride time with an average speed of 10.2 mph.
David Lindquist