Sunday March 11, 2007 Bob and I went to the City of Rochester Fire Station Pancake breakfast this morning.  The fire Station does a fund raiser to raise money by hosting a pancake breakfast the second Sunday of the month in January, February and March each year.  This is the first one we attended this year.  We went to one last year and if you remember the story we had a memorable time.  This old guy we were sharing our table with called Pete “dumb as a hoot owl”.  Feel free to go back and re-read the story from March 12, 2006, it is definitely a classic. 

We got there around 9:15 am.  Our plan was to eat some pancakes and then do a hike around the downtown area.  It appears all the fireman show up to work this event.  They have a lot of guys working and they do a really nice job of serving the customers.  We paid our five dollars and they quickly got us seated.  We each had a plate of pancakes and sausage in front of us.  Bob is a vegetarian again so he didn’t eat the sausage.  The pancakes appear to be some sort of wheat and are very tasty.  We each had water to drink and I also had a styrofoam cup of milk as well.  I’m not a big sausage fan myself, but I did eat one of the two pieces they gave me. 

It appears that a lot of the people that attend this event are family and friends of the fireman.  I guess this makes sense, typically word of mouth is the way these things get attention.  There were quite a few little kids running around with their parents.  I think the kids like to climb around the fire trucks and emergency vehicles more than the pancakes. 

It didn’t take Bob and me long to finish eating.  After our short visit we headed out for our walk.  We considered walking over toward the Clinton River Trail, but instead we stuck to the sidewalks and walked around the city.  At one point we saw a police car sitting on the side of a road.  There was a police officer in the car and he had his radar pointing out the window at the oncoming traffic.  We waved to the cop as we passed by.  He waved back, so at least we knew he was awake.  We slowly walked passed this area to see if this cop was going to pull anyone over.  The speed limit on this street was only 25 mph and it appeared everyone was going more than 25.  A couple cars passed by going at least 35 and no movement from the police car.  We were starting to think this cop just wasn’t going to make the effort to pull anyone over when a car went speeding passed going at least 40 mph, maybe even a little faster.  Well, this must have been the limit this cop was looking for because he quickly took off after this guy and pulled him over.   

I made a comment to Bob that it looked like all the people in the cars passing by on this road were dressed up and maybe were coming from a local Church that just finished a service.  I figured that would explain why everyone was speeding.  Seems like one of the most dangerous places to be walking or biking is near a church that just let out.  I’m not sure why everyone is so aggressive right after getting out of church, but this is definitely a trend I have noticed for many years.  I can remember when I was just a kid and walking to our car after church, you had to be careful as the crazy people start racing about to get out of the parking lot.  Makes me wonder what message these churches are instilling in their members. 

Once this cop finally pulled someone over we picked up our pace and continued our walk.  It ended up being an absolutely perfect day weather wise to be outside, we lucked out again.  After a few miles we ended up back at Bob’s van parked near the fire station. 

Following are the statistics from this breakfast hike, I base this estimate on the time we were out walking, approximately 4.0 miles.         
David Lindquist