Saturday June 16, 2007 Pete and I did a bike ride.  Because Pete has been fighting his allergies and lack of energy lately we decided to go north to Lake Orion so that the second half of the ride would be easier due to the fact it would be slightly downhill.    

Our streak of great weather continued this day, another perfect day for a bike ride.  We certainly have much better weather in Michigan than the state gets credit.  I don’t know why but it seems a lot of people I run across including people I work with love to complain how bad the weather is in Michigan.  I just don’t see it this way, I think the weather in Michigan is fantastic.  I can only remember a few days where it is either too cold or too rainy to keep me from doing something outside.  I think the change of seasons is refreshing, I like having different temperatures and I actually prefer the cold temperature over the really hot temperatures.   The nice thing about living in Michigan is it doesn’t usually get too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter, it is really a very nice balance.  Sure there are always a few days each season of extreme weather, but it doesn’t last long so it really isn’t a big problem. 

I rode over and met Pete at his house.  From there we headed over to Paint Creek Trail (PCT) and we took the trail north to Lake Orion.  The trail was in great shape, relatively smooth and easy to ride.  Riding the trail is never as easy as riding on a hard paved surface, but overall it isn’t too bad.  There will always be extra resistance on a surface of crushed limestone.  The small loose particles and stones cause a very minor additional cushioning effect which requires extra effort when compared to a smooth hard surface.  The additional energy required to ride on the trail is difficult to notice unless you are an experienced rider.  Sometimes when the trail is wet the resistance is much higher and the additional effort required to ride is very noticeable.  This has been a very dry spring, so we haven’t had to deal with a wet trail.  It has been so dry it is actually dustier than normal.      

The ride to Lake Orion was quite enjoyable.  We rode at a nice easy pace, we didn’t push ourselves at all.  We tried to time our arrival to around 11:30 am so that the Sage Brush would already be open for lunch.  I think they open at 11:00 am on Saturday and noon on Sunday. 

Both Pete and I ordered reasonable size lunches, neither one of us ordered the super burrito, so we didn’t have leftovers when we were done.  My lunch was tasty and just enough food to fill me up for the ride home.  I got an extra glass of water at the end of my meal that I poured into my water bottle for the ride home. 

To avoid the Brewster Hill at the end of our ride we decided to cut off the trail at Clarkston Road crossing and take Kern Road to Gunn.  Kern is a dirt road kind of out of the way, so it isn’t too heavily traveled by cars.  We got a ways down Kern when we ran into a road block caused by road construction at an intersection going over a creek.  We looked around to see if there was a way around the road block, but no luck.  We were forced to turn around and head back.   

We came to the entrance of the shooting range at Bald Mountain.  We went into the entrance and road up to the area where people were shooting.  Pete stopped to ask a guy that worked there for directions.  He gave Pete a map and pointed out the location of a side entrance to a trail from the road we just came from.  This guy then offered us ear plugs if we wanted to stay and watch some shooting.  We told him thanks for the offer but we had to keep moving.  We went out to the road and followed the guy’s directions to the side entrance to Bald Mountain.  We took the trail into Bald Mountain to cut across to another road as an alternate route home.  The trail in Bald Mountain was fun.  We had to pay attention due to raised tree roots on the path in various locations.  The trail went up and down so it was a good workout as well.  After a mile or so we came out the other side and started riding on another dirt road again.   

This just wasn’t our lucky day, after about a mile or so we came across another construction road block that we couldn’t get around.  Two in one day, this was very unusual and very bad luck.  This time we had to double back and ride where we had just come from and ride all the way to Lapeer Road.  We were able to take Lapeer Road south toward home and finally made our way back toward my subdivision.  We ended up probably riding and additional 3 to 3 ½ miles due to the closed roads.  It was a bit more riding than we planned and a little frustrating while it was happening, but in the end it turned out to be a great ride.  If it wasn’t for the first road block we would have never done the trails through Bald Mountain.  I could have done without the second road block though, oh well everything worked out fine in the end.  

Following are the statistics from this ride 23.3 miles total, 28.0 max speed, 10.6 mph average speed and 2 hours and 12 minutes time moving on bikes.   
David Lindquist