Friday July 20, 2007 I used a vacation day and did not go into work on this Friday.  Bob typically never works on Friday’s, but for some reason he was working a few hours in the morning.  Bob rode his bike to work this day and my plan was to meet him at his office to get lunch and then ride home together. 

We needed to get some maintenance work done on our Jeep.  One of my goals for the day off was to set up an appointment at North Hill Tire for the Jeep.  Diane was heading out to run some errands so I put my bike in Diane’s van and asked her to meet me at North Hill Tire.  I dropped off the Jeep and made the arrangements for the work to be done.  Diane showed up right on time and I unloaded my bike and said farewell to Diane as she headed off in the van to her destinations.  I hopped on my bike heading south on Rochester Road to meet Bob at his office.  We had set a time of 11:00 am to meet and I was pretty well right on schedule. 

I rode down Rochester Road on the sidewalk along the west side of the street.  I managed to avoid all the car traffic coming in and out of parking lots along the way.  It is a noisy ride on Rochester Road.  There is a lot of nonstop traffic on this street which is very noisy if you are walking or riding.  I typically avoid this road when riding bikes just because of the noise.  I also avoid this road when driving because it is always so busy and there are so many traffic lights that it is always a slow go. 

I arrive in the parking lot of Bob’s office just over the boarder of Rochester Hills into Troy right around 11:00 am.  I only had to wait a couple minutes before Bob came out with his bike ready to go.  We were both hungry and decided we should head south to find somewhere to eat before turning around and heading north back toward home.  Initially we agreed to eat at Hockey Town Café if it was located at Livernois and 16 Mile as we were guessing.  We didn’t find Hockey Town at this intersection so we had to find somewhere near by to eat.  We didn’t want to ride any further in the direction away from home, we knew we already had a fair distance from where we were to get back home. 

We came across a restaurant called Bahama Breeze which looked nice from the outside.  Bob told me he had wanted to try out this place so that is where we stopped for lunch.  It is kind of a neat looking place inside as well.  It wasn’t real busy and we got seated quickly.  It turned out the service was slow and the food just average and the prices a bit on the high side.  Needless to say we probably won’t be stopping there for lunch again, there are just too many good places around and I’m afraid this wasn’t a good one.  I can’t remember what we ordered, but like I said the meals weren’t just average. 

After lunch we headed west for a couple miles before heading back north toward home.  The ride home was at a nice easy pace, but still a decent workout due to it being slightly uphill most of the way.  Bob and I talked as we rode and once we started toward home we didn’t stop we just kept riding.  It was around 2:45 pm when we arrived at home.  Following are the ride statistics starting from when I got on my bike at North Hill Tire.  23.5 miles total, average speed 10.1 mph with time on bikes of 2 hours and 18 minutes.  
David Lindquist