Saturday July 21, 2007 Pete, Bob and I went on a bike ride.  Steve couldn’t join us this day because he was in Ann Arbor for some reason.  It was another perfect summer weekend day and we took advantage with a nice bike ride. 

Bob and I rode over and met Pete at his house.  We took the Paint Creek Trail (PCT) south toward our fair city of Rochester.  I thought we would see more people out of the trail this day,  but even on a perfect day like this the trail wasn’t crowded.  We took the trail all the way past the Library and we stopped at the Farmers Market that was taking place in the parking lot across from the fire station.   Bob bought a loaf of veggie bread from a vendor he has bought from before.  We each took a piece of bread and ate it while we walked around looking at the other items for sale.  We didn’t buy anything else and after a short break we got back on our bikes to continue riding.  

We decided to have lunch at the Hamlin Pub so we headed over to Rochester Road to go south to the Pub.  On our way Pete wanted to stop and look at used cars in the car dealerships located on the east side of Rochester Road.  When we got to the Chevy dealer we noticed a bunch of balloons and banners with people hanging out in the parking lot.  It looked like a party taking place right in the parking lot.  When we got closer it became evident that Mayor Barnett was having a campaign party trying to draw attention to him self for the upcoming election.  They were cooking hot dogs on a grill and giving away free cookies and cans of pop.  The mayor was wearing a big white chef hat and an apron, I think he was supposed to be cooking the hot dogs. 

When one of the Mayor’s assistants saw us on our bike she immediately came up to us and asked if we would pose for a picture with the mayor.  We said sure why not, he seemed like a nice guy and they were giving away free food.  We started talking to the mayor and told him we were the core members of the Rochester Hills PCT Bike Club.  I gave them some bike club stickers to prove we were a legitimate club.  They were quite impressed with us and asked if we would give the mayor an endorsement on our website.  Again, we said sure why not.  The more we talked to the mayor we agreed he was a good guy and when he told us he was very active in supporting the expansion of rails to trails and he had a big part in the expansion of the Clinton River Trail we agreed he was our kind of mayor.  The mayor even knew where the recycled material came from that was used to pave a portion of the Clinton River Trail west of Crooks and told us he was going to be taking part in the formal grand opening of this portion of the trail in a couple weeks.  They had a photographer taking our picture and she told us if I gave her my email address she would sent me a link to the pictures she had taken.  I will post the pictures at the bottom of this page. 

After a fairly lengthy visit with the mayor we continued on south heading for the Hamlin Pub.  We purposely didn’t eat any hot dogs so we could still eat lunch at the pub.  But, we did have a few cookies and a pop.  Needless to say Pete was hamming it up with both the mayor and a few of his assistants.  Pete was telling everyone about his hockey team web site and giving out the web site to anyone that would listen. 

After a few miles of riding we arrived at the Pub off Hamlin Road.  We locked our bikes out front and went inside to get a table for lunch.  It wasn’t very busy this day.  Mike the manager came over to our table and joined us in conversation for a while.  We are almost regulars at the Pub.  I guess you could call us semi-regulars.  The British Open gold tournament was on TV and we watched some of the golf as we relaxed taking to Mike before ordering lunch.  I ordered ½ a turkey Rueben and cup of chicken dumpling soup.  Pete order a full turkey Rueben sandwich and Bob order two side dishes, rice and vegetables.  Since Bob has become a vegetarian again he orders sides quite often for his meals.  Mike was complaining that business had been slow lately.  We told him we hoped business would pick up soon.  He always is a fun guy to talk with, he does a nice job of making you feel comfortable. 

We took our time eating lunch and watching TV.  Once we finished eating and had our fill of diet Coke it was time to head out for the ride back home.  Instead of going north a short distance before cutting through side streets heading west which is our typical route returning from the Pub, we started going west on Hamlin Road.  We ended up going all the way to Squirrel before heading north.   

Near the Auburn Hills business district there was a relay for life walk going on in the park.  We rode our bikes through the park to see what was going on.  We were actually riding against all the walkers going the opposite direction.  I don’t think we got in any ones way, but it didn’t dawn on me we were going the wrong way until we were exiting the park.   

We stayed on Squirrel all the way to Tienken for the rest of the ride back.  We cut through the side streets toward me and Bob’s neighborhood. Pete kept riding the additional 2.2 miles further west to get to his house.  Overall another great ride.  We were out a good portion of this day checking out what was going on around town out on our bikes, you just can’t beat a good bike ride.   

Following are the ride statistics from this day.  21.9 miles total, 24.5 max speed, average speed 10.4 mph with time on bikes of 2 hours and 6 minutes.
David Lindquist