Sunday July 29, 2007 Pete, Bob and I
planned to ride our bikes west on Clinton River Trail (CRT). Our goal was
to see how far west we could travel on this trail. Previously we always
stopped at Opdyke and either went north or south. This day we planned to
go further west as an exploration ride, just see where the trail would
take us.
Pete rode over and met me and Bob at
my house. We headed out the back of the sub to Squirrel Road. We knew we
could pick up CRT in Auburn Hills by traveling south on Squirrel.
Squirrel is a good route, it has nice wide black top paved bike paths
along side the rode and it has a very bike friendly bridge for going over
the I-75 freeway. It didn’t take us long to get to the CRT, we got on the
trail heading west. Again, after a short time we arrived at Opdyke. We
crossed Opdyke staying on the trail heading west. We quickly had our
doubts on how much further we were going to go on the trail. The trail
surface was not paved and it was covered with crushed stones and the
further we went the less crushed the stones. It got to the point where we
were riding on rather large stones and I was concerned my thin hybrid
tires weren’t going to hold up to riding on this surface. After a short
discussion we all three agreed to turn around and head back toward Opdyke,
no sense going any further west on this surface.
We made it back to Opdyke without
any flat tires. Now we had a decision of where to go next. We all had
planned for a rather lengthy ride this day, we certainly didn’t want to
head back home already. Without much thought we just started riding south
on Opdyke. Before we knew it we had come upon Woodward in the Birmingham
area. Road construction was taking place on Woodward and the right two of
the four southbound lanes were closed to car traffic. This was perfect
for us, brand new smooth paved surface all to our own. There wasn’t
anyone out working and we had these lanes all to ourselves. We just flew
down Woodward, only stopping when we came across red traffic lights. At
this point we had decided to ride all the way to Dugan’s for lunch.
It was around 10:30 am as we
approached Dugan’s. Dugan’s didn’t open until 11:30 am so we had about an
hour to kill before we could have lunch. We called a few of the local PCT
Bike Club members to see if they wanted to ride with us for a little ways
and then join us for lunch. We got Barry on the phone and he was in.
Next we got a hold of Gary by phone and he was in as well. Next we called
Tom, but we couldn’t get a hold of him, he wasn’t home at the time. We
made plans to meet Gary at my Mom and Dad’s house in Royal Oak and we were
going to meet Barry a little later at the intersection of Coolidge and
Catalpa. Me, Pete and Bob arrived at my Mom and Dad’s just a couple
minutes before Gary showed up. We went inside to visit a few minutes
before heading out to meet Barry.
Not too long ago Pete had set the
club record for drinking raw eggs. Tom tried to beat Pete’s record but
couldn’t drink as many as Pete. For a while my Dad thought we made up the
whole story of Pete drinking raw eggs just to trick Tom into trying.
Well, this bothered Pete and while we were in my parent’s kitchen my Dad
asked us if we wanted anything to eat or drink, he offered us some fresh
breakfast buns. Pete said yes he would like an egg to drink. This was
Pete’s way of showing my Dad that he actually drank the eggs to set the
club record. We got an egg out of the refrigerator and Pete quickly
cracked it in a small glass and drank it down. He did it so fast I
thought my Dad might have missed seeing it happen. I could tell by the
look on Gary’s face he thought this was pretty gross and Gary wouldn’t be
drinking any raw eggs any time soon.
I took a few pictures with my cell
phone from the ride this day. I will post the pictures at the bottom
of this page.
After our short visit with my Mom
and Dad it was time to continue our ride. We should arrive at Dugan’s
right about when they open. When we went outside Gary noticed he had a
slow leak in one of his tires on his bike. This was going to be a
problem, can’t very well ride with a leaky tire. Gary’s wife Judy has a
decent bike so Gary figured he would quickly ride home and use Judy’s bike
and then get his tire fixed later. Pete decided to ride back with Gary
and Bob and I headed off to meet Barry. Our plan was to all meet back up
at Dugan’s. Bob and I headed west on Catalpa where we met Barry in the
parking lot of a Family Video store near the intersection of Coolidge. We
explained what happed to Gary’s bike and told Barry we were just meeting
them at Dugan’s. Apparently Gary wasn’t the only one with tire issues.
Barry was riding his son Brian’s bike because Brian had borrowed one of
the wheels off Barry’s bike. Because Barry’s bike was not usable on short
notice due to the missing wheel he just used Brian’s.
Barry took us through some side
streets on our way to Dugan’s. It only took us a few minutes to travel
the couple miles to Dugan’s. We locked our bikes outside in the parking
lot and then made our way inside. Pete and Gary weren’t far behind, they
joined up with us just a few minutes after we were seated. We sat
upstairs so we could look out the large open windows onto Woodward and
also keep an eye on our bikes. Odds are no one would pay attention to our
bikes, but it is nice to be able to keep an eye on them just in case.
I can’t remember what everyone
ordered for lunch, but I do remember we had a good time hanging out
together while eating lunch. After lunch Barry headed back south to his
house. Gary wanted to do some more riding and Pete suggested he ride back
with us and have Judy drive out to take him home later. Pete invited
everyone to his house for a cookout and pool party. Gary called Judy and
she agreed to meet later at Pete’s house.
We went back up Woodward riding in
the closed lanes on our way back home. On the way home Bob complained
about being sore and he was having a little trouble keeping up. He
mentioned that he had done a fair amount of running the past couple days
and his body was sore from running and the combination of this long bike
ride. We slowed the pace down a little and Bob caught his second wind and
didn’t have any trouble keeping up for the second half of the ride home.
Some clouds came out as the
temperature warmed up as the day progressed. I was glad to see the clouds
to help reduce the heat of the sun, otherwise this would have been a very
hot ride home. Over all the weather was very nice, perfect for a long
bike ride. Diane and I ended up going over to Pete and Elaine’s for the
swim and cookout. Turned out to be a fun summer weekend day.
Following are the ride statistics from this day. 39.0
miles total, 27.5 mph max speed, average speed 11.2 mph with time on
bikes of 3 hours and 27 minutes.
David Lindquist
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