Sunday February 1, 2004, better known as super bowl Sunday, the PCT bicycle club took to the streets and bike paths of Rochester Hills for our weekly ride.  Bob, Rich, Steve and myself attended today’s ride.  Pete had his rather long streak of continuous weekend rides ended due to feeling under the weather.  But, fresh off the IR list to fill in for Pete was Steve.  We were all glad to see Steve back in the saddle again.  Both Steve and Rich brought their digital cameras today, so we have pictures at the end of this report.  Believe it or not, I have recently been accused of embellishing the accounts of our rides and some have even suggested I have fabricated some of the stories.  So, whenever possible I like to include pictures to help document what happens.  Needless to say most of the accounts stated in these ride reports are accurate, as far as you know. 

The weather today was great.  The sun was out and the skies were clear.  I am also happy to report the temperature was much warmer than we have seen over the past few weeks.  It was a balmy 16°F when we started around 10:30 am and it was around 24°F when we finished around 2:45pm.  Hopefully this is a sign that spring is just around the corner.  As a club we have learned that temperature is not a problem at all, but having to deal with the slushy or previously traveled snow is difficult.  So we are looking forward to the warmer temperature just for the fact it also brings the clear pathways.  I do feel bad that we forgot to warn Steve about keeping his feet warm.  Steve showed up with tennis shoes and one pair of socks.  The good news is Steve’s team of doctors report that all his toes that froze off have successfully been reattached without any long term side effects other than the one mistake and he now has two big toes on his right foot.  Really not a major problem when you think about it.    

The city of Rochester Hills provides a very nice service of clearing the walk/biking paths along all the main roads.  This allows us to travel a good distance without having to ride in busy and dangerous main roads.  It has taken a couple weeks to get all these paths plowed, but at least they are done now giving us clear sailing.  The only thing you have to watch out for is the build up of snow and ice chucks at street intersections.  We found out the hard way that sometimes you can fly through this stuff and sometimes not.  At one particular intersection I was in the lead and I tried to ride through the snow and ice build up after crossing a street.  I got about half way through when my bike decided it was going any further.  The momentum of my body kept going forward and I ended up falling sideways to the ground.  No worries though, I didn’t get hurt.  I landed on my hands, picked up my bike and continued on.  I think we all experienced this to some degree to day. 

Our goal for today was to ride to our most regular lunch destination, when heading south, Hamlin Pub.  We took a combination of main roads and side streets.  On the way we passed Dinosaur Hill and since the gate was open when we got to the cemetery we decided to cut through.  The problem with this plan was when we got to the other side of the cemetery that gate was locked.  An insurmountable obstacle you might think, but not for this group of PCT club members.  We just routinely carried our bikes over the chain link fence.  It helps when the fence is only eight feet high, or only maybe only four and a half feet, I can’t really remember.  In honor of Pete at home nursing his cold, Bob decided to do a barrel roll over the fence.  It ended up being a flip from a running start that was actually quite impressive.  Word on the street is one of the club members got hung up on the fence for a few seconds on the way over, but I am here to report that it is just a nasty rumor and there is no truth to it, as far as you know.  

We went down under the bridge of Rochester Road and past some of the light industrial business of Rochester in this area.  We stopped in front of  VooDoo Choppers (another link) to take a couple pictures and noticed a bank of snow that looked like a ramp.  There were tire paths from what appeared to be bicycles going up the snow ramp.  Being adventurous as we are we decided to try out the ramp and see who could get the most air.  I think Bob would have won but his bike got stuck in the ramp and he flew off backwards.  Steve also got excellent air but he ended up losing control in the forward direction and he ended up with a face plant.  Rich was manning the cameras at the time and after Bob and Steve both crashed he decided pass on his turn.  I was definitely going to smoke that snow ramp and probably fly at least 20 feet through the air to a successful two point landing, like I usually do, but Bob and Steve destroyed the take off area so I had to pass as well. 

Since we hadn’t been to Bloomer Park in a while we decided to ride around there for a few minutes.  We first headed over to the sledding hill to check out the action.  There were quite a few families taking advantage of the snow cover decline.  Again, we were all set to tackle the hill on our bikes, you know just to be able to say we did, but too many young children around so we passed.  Safety is important to us and the last thing we want to do is put anyone around us in harms way.  Speaking of safety reminds me of our club Safety Coordinator, Rich.  If you haven’t yet noticed we have just recently added Rich’s profile to the web site.  Check it out by clicking Rich’s initials on the home page, or even picking his name right here on this page.   Bob has spent the most time at Bloomer and he knows the trails quite well.  We decided to try out the trails to see how passable they were.  Bob took the lead and before we knew it we were walking next to our bikes, the paths were just too poor to safely ride.  After a long and strenuous walk along the big river, over a small creek and across a couple paths we ended up back to the sledding hill and on our way our of the park.  After this workout my wicking material was definitely wicking because we had all worked up a good sweat by this time. 

Next stop Hamlin Pub.  As usual the lunch was good and the diet coke outstanding.  We made it easy on them and we all ordered the Monte Cristo sandwich.  We tried to talk our way into a club discount.  We even gave them one of our club stickers, but no luck we paid full price.  Steve was officially presented his club logo stickers at lunch today.  Speaking of the stickers I am happy to report that the orders have finally tapered off to a manageable level and we now have inventory under control and our shipping department reports we are fully caught up on deliveries.  Drink coasters are the next item we have just recently started to promote, and they are becoming quite popular.  We had a recent inquiry from a shopping expert who was looking for volume discounts on the coasters.  After a lot of correspondence back and forth the Sales department reports we are close to an agreement.  Don’t wait too long to order your coasters.  As a beta testing effort the coasters were tried out this past weekend at a large gathering that was fairly well attended by both adults and children without incident. 

After lunch we suited back up and headed home.  Again we took a combination of bike path and side streets as we headed north.  We didn’t make any stops on the way home and this part of the ride was rather uneventful.  I transferred my speedometer to my new bike, but for some reason it didn’t work today.  So I don’t have the detailed statistics to report and I can only estimate that today’s ride was approximately 20 miles. 

David Lindquist 

The first 10 pictures are compliments of Rich>  The pictures after the first two rows are compliments of Steve.