On Sunday April 18, 2004 the official club ride was held with Rich, Steve, Pete and Jason joining me for this ride.  Bob had school work to do so he wasn't able to join us today.  Before I get into the details of Sunday's ride I do want to mention the ride Bob and I did two days earlier on Friday April 16, 2004.  April 16, that reminds me of something, Happy Birthday to my sister Carol.  

On Friday, I used a vacation day to make it a long weekend.  Bob and I decided to go for a ride and we took our fishing gear again.  This time we went to Lake Orion and we fished at Lake Orion.  This lake is quite large, which surprised me.  It was chilly by the water and the fish weren't biting, so needless to say we didn't catch anything, but it was still fun.  We didn't start out with the best luck.  About a mile and a half from home I got a flat tire.  This time it was a fairly large screw that imbedded itself straight into the center of my front tire.  When I pulled the screw out I could hear the air leaking so I quickly turned around and started riding back toward home.  I knew I wasn't going to make it very far but I figured I might as well go as far as I could before I had to start walking to minimize the time to get back home.  Once the air got too low I had to walk to keep from damaging the tire.  It was still early, around 8:45 am.  Bob and I had gotten a fairly early start.  My plan was to take the inner tube out of my old bike and put it into the flat tire so that we could get on with our fishing trip.  Luckily, Bob had forgotten to take out his garbage so he went back home while I walked to my house.  Shortly after I got home I quickly removed the flat tire and took out the bad inner tube.  I was just getting ready to remove the tube from my old bike when Bob called to say Rich hadn't left for work yet and we were going to borrow his spare inner tube.  Rich is always well prepared, it must be that Boy Scout instinct.  Bob brought over the tube and we repaired the tire quickly and were back on the rode.  I did learn a good lesson from this experience.  I will always travel with a spare tube and tire pump from now on.  My speedometer was acting strange today.  It  quit working once in a while and I would have to reseat it into it's holder, this was a sign of things to come.  Bob and I ended up riding, with a short portion being a walk for me, about 30 miles total this day.   

On Sunday we had scheduled a ride that none of us had ever done.  I had been doing some research looking for areas that we could not only ride to, but also had bike trails once we got there.  Addison Oaks always looked like a good spot, not too far away.  It ended up being a little further than I estimated, but a really great place to ride.  Rich and I rode over to Brewster to meet Pete and were glad to see that Steve had gotten back from his vacation in time to join us.  The four of us core members started out from Brewster heading north to Silverbell where we turned right to Gallagher Road.  We took Gallagher to where it runs into the PCT and then took the trail north to Adams Road crossing.  To go to Addison Oaks we wanted to head north on Lake George Road which runs into Orion Road between Gunn and Adams.  But since we couldn't find a good way to get off the trail shortly after Gunn we stayed until Adams and just doubled back on Orion Road to Lake George.  Jason called Pete and we ended up meeting Jason on a side street just off Orion about a 1/4 mile west of Lake George.  So, Jason drove over with his bike on a rack on the back of his vehicle and joined us for the rest of the ride.  We had gone approximately 7 miles when we met Jason.  

It was still an additional 5 miles to Addison Oaks.  It was dirt roads most of the way so there wasn't much car traffic to worry about.  It was beautiful farm land on both sides of Lake George Road.  There were a few homes scattered along the way but no real big developments, yet.  We stayed on Lake George until we got to Predmore where we went right and then only a short distance until we came to Kline Road where we turned left.  Addison Oaks was on our left as we approached.  It is a very nice park with a clean looking campground.  It was a beautiful warm day.  The temperatures were in the high 70's and the sun was strong.  The park was almost empty, it appeared we had the place to ourselves.  We rode around the main off road bike trail.  The bike trail was well marked and quite fun.  It did have a couple of soft areas where the ground was still a bit mushy and it was difficult riding through these areas.  After we rode for a few minutes we decided to stop and eat our sack lunches.  We stopped in the middle of the trail near a large fallen log that we all sat on while eating.  Steve was very winded and mentioned he had gotten tired quicker than normal.  I think maybe the heat and the fact that he had just gotten home from his vacation very late the night before just wasn't a good combination for Steve this day.  Steve did suck it up and made it the rest of the way around the park and the ride home.  It was downhill a majority of the way to Addison Oaks which made for fun riding there, but what goes down must come up.  The ride home was more difficult going up hill and the wind had picked up and was coming straight at us most of the way.  I really enjoyed Addison Oaks and I will definitely go back there to ride.  We also saw wild turkey shortly after arriving into the park, which was kind of cool, you don't see wild turkey running around every day.    

Speaking of wild turkey, Pete had played hockey that same morning before our ride.  Apparently Pete was in a hurry to join us after hockey and instead of putting on shoes he made the mistake of wearing sandals.  Granted it was obviously going to be warm, but many times we end up in areas having to walk our bikes through fields or over fences.  Sandals just aren't a good idea.  Luckily Pete didn't hurt himself or his feet.  At one point the bike trail in the park was flooded and not passable and we had to walk our bikes through a short brushy area.  There were many picker bushes that I brushed against and I was glad to be wearing my hiking shoes. 

Good news is the new tube I put in my front tire worked fine, no more tire issues.  The bad news is my speedometer vibrated off during the bike trail ride at Addison Oaks.  I'm not sure how far we rode before I noticed it was gone.  Looks like I will have to get a better one to replace my now missing speedometer.  Since it was 12.2 miles to the entrance of Addison Oaks and Jason estimated we rode about 4.5 miles at the park and then another 12 miles back home, we did about a 29 mile ride total.  We all stopped off at Steve's house and had a coke before Rich and I did the final two miles back to our neighborhood.  Steve did bring his camera, and when he wasn't struggling to suck  in air into his depleted lungs, he was snapping pictures.  So, check back later and I will post the pictures from this ride.  Check out his link for pictures from this ride thanks to Steve.

Thanks again for checking in on us. 

David Lindquist