This weekend I did a nice ride early with Pete Sunday morning, September 26, 2004.  We were going to do a Saturday afternoon ride the day before, but too many conflicts and we never ended up going on Saturday.  Both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days, absolutely perfect.   

I left my house about 7:20 am and I arrived at Pete’s house right at the designated meeting time of 7:30 am.  It was a little cool, around 58°F when we started so I had a sweatshirt with a thin windbreaker over top.  It was still comfortable enough to wear shorts, matter of fact if I hadn’t worn shorts I would have been way too hot.  Pete had a light jacket on with shorts as well.  Pete couldn’t find his dew rag so he rode this week without a dew rag.  If anyone needs ideas for what to get Pete for either upcoming holidays or his birthday next year a supply of dew rags would be a good idea.

Our first destination was to the Greek Island for a little breakfast.  Both Pete and I had to be back home by 10:30 am, so we didn’t have time for a really long ride, but plenty of time for a quick breakfast and then a decent ride.  We arrived at the Greek Island just a couple minutes before 8:00 am, which is the time they open on Saturday.  We rode around the parking lot for a couple minutes to kill time.  Once inside we both ordered a breakfast special.  Pete got his eggs sunny side up and I ordered mine scrambled, he also got sausage for the meat while I ordered ham.  Since I am being so detailed here I might as well tell you I ordered white bread for my toast and Pete ordered whole wheat.  And, in keeping with club tradition we had diet cokes to drink. 

After breakfast we decided to head over to Livernois and take it south to the entrance to the Clinton River Trail.  This trail runs east and west between Rochester and Auburn Hills.  We stayed on this trail past Hamlin, past Crooks, past Adams all the way to Squirrel Road.  Once we got to Squirrel we rode around Auburn Hills for a little while.  Pete took me past and through the parking lot of the first apartment complex that he and Elaine lived in right after getting married.  I think it was called Bloomfield Square, or Bloomfield something or other.  They looked like nice apartments, even though Pete didn’t speak very highly of them.  We also rode around a couple shopping center parking lots in that area.  We noticed that the Franks Nursery store at the corner of Squirrel and South Blvd is going out of business.  They had signs all over the store, so if you need plants or nursery supplies you might want to check out the going out of business sale.

Keeping an eye on the time we decided it was time to start heading back.  We just took Squirrel straight south back toward home.  Squirrel has a pretty good size hill on the east side of the rode heading north.  We thought it would be fun to try and better our club speed record of 36.1 mph.  Just before the decline of the hill I started pedaling fast and Pete did the same thing right behind me.  I was only able to get 31.5 mph and Pete got 34.0 mph.  I think I started pedaling too early and was getting tired part way down the hill.  I also have a few other excuses as to why I was so slow.  My tires were a bit low on air pressure and I forgot to turn my front water deflector sideways to reduce wind drag.  The next time I try for a speed record I will correct these issues and also do a better job of timing my acceleration so I don’t run out of energy before getting to the bottom of the hill.  

Jonathan and Mark’s soccer team had another game since the last update.  They played on Saturday September 25 against a Lake Orion team at Friendship Park.  This team had three girls, but don’t take that the wrong way, the girls were three of their better players.  We won this game 9-0.  The nice thing about this game was two of the boys on our team that had never scored a goal before both got a goal.  Bob and I are working the boys a little harder in practices this season, still allowing them to have fun, but at the same time hopefully teaching them the value of conditioning and good practice. 

Following are the statistics from this ride.  20.3 total miles, 31.5 and 34.0 max speeds, 10.3 mph average speed and total time moving on bikes of 1 hour and 57 minutes. 

Thanks for checking in.

David Lindquist