On Saturday August 20, 2005 I did two rides.  The first ride was an early morning ride with Bob and Pete and then a second one in the afternoon with Bob and his son Mark.   

For the morning the plan was to meet at Brewster at 7:30 am and ride somewhere to get breakfast.  Bob and I were on our way over to meet Pete at Brewster when we ran into him close to our neighborhood.  Pete must have gotten up and out early.   

The temperature was very nice when we started, a little cooler than what have been experiencing the past couple weeks.  Pete needed to get back from this ride relatively early because his daughter Megan was in a soccer tournament this weekend.  We talked about riding to Troy to find a place for breakfast.  Time was going to be a problem if we went all the way to Troy.  We ended up stopping at a Coney Island off Crooks tucked behind a fast food restaurant.  I wasn’t even aware that this place existed.  It was a little more expensive than the Greek Island, but the food was very good.  

While we were eating our breakfast a few Oakland County sheriffs came in and sat a back table.  Pete was clowning around when we were ordering our food.  Pete ordered some sort of meal that included eggs and when the waitress asked Pete how he wanted his eggs he said Arizona style.  She looked at him funny and finally asked what Arizona style meant.  I can’t remember what he told her, I was to busy laughing to myself.    

As we sat at the table we noticed it started raining outside.  It was a little cloudy out, but we weren’t expecting rain.  It wasn’t raining hard, but it was a fairly steady drizzle.  We just finished eating and we decided to have another half a glass of Diet Coke while we waited to see if the rain might slow down before starting our ride back home.  Over the past many weeks and months we have had outstanding weather on the weekends for our bike rides.  Today was one of those days where we were just going to get wet.  By the time we finished our Diet Cokes it was raining even harder.  Since we didn’t have any option we put on our helmets and mounted our bikes and started heading north back toward home.  It wasn’t pouring, but it was a fairly steady constant rain for the entire ride home.  Bob had brought a light weight jacket and wore it on the return trip.  I had stuffed the rain poncho I used on the century back into it’s small plastic container that looks like a car tire that I got from Pete.  I wore the poncho to keep some of the rain off my upper body.  Pete didn’t have anything but the shirt on his back, so I think he ended up getting the wettest.  By the time I got home the front portion of my clothing was completely soaked.  Even though it was raining it wasn’t real cold so the ride home really wasn’t too bad.    

Later in the day Bob called me to ask if I wanted to ride somewhere to get an ice cream cone.  Mark and Jonathan were over at Bob’s house and planning to go with us.  It hadn’t rained for a few hours so we thought we would be safe making a short ride.  Jonathan backed out at the last minute, but Mark still attended.   

We decided to go to the TCBY in the shopping center on the south west corner of Tienken and Rochester Road.  This is a relatively short ride, but it does have a few hills, especially on the return trip heading back west.  It wasn’t real busy, there were only a couple people in line ahead of us.  Bob and I each ordered a soft serve frozen yogurt in waffle cone and Mark got a large cup with vanilla soft serve with Oreo crumbs mixed in.   

As we sat at a table inside TCBY eating our ice cream it starting raining outside.  I guess this was just our day to get rained on while riding.  We finished our treats and this time we did not wait for the rain to let up.  We just got on our bikes and started riding home.  Again, the rain wasn’t real hard and this time it slowed down and actually stopped about half way home.  We just did a reverse of our route there on the way home, straight across Tienken on the bike path on the south side of the street.    

This afternoon ride ended up being 9.8 miles and I didn’t reset my speedometer so the following statistics are a combination from both the morning and afternoon rides this day.  Following are the statistics from these two rides, 23.5 miles, 10.3 average speed and 2 hours and 16 minutes time on bikes.
David Lindquist