Saturday April 8, 2006 was a cold and windy day, but not bad enough to keep Pete and I from riding.  Steve was also planning to ride with us but changed his mind at the last minute.  Steve and his family are planning a trip to Florida during the Easter week when the schools are off and he couldn't afford the time for this relatively long ride.  Pete's and Steve's daughters Megan and Rebecca both play on the same soccer team and their team had an organized scrimmage with two other teams out around 29 Mile Road and Mound on this Saturday.  Bob also considered joining us on this ride, but when he heard the plan he was concerned we wouldn't be back in time to take his son Mark to his soccer game at 4:30 pm.  It turns out Bob made the right choice.  Pete and I planned to ride our bikes out and watch some of the games and then ride home.  We knew this would be a fairly lengthy ride, but we did not anticipate how tough a ride it would end up being due to the wind and cold.  It is up hill most of the way there and this added to the level of difficulty during the first half of the ride.

On the way there we headed straight east toward Stoney Creek Park.  We rode through the park on the bike path for quite a ways.  We ended up cutting down a utility road and went through the parking lot near a nature trail.  Once we got out of the park we were on dirt roads for a while.  We actually went too far, all the way to 30 Mile Road.  We had to double back to 29 Mile Road and had to guess which way to go to get to Mound.  Pete picked the right direction so we didn't go any further out of the way. 

The game was already started when we showed up.  The driveway to the parking lot was covered with large stones which made riding difficult.  We spotted Steve's van and Pete's car and headed over that way to meet up with Steve, Cheryl and Elaine.  They were sitting in the vehicles while watching due to the cold temperature.  Steve came out to greet me and Pete as we rode up.  Steve had his nice camera with the long lense hanging from his neck ready to take pictures.  We stood outside for a few minutes while we watched the girls playing soccer.  We also sat on a bench of small bleachers off to the side until we decided it was too cold.  Once Megan and Rebecca team was done we went and sat in Steve's van to warm up.  Elaine and Cheryl were sitting in Pete's car.  Pete promptly sat in the drivers seat and reclined the seat and fell asleep almost immediately.  Steve and I were both surprised how quickly Pete had fallen asleep and how he was able to stay sleeping even while snoring so loud.

Steve and I had a nice conversation while Pete took his nap.  We woke Pete up in a few minutes when it was the girls turn to play again.  I happened to notice this one guy who walked passed our van a couple times.  Something looked funny about this guy and at first I couldn't figure out what didn't look right, but then it hit me.  This guy was bow-armed.  Bow-armed is like bow-legged, except with your arms instead of your legs.  I pointed out the bow-armed guy to Steve and Pete and it struck a funny bone because we all three ended up laughing about this for quite a while.

We watched the second game.  The games weren't very long.  Two teams would play while one sat out.  They just kept rotating this way until each of the three teams got a chance to play three or four games.  We watched a little of the third game before Pete and I finally got back on our bikes for the ride home.  The ride back was a little easier with the elevation in our favor this direction.  I'm glad I brought two bottles of water for this ride, I needed every bit of liquid I could consume.

On the way home we stopped at the Speedway gas station at Tienken and Rochester Road.  I went in and got us frozen Pepsi drinks at this rest stop.  I got myself a 22 once and I got Pete the 44 once which was only 10 cents more.  I knew how Pete enjoyed his frozen drinks so I got him a large.  Even though Pete complained when he saw the size of his drink compared to mine, he didn't have much trouble polishing it off.

The rest of the ride home is straight west along the side walk of Tienken Road.  There are three pretty good size inclines along this stretch that were kind of difficult based on the distance we had already ridden and the wind.  But, being finely conditioned bicyclists Pete and I made this stretch without too much trouble or effort.  I was sucking for air at the top of the second incline which actually has a slightly less steep grade than the first, but with it happening right after the first it always seems harder.  This was our first ride of relative decent length lately and I really enjoyed the ride.         

Following are the statistics from this ride, 31.3 miles, 25.0 max mph, 3 hours and 0 minutes of time on bikes and an average speed of 10.4 mph.
David Lindquist