Memorial day weekend and all my regular bike riding partners are out of town, so unless I can recruit family members it looks like I'll be doing solo rides this weekend. 

Friday May 26, 2006 I took a vacation day to make the holiday weekend even a bit longer.  Since I didn't have any firm plans for this Friday I figured I might as well start out with a nice lunch time bike ride.  I was intending to ride to Penn Station and pick up a carry out for me and Diane for lunch.  This would be a decent medium distance ride with a purpose.  I could put the warm subs in my burrito basket which doubles nicely as a cooler or an insulating pouch. 

I had only gotten a little over a mile from home when it started to rain.  The rain clouds came in fast.  I didn't get the feeling it was going to rain just ten minutes earlier when I left my house.  The clouds were thick and dark in the east toward where I was intending to ride.  I wasn't sure but it was looking more like a heavy rain, so I changed my plans.  I decided to stick close to home in case it started to rain hard.  I still wanted to at least ride five miles, otherwise I would feel cheated.

I stayed on Adams heading south past Tienken to Palmair, where I turned right.  I stayed on Palmair until it wound around west and north before finally depositing me back onto Tienken.  I rode Tienken past the neighbor hood I usually enter to get to my house.  I stayed on Tienken all the way to Squirrel Road.  Once I got to Squirrel I had to decided whether to head north or south.  Again, I based my decision on the weather and I headed north which is toward home.  It was still raining lightly, but it appeared that it might start coming down heavy any minute.  There was very little traffic on the roads, probably a combination of being a holiday weekend and the middle of the day on Friday. 

There are quite a few relatively new churches on the west side of Squirrel all the way from Tienken to Dutton.  As I passed by one church after another I noticed very little traffic around the churches as well.  I practically had this whole area to myself.  The fact that it was raining was probably the reason I didn't see anyone out walking their dogs or out jogging.  I stayed on Squirrel all the way to Dutton where I turned right toward home again.   Once I got home I put my bike away and then I changed into dry clothes.  About 30 minutes after getting home the sun came out and it appeared the rain was done for the day.  The rain clouds had mysteriously disappeared almost as quickly as they came in earlier.  Turns out I could have probably done a longer bike ride, the heavy rain never did materialize.  Just bad luck on my part.

The last mile and a half and I was back home.  It wasn't a long ride, but still better than nothing.  Following are the statistics from this rain shortened ride, 5.2 miles total, 22.0 mph max, 25 minutes of time on bike with an average speed of 12.4 mph.
David Lindquist