This week the club ride was on Sunday February 13, 2005.  Bob and I did a long walk Saturday morning, but I am not going to write about the walk other than to mention here that we did about a 12 mile walk to Lapeer and Greenshield area and back.  We intended to have breakfast at the Wooden Eagle, but they were closed so we had breakfast somewhere else.  And we ran across a really cool unique grave stone in a old cemetery on the way home. 

On Sunday the plan was for Bob, Rich and me to meet Pete over at Brewster around 8:30 am.  The three of us left Bob’s house around 8:25 am.  Pete had just called and said he was leaving around the same time.  When we got to Brewster Pete wasn’t there yet so we kept going toward his house.  Just before we got to Pete’s street we saw Pete heading our way. 

Saturday was a beautiful day, temperatures slightly above freezing and the sun out strong.  I was concerned before the ride on Sunday that the bike paths might still be in bad shape since the city plow did not clear the paths after the last snow of a couple inches.  Luckily the sunny Saturday cleared the streets and paths so we had good surfaces for riding on Sunday.  It was still cold when we started, around the mid 20’s and with the wind blowing it felt even colder.  I was prepared for the cold with a sufficient amount of layers.  Pete complained about being cold for the first half of the ride.   

Again this week we wanted to ride a bit further than the Greek Island before stopping for a late breakfast or early lunch.  We ended up going to the Coney Island in the Target shopping center.  This is the same place we went last week.  This week there weren’t any Oakland County Sheriffs at the Coney Island.  Rich and I both ordered Texas style French Toast, Rich got his with ham I believe and this being my second breakfast I passed on the meat.  Bob ordered a buffalo burger and Pete got the breakfast special with a Greek omelet with hash browns and toast.  We all had our usual coke or diet coke, except Pete who just got water since he has given up drinking pop, it will interesting to see how long this lasts.  I need to take a moment to report an all time first.  In all the years I have been hanging around with Pete I have never finished a meal before him.  Pete has an incredible ability to eat fast, I think one of the reasons he can eat so fast is because he doesn’t fully close his month on each chew, allowing him to get in more chews per minute than the average person.  On Sunday however, I actually finished my meal before Pete.  In fact Pete was the last one done at the table.  He did have more food than everyone else, but this typically does not stop him from being the first one finished.  Who knows maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.  I will keep an eye on Pete to see if this is a new trend or just a freaky abnormality.     

After our meal we all suited back up for the ride home.  We were thinking of stopping in Best Buy to look around, but they weren’t open yet.  We ended up riding over to Kohl’s department store and we did some quick shopping.  Pete was still cold and he ended up buying a sweatshirt which he put on right away underneath his jacket for the ride home.  He also bought some boxer underwear made of fabric with hundred dollar bills randomly printed all over.  This is similar fabric to the pattern of his favorite dew rag.  Pete told us he lost his dew rag.  Elaine, you need to come clean and give back the dew rag, it is not that embarrassing.  Anyone stumped on what to buy Pete for his upcoming birthday in March might want to consider dew rags.   

After leaving Kohl’s our next destination was Damman Hardware, Bob had something he wanted to return.  The ride to Damman’s was a nice easy ride.  Rarely will I ride out front, for a couple reasons, one of which is a basic club rule related to your own safety, “Always keep Pete in your line of sight.”  But, just before we got to Damman’s I happened to be out front and I decided to pick up the pace a little since we had been riding so slow most of the ride.  It felt good to keep up a good pace for a couple minutes.  As I was taking off my helmet and visor cogs I noticed Rich had grabbed a hold of a Damman’s shopping cart and was pulling it along side while he was riding toward the store. Another good deed by our bike club scoutmaster, Rich.  The young cashier manning the register on the right noticed Rich’s action and promptly thanked him as he brought the cart all the way into the store and place it with the other carts.  Once we got to Damman’s Bob went right to the service desk to do his return.  I picked a nice spot just inside the door on the brick window ledge to sit and wait, I couldn’t think of anything I needed to buy.  While I was just sitting there watching my glasses fog up, the lady helping Bob offered him a small box of Valentine candy for free.  She also offered a box to the rest of us as well.  We all took a box of candy, I planned to give mine to Diane and tell her it was an expensive box of the finest chocolate money could buy.  I know Diane no longer reads these stories, so I am safe knowing she will never know the truth.  The fact is even though it was a box of free, probably stale from last year, candy it is the thought that counts.  It’s not like I would eat the candy before at least giving it to my wife.  Since the lady helping Bob and the other young cashier were so nice to give us free candy I felt it was appropriate to give each of them a Rochester Hills PCT Bicycle Club sticker.  As I gave them each a sticker I suggested they place them on their bicycle helmets.  They each had a puzzled look on their faces as they accepted the stickers, it must have been a heart felt look of gratitude. 

The rest of the ride home was uneventful, other than Pete almost knocking Bob off his bike as Pete sharply cut in front of Bob shortly after passing from behind.  Pete saw a circle drive that he wanted to ride through and he didn’t let the fact that Bob was in the way stop him.  This is just more support for following the rule of never letting Pete out of your line of sight.  

I took a few pictures during the walk on Saturday and just a couple from the ride on Sunday.  See below for the pictures.    

Following are the statistics from this ride; 18.6 total miles, 23.5 max speed, 9.8 average mph and 1 hour and 53 minutes total time moving on bikes.
Thanks for checking in.

David Lindquist