On Monday June 6, 2005 Pete called me while I was driving home from work.  He was wondering if I wanted to do a bike ride that evening.  I told him I had already made plans with Bob to jog out at Bloomer, but that wasn’t until 7:20 pm.  Pete and I decided we had plenty of time for a nice ride. 

I rode over to Pete’s house and we took PCT (Paint Creek Trail) south into Rochester.  Pete wanted to stop by the Rochester Bike Shop to ask about splicing the wire on his speedometer that he broke a while back.  The guys at the bike shop told us they have never had any success splicing the very thin wire used on the Cateye units.  They recommended that Pete just order a replacement wire harness kit to replace the broken wire. 

After the bike store Pete wanted to stop at the ACE Hardware store formerly known as Damans.  Pete was looking for some plumbing supplies to splice together a plastic tube in his sprinkler system.  Apparently Pete just had splicing on the mind, he was trying to splice everything.  We looked in the isle where the underground sprinkler supplies were stored and couldn’t find what he needed.  I noticed the shelves are slowing becoming emptier every time I visit this store.  Too bad, but it appears the new management is going to slowly destroy this one time excellent hardware store.  The people that work there used to know where stuff was and were helpful when you asked them questions.  When Pete couldn’t find what he needed he asked a young man working if he knew where the part might be located.  The kid gave Pete a dumb look and said if we have it, it might be down that isle.  Good help is hard to find, especially when you are competing against Wal-Mart mentality.  Pete finally did find his part and after checking out we were back on our bikes headed home. 

Pete and I talked a little about the Tour de Cure ride sponsored by the American Diabetes Association coming up on June 12, 2005.  Pete told me he would ride with me.  I think this is a very good thing Pete is doing, and it will be nice to have someone I know riding with me.  We are going to do the 30 mile route.  They also have a 50 and 70 mile route.  Maybe we can progress up to the longer routes over the next few years.  I think we get a free lunch and there are rest stops along the way to get a bottle of water.  I think this is going to be a well attended event that I am looking forward to participating.  This will be my first time riding in an event like this, so I’m really not sure what to expect, but I think it will be fun.  If any one reading this thinks they might want to participate, it’s still not too late.  They also have some shorter routes for those that aren’t quite the finely conditioned athletes as the members of the Rochester Hills PCT Bicycle Club.  I will start the planning a little sooner next year to give everyone more time to plan for this event and hopefully we can get a few more participants. 

Off topic for a moment.  We have had animals living in our family room ceiling for a few months.  We must have a hole on the inside of the brick chimney that allows animals to crawl into the ceiling above the family room.  We are going to get this fixed, but we want to be sure the animals are gone before plugging the hole.  Recently we saw a raccoon climbing down the outside bricks of the chimney, and then the next day we saw another raccoon actually going down the opening.  Before I thought it was just squirrels in the ceiling, but now we know the problem is a little bigger.  I bought a large live trap from Lowes for the purpose of catching and relocating the raccoons.  We suspected there was more than one.  The trap works quite well.  As of June 8, 2005 we have caught four, (yes four) raccoons, one opossum and one ground hog.  I have taken pictures of all the critters so far with the exception of the first raccoon.  I think I will make a separate page to record this project.  I know it isn’t bicycle related, but I still think it is interesting and I thought the bike club fans might find it interesting as well.   

Back to the Monday evening bike ride.  The weather again was perfect for this ride.  Pete and I took our regular route home through various subdivisions.  Following are the statistics from this ride.  Total distance was 12.3 miles, 11.0 mph average speed, 26.5 max speed for a total time on bikes of 1 hour and 6 minutes.
David Lindquist