Sunday July 8, 2007 was a warm summer weekend day, perfect for a bike ride.  I rode over to Pete's house and from there we rode over to pick up Steve at his house.  We got there around 10:30 am and we had to wait a few minutes for Steve to get ready.  The temperature was in the mid 90's but at least there was some cloud cover to block the sun otherwise it would have been extremely hot.

From Steve's we rode through the back of his neighborhood to Dutton Rd on our way to the Paint Creek Trail (PCT).  We took the PCT north to Lake Orion.  The trail was relatively busy with walkers, joggers and bikers.  I say relatively busy because it really never gets as busy as it should for the population in this area.  The trail is still only used by a very small percentage of people.  Pete was sore this day and Steve and I slowed down a couple times to allow Pete to keep up.  I can't remember why Pete was complaining about being sore, but I do remember that Pete was complaining.

As we rode down the trail we decided to go to the Sage Brush Cantina for lunch.  Once we got to the end of the trail we rode through the parking lot of the new condos out to Lapeer rode.  We headed straight to the old downtown area to the Sage Brush.  We arrived in front of the restaurant at 11:20 am and we thought it opened at 11:30.  We locked our bikes to a light post on the sidewalk out front.  As soon as we walked up the steps to open the front door we quickly found out they weren't open yet.  Back down the steps we read on the painted sign on the front of the building that on Sunday's they open at noon.  So, we had to waste about a half hour before lunch.  Instead of unlocking our bike we decided to walk around town.  We were near the Poppy Seed which is another of our favorite places to eat in Lake Orion, it is a really good deli that we highly recommend.  We went inside the Poppy Seed and bought a pop and sat outside sipping our drinks.

It felt good to just sit and relax outside on this warm day.  We were sitting in the shade and talked with a couple people that happened to walk by or drive up while we were sitting out front of the Poppy Seed.  Steve was telling stories keeping us entertained.  Pete was wearing one of his many dew rags looking sharp.

After approximately 20 minutes we started walking the short distance back to the Sage Brush.  They had just unlocked the door when got there the second time.  We were the first customers of the day.  The nice young hostess sat us at one of our regular tables in the non-smoking section.  The Wimbledon tennis tournament was on TV and we watched some of the Federer and Nadal match.  It is amazing how quickly this place fills up once they open.  The Sage Brush is without a doubt the most popular place in Lake Orion.  As typical we each had a delicious filling lunch.  We also get very attentive service, Pete never has to sit long before getting his diet coke refilled.  Sometimes when they get tired of Pete drinking his pop so fast they will bring over a larger pitcher of pop.

After lunch it was time to ride home.  With Pete being sore this day he didn't even want to consider the Dutton hill so we decided to take the trail part way and cut off at Clarkston Rd.  By heading west we would end up on the other side of Dutton hill.  From Clarkston we rode to Kern Rd and then to Gunn Rd before we eventually ended up on Adams Rd.  We rode the paved bike path along the west side of Adams south to Dutton where I split up from Steve and Pete who headed east on Dutton toward their neighborhood.   

Following are the statistics from this ride 18.2 miles total, 23.5 max speed, 10.8 mph average speed and 1 hour and 40 minutes time moving on bikes.  
David Lindquist