This week we rode on Sunday November 7, 2004.  Bob and I were the only ones that rode this weekend.  Pete was in Germany, raising havoc in a foreign land no doubt.  We are still looking forward to Rich and Steve rejoining us shortly. 

On Friday I rode my bike to the shop where I got it, RBS Rochester Bike Shop.  When you buy a new bike at a decent shop they offer a free first time tune up.  Since the bike is a few months old with quite a few miles of use it was time for the first tune up.  I noticed the brake cables had stretched slightly and instead of me messing with the adjustment I figured I should take advantage of the free offer.  In addition to adjusting the brakes they also went over the whole bike to make sure nothing had loosened up.  They needed a couple hours to do the job so I left the bike there.  The guys at the bike shop got a kick out of the air horn I have strapped to the front of my bike.  Before we left Bob asked one of the young guys that worked there if he should lock his bike to the rack.  He took one look at Bob’s bike and said “I wouldn’t worry about it, we’ve never had a bike stolen from this shop”.  Then he pointed to a bike just a couple away from Bob’s and said, “If any bike was going to be stolen it would be that one, before yours”.  I guess it must have been a real expensive bike.  As you probably have figured out by now, Bob went with me and we walked back home.  Bob has a bike rack for his van and we drove back to the shop later in the day to pick up our bikes.  We got approximately 8 miles of riding one way on this Friday.   The walk home was long, but enjoyable.

Sunday turned out to be a nice day like Friday, and Bob and I decided to head over to the Hamlin Pub for lunch and watch a bit of the first half of the Lions game.  We got to the Pub around 1:30 so the game had already started.  Turned out the Lions didn’t play well and their opponents the Redskins weren’t much better, overall a pretty boring game with a lot of punting.  At least we had a typical good lunch from the Hamlin Pub. 

I brought my radio again and strapped it hanging from my handlebars on the left side so we could listen to the radio broadcast as we rode home.  The game was still boring, but at least we stayed updated as we rode.  It was windy and the ride home, as it more often than not, turned into a struggle against the wind and the always-present hills.  Instead going north right away and then west on either Tienken or Walton, we started out west right on Hamlin Road.  We took Hamlin all the way to Squirrel before heading north.  This was kind of a nice change in scenery for the ride home.  The ride home definitely took all of our energy.  The wind was coming from the northwest, so no matter which way we went on the way home it seemed like we were riding straight into the wind.  Still a fun ride, give us a call if you want to join us some weekend, we are always looking for new company.  

Following are the statistics from this ride.  19.2 total miles, 23.0 max speed, 10.1 mph average speed and total time moving on bikes of 1 hour and 53 minutes.

David Lindquist