Carol - (Wednesday June 20) - I woke up to sunshine today and decided to call my good friend and fellow biker, Penney, to ride with me, however, I had appointments earlier in the morning so I didn't actually call Penney until about 2:00.  I was able to talk her into putting down her current project and go for a ride in the sunshine with me.  I was still a little bit tentative about riding in traffic since I had my incident a couple of weeks earlier so I really appreciated her coming with me not only for companionship but also for support.  We met up at my office in downtown Bellingham and took off from there.  It was really warm (or should I say warmer than normal) about 75 degrees.  Now, I have to admit I didn't give Penney much time to prepare.  She barely had time to eat an apple and get her riding clothes on plus she hadn't been on a ride for a month and the one thing that was missed was pumping up her tires.  We were out about ten miles when it became apparent that my good friend was having some issues.  We stopped for a minute so she could take off her sweatshirt and I gave her some of my raisens and some nuun for her water bottle.  This seemed to help for a while.  Our route took us into Ferndale via a way I had never been before.  The roads in Ferndale were extremely congested so we were careful to stay together and watch for traffic.  We were lucky that a bus stopped to let us cross by Pioneer Park were we turned and headed back to Bellingham.  It was nice to be away from traffic and back on rural roads for a while and we were actually able to visit for a time.  We finally made it back to  Marine Drive and I had ridden ahead a ways when I pulled over and noticed I couldn't see Penney.  I waited for a reasonable amount of time and decided to ride back to see if she was okay.  It was obvious when I got there that she was done.  We rode a little bit further before she called her husband and had him come pick her up.  I felt really bad that she didn't enjoy the ride that much and especially that I didn't give her time to prepare adequately before we left.  It turns out that when her time pressure was checked she was basically riding on flat tires.  I still can't believe that she rode as far as she did under the challenging conditions.  All I can say is "Penney you are a true friend". 

Total Miles  28
Weather  75
Average speed.....Doesn't really matter as we had a good time under the circumstances.