recipes and ride reports

Oops, didn't finish this post last weekend. I'm definitely not going to make all 8 rides this time around; there's just not as much joy in it when I'm putting people in danger just to have a coffee I didn't make myself. But I did have more errands to run last weekend that I could make coffee-adjacent:

Coffeeneuring #4: Technicalities Count

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/4304357303
1. Where I went: Colleen's, 61 High Street, Medford, MA.
2. When: Saturday, November 7th, at around three.
3. What I drank: Nothing -- I went with the coffee ice cream option (coffee-fudge!) as I had had Too Much caffeine that week and didn't want much more.
4. After acquiring the ice cream, I walked with my bike up a street that I've never walked on, shaded with pretty fall colors, so that I could actually eat it while away from other people. Relaxing, after a very long week of election-tension and work doing long-term planning (so many telecons). No pictures of the pretty leaves as I had my hands full with ice cream and pushing the bike, and didn't want to get my phone sticky.
5. Total distance: 3.9 miles, including the walking bit.

Coffeeneuring #5: Construction Detours

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/4309656702
1. Where I went: Donuts with a Difference, 35 Riverside Ave, Medford, MA
2. When: Sunday, November 8, around 11:30am.
3. What I drank: drip coffee (and a cinnamon roll)
4. Hit construction in downtown Medford that hadn't been there the day before, but got waved through and avoided town on the way back. Not sure what was going on; looked like a pipe problem or something, since they were digging a long trench in the road and nothing had been announced ahead of time.

On the way home, I realized I might have managed to sliiiiiightly overload even the cargo bike with heavy groceries; it was a bit wobbly, and I turned the power on mostly because more speed smoothed out the wobbles a bit. Given how heavy the bags were, I probably had close to a hundred pounds of groceries on there, which is lighter than putting a person on the back but was not as centrally balanced.

Also, to be honest, I still don't get the love for this local donut shop. It's way better than the omnipresent chain -- and a similar style, so perhaps it's just that. There wasn't anything wrong with my still-warm cinnamon roll, but it didn't have much flavor. Sweet, airy, warm, yes. Also the only other person in the donut shop besides the clerk when I walked in was a cop. I kid you not, although after a week of political doomscrolling my instant reaction was panic rather than amusement. Sigh.

5. Total distance: 7.3 miles. Outbound on the way to the donut shop and then the grocery, I was riding without the assist, so 3.4 miles if one only wants to count that.

I absolutely forgot it was coffeeneuring season until I saw Strava posts from a couple friends, too late last weekend to go off and do my own ride.

So I figured I'd do at least one this weekend, while also heading down to city hall to drop off my mail-in ballot and save the USPS the trouble.

The only hiccup being the part where I grabbed an envelope of word puzzles from the National Puzzlers League instead of my ballot. Usually, this would be exactly the right thing to bring coffeeneuring, as I could linger over my coffee in a lovely little shop, doing puzzles. Not so much in the "only three people in the store at a time era". I still got my coffee (and pastry; I am definitely a coffee drinker but not a coffee connoisseur and the pastries are the draw at coffeehouses to me).

Coffeeneuring #1: Modern American(o)

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/4207477120
1. Where I went: Modern Pastry, 20 Salem Street in downtown Medford
2. When: Saturday, October 17th, at around noon.
3. What I drank: an Americano, since they had just finished a pot of drip and I didn't want to make them make a new one after the morning rush. (Pastry: sfogliatelle)
4. This was kind of the ride of mainly failing at everything except acquiring coffee (and the last sfogliatelle in the case), since my photo (below) has my hand in it, I forgot my ballot, and my Brompton was refusing to shift, but it was really nice out and felt good to be riding outdoors rather than on the trainer.
5. Total distance: ~3.6 miles, but Strava didn't start registering quite at the start, for some reason. The 3.1 it recorded are still enough.



Coffeeneuring #2: Cinnamon Swing (State)

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/4211458273
1. Where I went: Mystic Coffee Roasters, 30 Riverside Ave in downtown Medford
2. When: Sunday, October 18th, at around 8:30
3. What I drank: a "Cinnamon Swing" latte. (Pastry: spinach croissant)
4. This time I successfully remembered my ballot! Also, Strava seems to be picking up on "ballot" in ride descriptions and giving people little red-white-and-blue routes on the activity feed, which is very cute. I did try to get the rear hub shifting, but mostly kept making it worse, so it would only shift between the top and bottom gears and not into the middle. Alas! I'll put it in the stand later.
5. Total distance, 3.8 miles, measured correctly this time.