Last Coffeeneuring ride of 2016

I set out on November 20th to try a new route that would be 49 miles on my upcoming 49th birthday.  The temperature was in the 50's but it felt a lot colder.  Since I was testing out a new route, I had my phone mounted on my bike so I could see the map when I needed too, but it was just too cold.  My phone died and I had to warm it up in order to get it to turn back on and finally just gave up and just figure out the best route home.  I was getting pretty cold as well at this point, so I saw a McDonalds and decided that it would just have to be my coffee stop.  Now, I must confess to being one of those people who doesn't really drink coffee.  I mix my coffee in with my soy milk and a variety of sweet flavorings, but since I don't digest milk, and McDonalds doesn't have any alternatives, I just had them put some sugar in my coffee and was happy for the warmth.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually liked it.  I have heard before that McDonalds makes a good cup of coffee, but hadn't really tested it for myself.  I was so grateful for the warmth though, that I may have to try it again and see if it wasn't the circumstances that made it a great cup. I ended up with somewhere over 30 miles, but I'm not completely sure how much since my phone kept shutting off.

Lake Ride

It was a beautiful day on November 13th , a little cold, but it was supposed to hit 60 degrees (F) and the sun was shining.  We had a wonderful, nearly 40 mile ride around three different local lakes.  It was a no-drop ride and we had a new rider on a heavy mountain bike and there were several intense hills.  We took our time and enjoyed the ride at whatever pace was needed.  I love riding with a group of people who appreciate the help to make themselves better. We have a great community of cyclists here.

As we got back into town, we saw that Eurasia Cafe was open on Commercial Street.  This is a spacious coffee shop that allows us to bring our bikes inside while we enjoy a a cup of coffee or breakfast. I just had their warm mocha with soy, but if you are riding your bike on Commercial Street, make sure and stop at Eurasia for a cup.  It was cooling down because the sun was setting, and it was dark by the time we were heading home, but it was a wonderful experience!

Katy Trail

We left my house early Saturday morning (November 5th) for the long drive up to St. Charles, MO to start spend the weekend on the Katy Trail.  We parked at the boat house and had lunch at the Bike Shop Cafe.  It was still pretty chilly out if you weren't standing in the sun so we had to have a lot of layers for the ride.  We headed out and the trail was beautiful. The leaves are at the perfect point of fall colors and the Missouri River was flowing on our left.  You really couldn't ask for a better day.  Our camp was about 28 miles down the trail so we were able to ride at a comfortable pace and enjoy.

Our campsite was AMAZING!  It seemed very secluded because of the bluffs.  There was a family with a dog to one side, on the way to the bathroom, that we couldn't see, but occasionally heard. The nearer campsite was a boys group that was also riding their bikes on the trail.  They were supported and didn't have to carry their gear, but that meant that they had a lot of camping equipment.  They had some extra wood and gave us some so we were able to have a beautiful campfire to warm up before calling it a night.  We really appreciated the firewood because had tried to find some at dinner and were unsuccessful.

We woke up around dawn but were slow to get out of our tents because we could hear water dripping on them.  I really didn't want to get my warm clothes damp, but I finally realized it was moisture dripping off the trees, not rain, and it wasn't going to get any better, so I may as well get up.  A cup of coffee made with the jet boil and a bowl of hot oatmeal warmed me up inside and we eventually got our tents packed up and we were ready to go.   Last stop at the bathroom before starting on day two.  Although the day was a little chilly, the sun was shining and the trail was beautiful!  Just look at the photo below. 

We passed a beautiful winery on top of a hill and Julie wanted to stop, but Donna thought it wasn't open yet.  Julie really wanted to check it out so she road close enough to see the sign with a phone number and called to find out they were indeed open, so we got to take a rest stop at Wine Country Garden in Defiance, Missouri. I had my coffee for my Coffeeneuring Challenge Ride #5 with some fish tacos and some tempura chicken fingers.  The food and the atmosphere was fabulous and we even enjoyed the company of a cute little cat.

Fork and Ride: SBC

Sunrise over Battlefield

   Wonderful, cool, fall morning on October 29th with a group of local cyclists, all meeting and riding the trails before dawn.  We got to watch the sun rise while riding and throughout the ride, the mist was still rising off the fields.  It was such a beautiful morning with wonderful friends, many of whom I have not been able to ride with for several months.  It was great to see them and have a chance to visit with everyone while riding this morning.

The fields were beautiful as we passed them and I couldn't help but pull out the phone for a wonderful shot. 

 We even got to ride through the "haunted forest"!  There were a lot of scary monsters and villains along the path.  Hang on to your bike and keep pedaling! We made it through and didn't lose a single friend, although we started to wonder when a couple of them took longer to get through the "forest".  It turned out that they were expecting one of us to jump out behind every obstacle, so they were riding super slow.  This was actually a detour from the originally planned ride, but worth the extra time, although my stomach was really ready for food by the time we got to our breakfast destination.

As you can see we had to get this great big table to fit all of us together for breakfast at Springfield Brewing Company.  I had a simple breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast, but others had the bacon and sausage pancakes. I also didn't have any coffee with my breakfast, so I invited everyone to join me afterwards for Trader Joe's Pumpkin Spice Coffee at my house to fulfill my Coffeeneuring challenge #4 for 2016!  By the time we go to my house it was just Juana, David, Michael and me, but we had a great cup of coffee and they got to say hi to Tsuki, who had to catch the Frisbee a few times for our guests. All in all it was a GREAT morning!

Coffee at my house!

Ride 3

I am a little late (a full week) late posting this, but it has been a busy week.  I posted in our local Facebook riding group that I would be riding this route slowly with Tsuki and stopping for coffee if anyone wanted to join me.  Gene thought it would be a great way to get back on his bike after his mini rest since his return from touring for six weeks.  Wow, I love to hear about the touring stories of others, and can't wait to get some more of my own.  Tsuki ran like the wind this time.  We ended up riding 18 miles but she ran nearly half of it this time!  She knows this route so well, and has stopped here so often, that she didn't even complain about being left outside, as long as she could see me.  The weather was perfect my Sweet Emotion coffee was perfect, and I even had great company.  This is what coffeeneuring is all about!  Oh, and Gene hadn't been on several of my trails before, so he got to learn a new route around town.

Midweek Coffeeneuring Ride!

What a Wednesday today was!  I actually was ready early this morning so I decided to stop at Panera on my way to work.  My Panera Rewards card is giving me a free bagel every day in October, so I am trying to stop by every chance I get.  I also had received a $25 gift card so I decided to get my Jenny (my co-teacher) a coffee as well.  I try to bike commute every day on my lovely Kapua and the Panera is only about a mile away from work, but as I was approaching the store, I realized, I only had one cupholder and wasn't sure how I would make a second cup work.  I started looking at my bike to find a solution and thought, I can just stick it in the handlebar bag.  That should make it safe......

As I was ordering my drinks, I realized that I could count it as a coffeeneuring ride as well, so I would need to remember to take a photo once I got my drinks.  Of course, when that moment arrived, I completely forgot.  There were too many other things on my mind, like getting these drinks safely to work, on bumpy old roads.  I unlocked my bike from the bike rake around back put the cups on the handlebars and headed off.  When I had to stop at the red light, I remembered my need for a photo and quickly got it taken before the light turned green.  I am pretty proud of my ability to get all the important elements included in the quickly snapped photo.

The drinks made it to work safely, even though there was a lot of coffee splashed onto the lids.  Jenny was happy to see me with a lovely drink, and the day started quiet well!

Coffeeneuring 2016

Setting out on our first coffee-neuring ride of the new season.  Tsuki has spent the summer resting because she tore her ACL in the spring and was ordered by the vet to avoid running, jumping and playing for 6 weeks.  I have also had a busy summer and have only taken her out on a couple of short runs.  She is doing much better so I decided to have her join me on the first ride. I decided to take her out to the new trail that opened up this summer that connects Southcreek trail and Wilson's Creek, which provide even more trail and less road time to my 17 mile loop.

 

It is a beautiful morning.  The temperature is in the 70's and the sun is shinning.  It rained really well a couple of days ago and the trees are starting to change color. There is nothing more to ask for to make it better.  

I decided I would just make my own coffee and find a good spot for us to sit and enjoy it  and the new gazebo and the new trailhead was a great spot to stop.  Tsuki had already run a couple of miles at this point and was needing a break so we enjoyed the gazebo while I drank my coffee and she had some water.  

Once we started back and got on the new section we had to pass the gate that kept the cows in their pasture.  

Tsuki was a little nervous about the cows being so close, but she stayed and the trail and didn't make eye contact with them and they watched her carefully as she ran by.  They seemed to be as cautious of her as she was of them, halfway through this portion of the trail, she really started to slow down so she spent most of the rest of the ride on the back of Kapua.

More coffee and geocaching

My plan for the morning was to take some warm coffee to drink while geocaching to the Greater Springfield Farmer's Market and seeing if they had something warm and caffeinated to drink.  That farmer's market is usually more about the produce than the extras and sometimes don't have much available for coffeeneuring.  So I stopped at this geocache (http://coord.info/GC61ATA) and dug around some leaves, weeds, and moldy scat.  I saw a pen and thought how ironic that was to find at a geocache, and just moved it out of my way.  I finally gave up, took a photo, and moved on.  Tsuki was really tired of waiting and was ready to move!

I went to the next park that had 3 or 4 Battleship caches and stopped at this bus stop and started looking.  I looked all around the bench and found nothing, so I started widening my search and in the grass by the curb, I found a pen, that looked JUST LIKE the other pen at the last cache.  That reminded me of the clue: While aboard the USS Missouri when you are writing home remember your penmanship and I realized it was the cache.  I opened the pen, and there it was!  VERY wet, I got a fresh piece of paper, signed it and added to the cache.  

Now I need to go back to the first geocache and sign that log as well!  I moved on to the next two geocaches in the same park, with the same hint, but was unable to find them.  I think they may have been picked up by someone, not realizing it was a cache, or maybe washed away or cleaned up with the leaves.  I didn't waste a lot of time looking since I now knew what I was looking for, so I moved on to the next cache and found it very quickly.  It was nicely dry, so I signed, took a photo, and moved on.  

  I was needing to go to A&B Cycle and sign up for a class on bicycle repair.  They open at 10 am and it was around quarter till, so I decided to skip the Farmer's Market and head to the bike shop! Tsuki and my bike got a lot of compliments while we were there, and once we were done, I took her out to the grass so that she could get any business done that she couldn't do in the shop and correctly get my clothes layers right for the temperature outside.  She was bored and decided to be cute!

Longer ride with Tsuki

Sunday, Oct 25th, 2015: I decided to do my 15-17 mile bike route around town that stays on the trails.  There are a couple of multi caches on the route that I had been avoiding. I looked at them and saw that they weren't difficult after all but they did require getting some information and manipulating numbers so we (Tsuki and I) headed out around dawn.

I found the locations and took pictures of the clues and then rode to Classic Rock & Coffee. The staff was super friendly and once they saw Tsuki waiting outside, kept going on about how cute she was. One of the staff came out to pet her and took our photo. 

I ordered the recommended oatmeal and a warm mocha and sat outside to keep Tsuki company.  I gave her a little almond and oatmeal but she didn't like the almond. However when I was done, I let her have the bowl and she held it close and licked it clean. 

I solved the geocaching locations but decided to continue on my route instead of going back to find them. So a found another cache down the road and the we continued ride another 15 miles for a total of nearly 18 miles. 

Garage Sale Coffeeneuring Ride

This morning a club at the high school I teach at was having a garage sale.  I promised my students that I would stop by and visit them on my bike and that I would bring Tsuki.  Since Kapua hasn't made it out on any of my coffeeneuring trips, I went to the garage to pack her up and found her back tire VERY flat.  I didn't have the time to fix the flat this morning so I took the Volvpe, again.  Tsuki LOVED the girls at the garage sale.  She ended up with a new toy that they threw for her, and many of the wanted to take her home.  You can see some her tweets if you follow her on twitter @dogonbike

After eating some cookies they were selling at the bake sale table of the garage sale, I headed over to Kingdom Coffee & Cycle for a hot cup of coffee, because this morning the temps were in the 40's and standing around got me pretty chilled.  Tsuki waited patiently for me outside, protecting the Volpe and even let this guy talk to her.  It helped that she could see me.  I know that we completely blocked the sidewalk, but since there was little to no foot traffic this morning, there were no complaints.  The coffee was perfect, warm and frothy, and since I didn't want Tsuki to wait too long for me to drink it, I poured the rest in thermos and we headed out to find some geocaches.  

There were a couple of geocaches downtown, near Kingdom Coffee & Cycle but they had several DNF's (Did Not Find) so after a quick attempt, we moved on.  We finally found Red Robin (GC4NW3K) back by the garage sale and I was able to drop a trackable coin off in the cache for someone else to find, and we headed home.

Coffeeneuring to Keen Bean @ the Farmers Market

Tsuki is ready to head out for a bike ride and some geocaching, although Kapua stayed home and the Volpi got to go with this time.  Juana meet us at a local park and we headed out around dawn.  It was a chilly 45 degrees and we were bundled up well and road several miles before stopping for our first geocache, Lock & Load (GC4C2MK).  This was Juana's first time geocaching, it is was a GREAT one!  The description stated that you needed to bring your own water bottle, and luckily we had some on our bikes because I didn't read the description before leaving the house.  But when I ride with Tsuki, I alway make sure I have enough water for her and myself, so we had plenty.

Juana signing Some Where Out There 1

                                  After leaving Locked & Loaded, we headed to the trail and looked for Some Where Out There 3, 2 and 1 but were only successful finding Some Where Out There 1(GLK508RN).  Unfortunately we got quite a few stickers on us trying to find the first on one the trail.  

Once we arrived at the market we looked around at some great food options and finally decided on getting some cinnamon rolls from some venders and coffee at Keen Bean's Truck.  Tsuki seemed very interested in my coffee this morning, but she doesn't get any.  Not a drink for doggies!  But I did let her lick the icing off the cinnamon roll container.  

Tsuki was model-ing her newly modified collar that has a patch that says Follow me on Twitter @dogonbike and there were a lot of people asking about it.  Most of these photos made it onto Twitter while we were at the Farmer's Market, but we still only have a few people following us. Maybe the patch will increase her following.  

After we finished our rolls we walked around and bought some produce, tasted some freshly roasted chestnuts and found out that whoever said the buckeyes were chestnuts didn't know what they were talking about.  We also discovered that Tsuki really likes chestnuts and the couple selling them gave her a couple of cold ones so I would have extra to give her later.                                                                                                     We went down into a green space near the market and found another nice geocache Hidey Holey Shoney (GS2NXM4) before riding back to Juana's house.  As I was back on Southcreek where I rode last weekend looking for geo-caches, I saw a couple of ladies looking for a geocache that I had been unable to find.  I stopped and helped them and together we found the cache, to bring the day's total up to 4 finds!  

I am enjoying this geocaching theme within my Tsuki blogging theme, and am enjoying the company of friends as well. 

The Coffeeneuring Challenge Begins Again!

The first weekend of October and a new coffeeneuring challenge has begun: http://chasingmailboxes.com/2015/09/19/coffeeneuring-challenge-2015-a-dream-within-a-dream/.  This year they are suggesting a theme within a theme and so I decided to include geocaching as my theme, while still keeping Tsuki with me from my last year's theme.  Even though I have a new bike, I want to try to ride Kapua for these rides, but unfortunately this morning she had too much in the garage blocking her from my sight.

So I headed out on the trail near my house to look for some geocaches.  I took Tsuki and my coffee along because I knew that geocaching may end up using a lot of my extra time.  I didn't spend too much time with on the first few geocaches, but was able to easily find Battleship #8 (GC61AT2) and moved on to the next one, Roadside cache (GLK3M98Y).

We stopped and enjoyed the rest of my morning joe at the nearest park, which is just over 3 miles from my house.  I guess I can't say "we", since Tsuki only got water.  It was a beautiful morning that started in the 40's and warmed up into the 60's.  I took Tsuki home and then met some friends to ride some more on the trails. Total miles for the day: 56.7 miles!

Longest Weekend of 2015 - Summer Solstice

It has been a long time since I have taken Tsuki on a ride with Kapua and decided that this weekend, having the most sunlight of the year would be a good time to take them both out.  I needed a few things from the Farmer's Market and it is a perfect place to take them both.  I found a nice shaded spot to park Kapua while Tsuki and I shopped.  

While in the parking lot on the way to the market, someone driving by asked me how I get her to stay on the back of my bike.  I am asked this question often and realized that I don't actually "get" her to stay there.  I simply provide her a place to sit when she is tired.  She loves being out with me so much that she stays put.  She also discovered that jumping off when the bike is moving hurts.

On Sunday I took them out again, but this time we went for a longer ride on the trail.  We rode through the park and saw the goslings growing up.   The heat and humidity was pretty oppressive, so we had an emergency trip to Andy's, where Tsuki got a free doggie cone!