2024 Coffeeneuring Challenge #9: Autumn Leaves

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

— Joseph Kosma 

**********

I slept poorly last night, and decided not to try and meet up this morning with the Coffee Outside PDX gang at the south end of the Esplanade. Instead, I slept in.

It was a good choice. I awoke at 9 feeling better rested, enjoyed coffee with Sweetie, and slowly warmed up to the day. Around eleven, the sun broke through the clouds. Sweetie told me it wouldn’t rain until around three, and that perhaps I might like to grab a short ride around the neighborhood. “Plus,” she said, “we have no chocolate in the house.”

My partner is so wise.

I dressed, grabbed the Peugeot and headed up Dekum. I stopped for coffee and a baked item at Woodlawn Coffee, and got them to go. Then, I nodded around the neighborhood and enjoyed the colorful leaves, in the trees and on the ground and a few on their way down. I stopped at a mom-n-pop store to grab some chocolate for Sweetie, and then made my meandering way to the pocket park on 10th. The weather was dry, and clouds were moving in, but I figured I had some time to enjoy my own private Coffee Outside before riding home.

On the way home, while I admired the many colors of fall, I began humming the song, “Autumn Leaves” and it became an earworm.

I probably managed a little more than two miles, and a quietly lovely mood that will make the day nicer.

Happy riding.

2024 Coffeeneuring Challenge #8: Open and Shut

I’ve been struggling with my emotions, my body, the shortening days and the weather.

I’m on a new medication this week, and it will take time to kick in. I hope it will help lessen some of the darkness on my hardest days.

 Have also come to some new understandings abut my health journey. 

And chief among them is that I am exhausted. Wiped. Out of spoons in mind, body and spirit. The losses of the last five years have opened me up to a lot of stuff and I have very little energy these days.

No wonder I haven't felt like riding my bike. It’s all piled on and I am only just beginning to sort it all out.

But still, the sun broke through the clouds this afternoon, and I knew that if I didn’t try to take advantage of that, I’d feel worse later on. So I forced myself out of bed, got dressed, and went for a Coffeeneuring ride.

It was tough going for the first mile or so. My legs felt like jelly, my knees creaked and it felt like a slog. But I knew there was a coffee place not far away where I could do the Coffeeneuring thing, so I kept pedaling.

When I got to Kiss Coffee, it was around 2:15. They had closed at 2.

Disappointed, but feeling a little better about riding, I pedaled on.

The breeze had picked up, leaves were being blown from branches and the sky was a constant swirl of clouds with patches of blue sky in between.

I rode up to Killingsworth, where I knew of at least a couple of coffee stops.

One had been converted into a restaurant and bar that wouldn’t open until at least 4.  

I rode across the street and down half a block to Extracto, which had closed at 2.

Annoyed, I decided to make a loop back to Ainsworth and MLK where I knew there’d be a Starbucks. It wasn’t ideal but it was there, and by now I was determined to have a cup of hot chocolate.

Along the way, I felt the wind pick up, and kept an eye on the sky to the southwest. If it started raining before I got to Starbucks I might get a bit wet, as I had only grabbed a rain shell but nothing else.

I made it, and the sun had come out again.

After sipping my hot chocolate and enjoying a slice of lemon pound cake, I watched the sky, read the Willamette Week and felt myself calm a little.

Living with my body has been hard. It doesn’t do all the things I used to be able to ask it to do, and bumping up hard against those moments has been painful.

But today I could ride my bike, and get home while it was still dry and partly sunny outside. With the unintended loop, I probably rode around four miles.

With all the worry and fear around the election, I may hunker down and stay in this weekend. It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow and Sunday so I’ll probably just take hot showers and little naps and watch some old noir on cable to take my mind off my fear. And if I absolutely need to step outside, I can always try to rake some leaves off the sidewalk so no one slips on them.

Will do any more Coffeeneuring rides? I don’t know. It will depend on my health and my mood each day, perhaps each hour, and the weather. And I am slowly learning to live with that. It’s a process.

Happy riding.

Approaching terminal Rivendell

Rivendell Bicycle Works was founded in 1994, by a guy with some very particular ideas about what a good bicycle ought to be. Over the years, his ideas expanded to bicycle accessories and then to riding.

RBW became a cool little mail order company and people caught on.

I was one of those people. I began working in the bicycle industry the same year that Rivendell began, and I was attracted to many of the ideas that RBW espoused. 

Five years later, I bought a Rivendell frameset — well, actually a truck driver’s insurance company bought it for me — and built it up.

It has been a lovely ride, both the bike and the time spent living my bicycle life according to RBW’s template. I couldn’t keep up with all of it, mind you — I was never strong enough to be a long term mega-miler and my income simply couldn’t keep up with RBW’s prices — but I did my best to enjoy myself.

Then Covid happened, and changed my life.

I couldn’t ride a bicycle for almost two years. When I could begin riding again, it was a lot slower, the distances were shorter, my tolerance for cold, west weather had greatly diminished and my balance was more precarious than before.

At the height of my bicycle life, I averaged over two thousand miles a year for close to a decade. I wasn’t breaking any speed records, but I got to ride through some lovely places and mostly enjoyed it.

Since coming out of the pandemic and resuming riding, my rides are fewer and shorter now. If I can manage a ride of five miles round trip that’s an incredibly good day. If I can do it more than once or twice a week, that’s astounding.

During the latter half of lockdown, when I was still able to turn wrenches, I found an old Peugeot mountain bike, and set about making it work for me. It sits slightly lower than my Rivvy because the frame is more vertically compact. This means I need a longer stem to make the handlebars the right height. It looks a little dorky but it’s safe and solid for the riding I do now.

It’s also got a lower top tube, so I can get on and off more easily.

And for reasons I’m still not entirely clear on, it’s more comfortable to ride than the Rivvy now. The laid-back geometry allows me to set the saddle farther back, putting my legs and knees in a comfortable place. The most telling difference is that after I ride the Rivvy, my knees hurt for days. After I ride the Peugeot, they feel fine.

Since I don’t ride as much as I used to, I am seriously thinking about selling my 1999 All-Rounder, and being done with the whole RBW-cool of it all. 

Early in RBW’s history, Grant would encourage folks to buy his bikes by saying they were “affordable for anyone with a job and bicycle priorities,” and I always winced a little when I read that. While I did buy a Rivendell myself, it was with the proceeds from a crash settlement. I certainly could never have afforded it myself, not on my bike mechanic’s wages. And I needed my bike shop job to obtain the discounted parts with which to build it up.

I worked in a bike shop that focused heavily on repairs, and on encouraging people to commute by bicycle on whatever they had. This probably helped to inform my discomfort as well.

It was fun for a long while, but I always held something back. Some of my enthusiasm was always tempered with how damned expensive it was to become part of the Rivendell cult, and also how overly male the whole thing felt for quite a long time. I’ve never forgotten that awareness in thirty years of my own enthusiasm for good bikes and places to ride them. That awareness has tempered my enthusiasm a little bit this whole time.

It’s not unlike the other parts of my life where I’ve belonged, but not fully. When the first half of your life is spent on the margins and always on the go, you never become fully grounded in any scene or group, because you can’t. It’s part of the hardwiring of my brain, for better or worse. Probably both. And it can’t really be undone now, and I am learning how to live with that knowledge. I am learning how to discern what still makes sense in my life, and what needs to be set down.

Not fully belonging has been hard but it has also allowed me to see things from a different angle. And so it has been with Rivendell and my participation in the RBW cult. I participated while knowing that I could never really keep up, and when I got dropped — physically, geographically or financially, I just kept riding my own ride and calling it good.

I’ve gotten to a point where I no longer have “bicycle priorities,”  or the stamina to chase after them. And that realization has helped me to see where and how the RBW thing isn’t really serving me anymore. Not keeping up has become far more prevalent since I got sick and never fully recovered. Not keeping up has given me a new perspective on what it means to be in my body, and on how I move around in the world today.

I plan to put the Rivendell up for sale, probably in the early spring. I don’t know yet if I will sell it as a frameset or as a whole bike. I have a few months to consider that, and also to determine if I have enough strength in my hands to dismantle and clean it up. In case anyone here might be interested, here are a few details. The rest can come later.

Seat tube, c-c: 20.5”/52cm 

Top tube, c-c: 21.5”/54.6cm

For 26”/559 mountain bike wheels and canti brakes

Wheels: handbuilt, Sun CR18 rims, Phil Wood hubs. Both could use some love, and the rims might need to be replaced at some point. Suntour 5-speed FW in good shape, plenty of room to swap in more cogs if you want, but it doesn’t need more than six or seven at most. Current tires are 26 x 1.75 vintage Conti TopTour 2000, tread is still fine for city use and sidewalls are still whole.

Nitto CrMO North Road bars, Technomic stem, friction shifters, SunTour champagne levers. Fenders, lights, pump can all come with the bike.

I will probably remove the rear mini-rack, basket, bag and maybe the saddle to swap over to my other bike.

The frameset is in used condition.still straight, never crashed, shows its beausage with paint chips and stickers but is solid and fine. It’s missing the original head badge. If I can find it, I’ll include it with the bike but you have to reinstall it. Includes a Shimano Ultegra headset in good condition.

The HS was last overhauled and the cartridge BB replaced about six years ago. The hubs feel fine, but maybe want some TLC from Phil, unless you have the tools and can do it yourself.

The bike is totally rideable right now as it is and it is fine. If you want something fancy and pristine, keep looking. But if you might be interested, feel free to reach out.

I’m not sure yet what I’d ask for the bike, and will think about it over the winter. But I will not accept trades, in whole or in part.

Bear in mind that since I cannot really use my hands as much now, I will likely have to pay someone to partly break down and box the bike for shipping, and that will be added to the asking price if you want me to ship the bike to you. I honestly would prefer to get cash in person for it. And since we’re heading into winter now, I will probably not make a more detailed listing until I’m ready to sell it in the early spring.

It’s been fun. And in February or March it will be someone else’s turn.

Happy riding.

2024 Coffeeneuring Challenge #7: we don’t need no stinking rules

Today’s Coffeeneuring ride was hard for me.

I’d slept poorly. The cats woke me at 5:30 am, demanding to be fed. My joints ached with the onset of cooler, wetter days, and I was sorely tempted to just chuck it all today and call my Challenge done.

It has been harder to ride a bike since coming out of Long Covid. Most of my symptoms have abated, except for occasional spikes in heart rate after exertion and dizziness pretty much anytime I turn my head or body to one side or the other. My doctor does not know whether the dizziness is from the Long Covid, from my aging process, or both. But she keeps encouraging me to find ways to stay physical active if I can.

Then, there’s the depression and anxiety, both of which have taken on new shades with conflicting diagnoses of ADHD and now PTSD. These issues have left me reeling, as both have come later in life. I’ve learned that I tick most of the boxes for both; and there is no definitive way to tell them apart without more extensive — and expensive — testing that’s not covered by Medicaid. So I’m doing my best to stay busy and work with a counselor while I await a disability determination. I’ll probably be denied, as everyone is the first time around. Do I want to appeal? I don’t know. Either way, I turn 62 in a few months, and will file for regular Social Security regardless to help ease the financial concerns, since I can no longer work full time at a regular job.

Riding my bike has come less frequently since Coming back from Long Covid. It’s possible that I will never regain the strength and endurance I had before, and the balance issues will probably not subside fully. It takes me .pinger on the bike to actually enjoy riding now, and with the arrival of typical fall weather I know my riding will probably taper off a great deal.

I probably — definitely — broke some rules with this seventh ride. I repeated an event (Coffee Outside), though it was held in a different location. I brought a thermos of coffee from home. And I went multimodal, as I do now with most rides over two miles each way because of the balance stuff.

And honestly, I sort of don’t care.

I’m glad to still be able to ride a bike at all and still enjoy it. I’m glad to still be able to enjoy bike-based social gatherings, even if they are fewer and shorter. And I’m glad that I can still peel off my wet layers and make some hot soup after a rainy ride, and enjoy the warmth returning to my hands and feet.

But all in all, riding a bicycle doesn’t take the precedence in my life that it used to. And that has been a strange thing to notice, after decades of living a true bicycle life. I’m older, slower and creakier now. My overall health is no longer what I can call robust, even on good days. 

I’m working with my counselor on something called Acceptance and Commitment, and therapeutic approach often used with people who’ve had years of complex trauma and also are dealing with a lot of loss. It involves recognizing one’s losses and taking time to really grieve them, something our workaday world with its demands of near-constant productivity doesn’t easily afford or honor. Daily physical activity is supposed to help, so on my good days I still do something. On the harder days, when the balance is really wobbly or my arthritis is hurting, I try to give myself some grace and rest when I need to.

So I can’t say whether or not I’ll try to add any more rides for my Challenge this year.

While the admins may not agree, I’ve done my seven rides. So if I don’t have the emotional or physical spoons to do any more, I’m giving myself permission to call it good.

It was a lovely morning, even if it was cold and wet. We met at a grade school on the edge of Ladd’s Addition, where there’s a little covered play area made of wood. It’s perfect for congregating and sharing conversation, coffee and baked goods (including, today, chocolate babka). 

I also enjoyed watching someone try to ride an odd bike. It was too tall for me to try (which is probably a good thing), but reports from other riders assured me it was not an optimal experience and I wasn’t really missing out. 

NOTE: Thanks to Xfinity Essentials (aka poor people’s WiFi) deliberately slowing down my internet at home, I am unable to add photos, even one, without everything freezing up.

I may try to add them at my Instagram, but if I’m not successful, there’s nothing I can do and you’ll just have to take it on faith that I rode today.

Happy riding.

2024 Coffeeneuring Challenge #6: Urgency

We were out of a few things and the big rain hadn’t arrived yet, so I decided to head to the store for a quick trip. I also hoped to take a scenic route home to check out the widened bike path on N. Willamette Blvd.

But in leaving so early in the day, I was risking the sudden onset of urgently needing a bathroom. This is always a risk when one lives with both Crohn’s and IBS. Now that I am semi-retired, I have the luxury of not having to leave the house very early in the morning, so I can take care of myself at home without stress.

But if I wanted to beat the rain, I had to leave early.

En route, I saw the recently repaired Free Cupboard had been restocked, and was glad to see that the Little Free Library side had some fresh books on the shelf.

There are maybe hundreds of Little Free Libraries all over Portland now, and dozens of Free Fridges and Free Cupboards too. I love the neighborliness these things represent and encourage. If we had the space in front of our house we’d install a Little Free Library, but there are at least two within a block of us so it’s not an urgent need.

Heading on towards the store, I passed by Woodlawn Park, and hoped that eventually the City would replace the sign that had been deliberately destroyed by BLM rioters in 2021. When they staged protests in the park back then, some of the protestors would set things on fire or smash them with sledgehammers, a multidirectional statement against the state, white supremacy and the police department. If they wanted to effect change, there were better ways to do it, and they did not get much love from residents who live near the park.

Then, it happened. My body gave off telltale signals, and I needed a bathroom. Very soon. 

I turned onto Rosa Parks Blvd and looked up and down cross streets until I found a Porta-Potty. In NE Portland, someone is always building or repairing a home, and there’s sure to be a Blue Room out front if the required work is extensive. 

Thankfully, this one wasn’t padlocked for the weekend, as some are.

While some folks may not want to think about it, this sort of thing is a regular fact of life for me, and nothing to feel squidgy or ashamed of. We all have to go sometime.

Without time or a reasonable pole to lock up to, I have to lean my bike against the Porta-Potty and hold the door slightly ajar so I can grab my bike if someone tries to take off with it. It has only happened to me once in my entire life, but one incidence is enough around which to create a policy.

I rode past beautiful scenes that reminded me why I love living here, including the end of the blooming season at Peninsula Park, dogs running across the grass with their tongues hanging out while their humans made small-talk, and a gentle breeze that nudged a few leaves off their branches and helped them float gently to the damp ground.

The air began to change, and I could feel the moisture in the air grow. The rain would come soon.

In order to fulfill the beverage requirement of the challenge, I helped myself to some coffee from the coffee counter inside the store, enjoying a small cup while I shopped and saving the rest in my thermos for the ride home.

After I made my purchases, I unlocked my bike, put on my rain jacket and rode home, deciding to take a more direct route and save N. Willamette for another day.

Thankfully, there were no more urgencies of any sort on my ride, and when I got home the rain had yet to show up.

From the inside of our entryway, it was lovely to hang up my bike and watch the yard for a few minutes while I sipped some more coffee from the thermos. And when I turned around, there was a sweet kitty to welcome me home.

Hope your rides this week are truly enjoyable.

2024 Coffeeneuring Challenge #5: Coffee Outside at Overlook Park

Technically, I’m only supposed to count two rides per week for the Challenge.

Since I could not ride last weekend because of Yom Kippur — and even if I wasn’t working I would have still been at shul somewhere — I’ve gone ahead and counted my mid-week rides as taking the place of anything I might have done last weekend on any other day of the year.

If the admins have difficulty with this, I’m sure they’ll let me know.

Meanwhile, it’s another weekend, and the weather and my energy level were more closely matched today, so I rode to Overlook Park to meet up with the Coffee Outside regulars.

I packed a thermos of home-brewed coffee, took along a rain shell just in case (becuse it’s fall and I live in Western Oregon), and enjoyed a lovely 3-mile ride.

When I got there, I discovered that folks were congregating at the outside table in the off-leash dog area, instead of under the stone building. Then I noticed that someone had camped out in there and was still asleep. My friends had move so as not to wake him too early.

Here’s a photo dump that includes several regulars, some beautiful, well-loved bikes and a few Coffeeneuring patches, along with falling leaves and a sky that grew sunnier by the minute. It was a gorgeous fall day that was perfect for our gathering, and I am glad my balance was sufficiently well enough to participate.

Happy Riding!

2024 Coffeeneuring Challenge #4: Crema

I decided to try another coffee loop today, this time over in southeast Portland.

I enjoyed a slow ride along tree-lined residential streets, and eventually made my way to Crema, at the corner of SE Ankeny and 28th. They’re known for excellent baked goods made in-house, and their coffee isn’t bad either.

I ordered a fat slice of some of the nicest pumpkin bread I’d had in a long time. Moist and flavorful, and without nuts — a walnut allergy compels me to ask every time so I don’t end up eating something that will make my mouth and throat itch! — and a generous portion. It went well with a fresh cup of coffee and the latest issue of the Willamette Week, which fetures their editorial endorsements for the November election.

The ride home was more tiring than I thought it would be.

The truth is that I’ve had to come to terms with just how much Long Covid and the pandemic have aged me. I simply haven’t been able to enjoy long rides anymore, because of creaky knees, occasional dizzy moments, fatigue or a combination of all of the above.

This time, I tossed my bike on the bus to shorten the ride home. Even with that, I still managed about five miles of riding, and got home in time for a lovely afternoon nap.