Catching up: Fall riding days are so sweet

I haven't been riding as regularly this fall, owing to some physical fatigue and also to ramping up my preparation for recording. Post-production has given me a chance to rehearse other material for my upcoming trips, and also to ride my bike a little more during these lovely, late-fall days, Here are a few shots along the way, including a healthy dose of #coffeeneuring, scenery-gawking and clearing my head.

First, a lovely coffee meetup with friend Barb, who helped out with some post-production work for the CD. The labels fit snugly in her recumbent's rear bag and she turned around the printing in a day. I was grateful both for her work and for the chance to catch up.

Then a few days later,  a nice spin around SE Portland for errands and of course, more coffee.

Want to see beauty? Just look up.





The trees are shedding their leaves quickly since the rain finally showed up. Leaving sidewalks carpeted (and slick!)
When the rain subsided, I was comfortable riding in a t-shirt, a heavy wool sweater and jeans.
A thin wool cap fits nicely under a helmet and wicks excess sweat pretty well.

Add some fingerless wool gloves and I've got all I need to enjoy riding in this season.

And finally, another short ride around the neighborhood, where I relished time to simply stare at the fading fall colors, in the trees and carpeting the ground.

Above: Enjoying fresh coffee at Ps and Qs, with my old ACW mug. (I made my own using a decal and double-walled steel mug I found at Goodwill. It's holding up nicely, and cost roughly $18,00 less than the one offered at the ACW web store.)

I chose not to enter the official Coffeeneuring Challenge this year; I had plenty of patchesk bandanas and pins, and didn't feel a need to earn any more. Instead, I chose my own rides and coffee drinks, and sometimes I recorded them and sometimes I didn't.

By focusing more on the experience and less on the completion, I rode less frequently, but enjoyed my rides more.

I especially love to ride up and down the many alleyways in N/NE Portland, which show the backsides of houses and sometimes garages and driveways set at odd angles to the alley. Riding these instead of residential streets gives another, gentler quality to my rides that I adore.

In the absence of rolling countryside, it's the closest thing I'll probably know to the rides enjoyed by CTC members fifty years ago in England.

Next up: Tomorrow, I'll go multi-modal to The Map Room to listen to the final mixes of my album.
I'm very excited, and will try to get some scenery in along the way.
Happy riding!