Saturday, October 3, 2015

2015 Coffeeneuring Ride 1: I moved to Colorado. No more Manhattan, no more bridges.

Ride 1: October 3 / Hot Chick a Latte / 7.8 miles / Morning Wood "Stiff" (Essentially a White Mocha with an extra shot of Dark Espresso)


All two of my readers have been waiting for this moment for ten months: Coffeeneuring 2015 has begun, and so has my blogging.  It's been a big year.  Since Coffeeneuring 2014 ended and I got my Coffeeneuring patch, I moved from New York City to Colorado.



For those of you from New York, Colorado is the one flyover state that some of you would consider visiting.  It is also currently undergoing some kind of crazy transformation and population explosion right now that is driving up real estate and rent prices very similar to what happened in Brooklyn.

No kidding, it looks like this here.
Skyrocketing rent prices aside, Colorado (Denver, specifically) is a much different place to "compete" in Coffeeneuring.  Riding a bike is always fun, but in New York, it was also a fight for survival. Here...it's just...fun.

Anyhow, I have also roped several friends into doing the challenge with me, but they all had better things to do for the opening of Coffeeneuring season.  Bummer for them.  I hopped on my trusty steed (remember my Cross Check?) and set off to get a cup of coffee that was sure to be interesting.

Surly Cross-Check.  Same configuration as I had it in NYC.
No bridges here to get non-drive side shots, though.

Off to Hot Chick a Latte.

Route Map.  2.5 miles to Hot Chick A Latte.

I have to tell you, I chose this ride by putting "Coffee" into GoogleMaps, and I knew that I wanted to go to the Bike Depot.  There are a shocking lack of coffee-houses East of City Park; most of them seem to be North of downtown or over in the Highlands.  

Like any good bike-blogger, I also did some research before I went.  Here is where the warning happens:  This is a coffee shop that apparently served coffee while the baristas wear bikinis.  

I know that there are going to be some admonishments about my choices, but I was curious.  So, I went.

Denver has a pretty good bike infrastructure, so I was able to ride on a road that either had a dedicated bike lane or was "bike friendly" pretty much the whole time.  There was one major artery to cross, I almost got hit by a speeding car, and then was the target of some adult language.  

The ride only took about ten minutes, and I was there.  There was no missing it, since the coffee shop is painted bright pink.

You can't miss this place.  It's BRIGHT PINK!

The Baristas were not wearing bikinis, but that's ok.  (I'm not going make any more comments about the sartorial choices of this coffee shop, since I could lose one of my readers with one wrong comment.)  The menu is completely loaded with innuendo, even going down to the detail of coffee sizes being listed as B, C, D, or DD.  I decided to have a "Morning Wood" which was kind of like a White Mocha.  I also had it made "Stiff" with an extra shot of espresso.

Coffee with a view...kind of.

It was good, but even with the espresso, was too sugary for my tastes.  I think I'm going to stick to a "Coffee Black" rule for the remainder of Coffeeneuring.  It's also on a busy street, so it wasn't really the type of place where you could really kick back and relax while taking in the beauty of things... unless you find traffic beautiful.

Sugar on board, I raced north to the Bike Depot.  It's a great non-profit shop that has a workshop, classes, and a huge used parts selection.  I grabbed the last parts I needed to convert the trusty Cross-Check to gears.  Singlespeeding in Manhattan was great.  Out here, I'd like a bit more range.

After the bike depot, it's only a 15-20 minute ride home through City Park, again, all on bike routes.

Once I got home, I cracked a beer, and got to work on that Cross Check.  I'm happy to report it now has a 48/36 Biopace compact double with an 8-speed cassette.  Future coffeeneuring rides will be done in style.

Thanks again to Mary for Coffeeneuring 2015!

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