Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Officially a Coffeeneur


The Coffeeneuring challenge turned seven this year!

Coffeeneuring is a take-off on randonneuring, with a whole host of arcane rules, but it is fundamentally about riding bikes and drinking coffee and taking photos. This is precisely what we do. All the time. NeverNotCoffeeneuring! Yet somehow, despite the fact that we #alwaysbecoffeeneuring, we have never officially taken part in the challenge.

But then last spring, after John and I both found ourselves convalescing from busted collarbones, Mary, aka @coffeeneur, sent us a couple of AlwaysBeCoffeeneuring patches. While we were injured, we were not to be deterred from our constant quest for coffee, photos and activity. So we simply walked to coffee shops, because ya know, #alwaysBeCoffeeneuring.


So this year, when the challenge rolled around, we decided we really should make an effort to do it officially and properly earn those patches.

For those of you out of the loop in the coffeenuering world, the challenge is to ride to seven different coffee shops - No problem.
The rides must be at least 2 miles - No problem.
Only one coffee shop per day counts - Bummer, we can't complete the challenge in a day.
Maximum 2 per week - Bummer, we can't complete the challenge in a week.
The challenge ran for approximately 6 weeks from October 13 to November 19.

The tricky part for us was to pick just two rides from each week to be official, and to keep track of which coffee shops we counted as official, so as not to repeat. We pride ourselves on not doing the same rides over and over day after day - we explore a lot and cover a lot of ground. And we go to a lot of different coffee shops. But in a 6 week period of time, we may visit the same place more than once.

So now I have to pick 7 from fifty!