Sharing stories and adventures about all things coffee, stories, and stoke
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Reflections
As a mountain biker, I love trails. We all do. In fact, we often talk about our favorite ones. We will also talk about amazing trips and grand adventures that focus on riding some trail system … Whistler, Sedona, etc. We all love our trails. And we should.
Like you, I love hand-built trails with tabletops and bermed corners. Gravity-fed flow trails are one of the wonders of the world. And so, I regularly hit the same trail systems repeatedly. But with gravel, whole new worlds open to me that I don’t see or miss by riding on enclosed trail systems. Oregon is packed with endless miles of gravel or dirt roads that take you on adventures that leave you whoopin’ and hollerin’.
We all are creatures of habit. Sometimes those habits are good, but we tend to notice them when they are bad. Maybe not "bad" as in "really bad," but we definitely know areas in our lives where we're mailing it in. Perhaps we're even lazy in those areas as well. So why bring this up? What does this have to do with coffee?
Often, we’re traveling quite a ways to a trailhead to ride. It could be anywhere from 1-2 hours away (or more). What that also means is we’re not in a hurry. We’ve committed a whole day to ride and being with friends in the outdoors. So why should we settle for cold coffee at the trailhead?
Most often, on weekends, I’m either riding or showing up for trail-building work parties. While I’m thinking lots about bikes (and trails) for obvious reasons, one of the other aspects of my planning is coffee. I suppose I don’t overthink about it as it slots into my mental checklist as I’m getting ready to leave … bike (check), helmet (check), shoes (check), knee pads (check), coffee (check) …
Why do we ride bikes? In particular, why do we ride mountain bikes? Yes, we can talk about the health benefits of an active lifestyle, but it’s much more than that. Ultimately we ride because of the community.
