Every year in October I participate in Love To Ride’s (psst, sign up using that link so I can get some extra points when you do your first bike ride!) Biketober competition. The TL;DR is that for every day that you go for a ride, for every mile that you ride, and for every new rider that you invite you get points for your team. At the end of the month winners are announced and there are some fun prizes. It’s not about big miles, it’s about getting more people outside riding bikes, and I love it for that.

This year in addition to Biketober I’ve decided to try the, unrelated, annual Coffeeneuring Challenge. If you’re not familiar with the challenge, the idea is pretty simple: between October 6th and November 18th you ride your bike to 7 different coffee (or other approved beverage) locations, with some minor limits on distance and how often a coffee place qualifies. For a full list of “rules” you can see this years post: “Coffeeneuring Challenge 2024: The Year of Small Wins”.

We’re a little ways into the challenge already, so this post will be how I document my rides for this year going forward! Let’s start with a few I’ve already done. For the purpose of the rules I’ll be starting my weeks on Monday, because that’s just how weeks work and this ridiculous notion that Sunday is both the “weekend” but also somehow the start of the week needs to be abolished.

Week One (Oct 05–06)

Oct 5th

Per rule 2: “Soft Launch Saturday” I completed my first ride of the joint Biketober/Coffeeneuring season! I was on my way back from an IWW meeting at the Little Five Points Community Center and decided that I’d make a detour to stop at Taco Cantina for a Horchata de arroz. Per rule 6 (“Controversial Beverage Rule”) this was adjudicated in the Court of Coffeneuring Public Opinion on fedi and now only awaits a final ruling by the Coffeneuring Challenge Committee and the Intern.

The overall ride was rather uneventful, but also highlights the major mobility gap in Cobb County, GA. The first four or so miles are from my house to the Cumberland Transfer Center which is the only place in the county that you can catch a rapid bus into Atlanta. I’m lucky enough to be close to the bus station, otherwise I would have to catch another bus to get there which, on the weekend, runs about once an hour. Not an ideal situation: trying to catch a transfer involving two buses that both run once an hour. If you bike, as I did, you can follow the Spring Road Trail and the Mountain to River Trail (M2R) all the way to the transfer center. While this is great in theory because it gets you off the 4 lane road where people regularly do 60mph, the road that the trail is next to is really more of a stroad so every retail establishment along the road has cars pulling out or in who aren’t looking for cyclists and it can be a rather harrowing ride.

Once you catch the bus and arrive at Arts Center Station the transit system improves a tiny bit. Transferring to the train is free and requires one transfer to the blue line which will take you to Inman Park/Reynoldstown Station. As I left the station I was surprised to find a small cycle path that I didn’t know about, Poplar Court Northeast, that cuts through the park to Euclid Ave right next to the Community Center!

The total distance round trip came out to 8.18 miles. A partial GPX trace for this ride can be found here.

Oct 6th

The next day I went out for a group ride. To get a few extra miles in this Biketober I decided to ride to Knight Park where the group was meeting at instead of taking the bus. The total distance to the park was 10.26 miles, mostly along Atlanta Road. This may have been one of the stupider cycling decisions I’ve made in a while; in theory there is a bike path being built alongside the road, but there are major gaps with no plans to fill them in as well and no good way to get off the road at points, especially when crossing bridges.

The group ride itself ended up being 10.36 miles, only 0.1 more than the commute, but was a much more enjoyable ride through Westside Park, Atlanta’s largest public park. At the end we stopped off at The Whelan for a bite and a drink! I went with a local Märzen; it’s not a coffee, but Oktoberfest beers seems like good Coffeeneuring drinks to me (though it did not come in the traditional Maß, which is always disappointing). During the winter proper this pub also serves mulled wine, so maybe I’ll stop back by for one of my last rides if they start serving it in time.

The total ride distance (after checking out an open streets festival and a partial ride home) came out to 24.35 miles. A partial GPX trace for this ride can be found here.

Week Two (Oct 07–13)

Oct 10th

I rode down to meet a friend at Viking Alchemist Meadery, an easy few miles along the M2R trail I mentioned before. I’d never had mead before so the bartender kindly let me try a few samples before deciding what I wanted. It’s not my favorite drink, but a few of the more sour ones were quite nice and a 4 year aged one that I can’t afford (but which he let me take a small sip of) was very nice and it felt like a good Coffeeneuring style drink to me!

I arrived a bit early and they weren’t open yet, so I explored a bit and ended up with a total ride of 5.72 miles. The GPX trace can be found here.

Oct 12th

A few days later the nearby city of Marietta, GA was having their annual Chalktoberfest celebration, two days of street art, beers, and a square that’s actually usable by people, not just cars! I took a ride up the M2R trail in the other direction this time to hand out some fliers encouraging people to vote for the Cobb County Mobility SPLOST which will fund a mix of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines and bicycle path improvements in Cobb. On the way back I stopped at Pie Bar and had my first cup of actual coffee! The city of Smyrna was also having its birthday celebration on the same day so I ended up also going back and forth between home and the Smyrna downtown area several times to hear the various concerts. This year featured “Letters to Cleo” and “The Roots” as well as a number of local bands!

Overall ride length ended up being 18.66 miles and a GPX of the main M2R portion can be found here.

Week 3 (Oct 14-20)

Oct 15th

It’s October 15th and that means it’s the first day of early voting in Georgia! I took a ride over to the Smyrna Community Center to see what the line was like and was pleased to see that a lot more people than I’ve ever seen during early voting were already queued up (~1 hour wait time according to one of the poll workers).

Nextdoor to the Community Center is the library, so I stopped by there as well and on a whim picked up a copy of “Everyday Utopia” by Kristen R. Ghodsee and “The Contradictions” by Sophie Yanow. I’ve never heard of Yanow, but the book had a bicycle on the cover so that seemed like a good enough reason to grab it. I’ve had Ghodsee’s “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence” on my “To Read” list for a while, and wasn’t aware that my library had any of her books, so I was excited to learn about “Everyday Utopia”.

Right up the street is Café Lucia so I also stopped for a coffee to complete today’s Coffeeneuring outing. I was pleased to see that they had several fliers with information about the MSPLOST tax on the ballot on their bulletin board that were put out by someone else; sometimes it’s easy to think you’re the only person who cares about public transit, so it’s nice to remember that other people are out there fighting for this as well.

The total ride came out to 3.24 miles, and a GPX is available here.

Oct 16th

My ride today involved several errands on the way to the coffee shop. I first stopped by an auto parts store to drop off some used engine oil from my motorcycle, then biked over to the library to return “The Contradictions” (it was much shorter than I realized and was fun, despite comics not really being my thing).

The line looked shorter at the community center (15 minutes as opposed to the hour it would have taken yesterday) so I went in to cast my vote; the big ticket items for me were Harris for president, of course, but also the previously mentioned MSPLOST and a local Democratic Socialist running in GA HD 42. This is all more-or-less on the way to Rev Coffee where I stopped off to use the wifi and get a little work done. As always, the coffee was excellent, but the bike parking was inadequate and cramped.

Oct 19th

Though only two rides per week count as Coffeeneuring rides (per rule 4), I rode up to Marietta for the monthly Cobb4Transit group ride and wanted to mention some of the work they’re doing. One of the things I like about this group ride is that it specifically focuses on riding a mix of safe streets, and streets where bicycle infrastructure could exist but has been neglected. It’s as much an education about the political situation in Marietta as it is about the ride itself. This is another of those group rides where getting to it without a car was longer than the actual ride for me, but we got to stop by one of my favorite coffee shops, Cool Beans afterwards.

As I was getting ready to ride back to Smyrna, a van owned by the Cobb County Library system pulled up and opened up a pop-up library! I had no idea the county library had a bookmobile and was very excited to see them out in the square loaning out books.

The total distance ended up being 20 miles and the GPX trace can be found here.

Week 4 (Oct 21-27)

Oct 24th

This was just a short ride down to Rose Garden Park to pick up a yard sign from Gabriel Sanchez who’s running for state house for district 42. With two weeks to go until election day, the campaign needs all the help it can get so despite the fact that I couldn’t stay for the political canvasing I decided to at least stop by and put up a yard sign. On the way back I stopped off at Rev Coffee again. Since I did three rides last week (and only two can count), we’ll say that last week’s Rev trip was just a bonus ride.

Oct 26th

Today in the Smyrna town square was the annual “Crafts and Drafts” festival. I was populating the Cobb4Transit and Freedom from Traffic table most of the day, so I biked over and got a coffee (in the morning) and a beer in the afternoon. The Smyrna downtown area, on occasions like this when it’s free from cars, makes a great Coffee Shop Without Walls, per rule 3!

Final Push

Oct 30th

I’ve already hit the Coffeeneuring goal of 7 places for the month, but wanted to do one last update to wrap up Biketober and mention my longest ride! Wednesday the 30th I rode the Silver Comet Trail from my home in Smyrna, GA out to the Alabama border near the hamlet of Esom Hill.

I had originally planned on doing my first century into Anniston, AL but after a late start and a few mechanical issues I hadn’t made it very far by lunch time, so I stopped at the Tara Drummond Trailhead near Dallas, GA for a coffee and some lunch. With all the delays it was almost dark by the time I got to the border and I didn’t have much water left so I filled my bottle from a volunteer fire house in Esom Hill and then turned back for some campsites I’d passed earlier in the day near Rockmart, GA called Camp Comet. This put me at around 85 miles for the day instead of my desired 100, but meant I had a guaranteed good place to sleep and the promise of coffee in Rockmart the next morning!

Oct 31st

I stopped off at a trailside shop in the morning to re-fill my water, then went into Rockmart for a coffee. Continuing on back I also stopped off in Powder Springs at Skint Chestnut Brewing Company for lunch and a beer, as well as a different coffee shop in Dallas so I feel like I got my Coffeeneuring fix in this trip!

The total distance ridden over both days ended up being 135.37 miles, and I had a blast camping for the first time in a long time! This year was the 10 year anniversary of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike and due to a mix of financial constraints, prior job constraints, and social constraints I’ve barely done any camping or long distance hiking since then. Even if it was only 2 days it felt great to get outside and do some miles again!

Wrap Up

I ended up visiting well over 7 new places this month (though I only blogged about some of them), so I’m well situated for the end of the Coffeeneuring season! For biketober the official results aren’t in yet, but I came in second place for my team with 350 miles covered over the month, and having ridden at least a small ride every day of the month!