Coffeeneuring #3.2: Hooky Ride

As I've mentioned in recent posts, my job is temporarily in a fugue state. I have finished everything I needed to do at my old position, but my transfer doesn't take effect for another three weeks. So right now I go in and do things which are productive for me and for the company long-term (like online training and reading related to my new position) but I might as well be invisible at my current position. I get no emails. No one talks to me. This is quite a change from before I handed off my responsibilities, where I would typically get 20 emails during my ten minute drive home (more when I biked, which takes longer!) and always had a stream of people and phone calls. Anyway, it's hard to get motivated to even show up and I've been doing a lot of working at home. Which no one even notices. I'm going to enjoy it while I can, because three weeks from now things will get busy again.

This ride started with a drive in the coffee-themed car

I have also been freaking out a little about the commute for my new job. I'll be teleworking about half the time, but the other half I'll have to go up to Ft. Detrick, which is fifty miles from home. Fifty miles in DC area traffic. So today I decided to test out the drive and do a little exploring of things I can do up in Frederick on days when I want to wait out traffic. I brought my bicycle and decided to do one of the rides listed on the web site of Gravel and Grind, a bike/espresso shop in Frederick (I expect to become a regular customer!). Their listing for this ride makes it sound pretty vertical and so I was expecting a lung-searing experience but in fact, while it did include a nice climb (about 800 ft. of elevation gain, over 1,000 feet of climbing with all the ups and downs) and a few steep sections, it was a pleasant ride out of town, through suburbia, into the countryside and up a gravel road beside a stream and then Fishing Creek Reservoir. With the changing fall colors is was quite pretty. If cycling was like this I might enjoy it more :)

By the stream

As usual, I didn't do a good job of following the cue sheet. In fact, I lost the cue sheet part way up - it fell out of my pocket - and so I navigated the rest of the way using RideWithGPS - except I don't have the paid version and so couldn't do turn-by-turn navigation. Instead I just stopped whenever I was confused and looked at where my little blue dot was relative to the route. I made it all the way out without incident, except that I rode a little past the route's end. My track tops out at 999 ft. of elevation, while the shop's RideWithGPS file tops out at 971. If I had realized I was at 999 ft. I would have ridden a little further to break 1,000! The route's turnaround point is a little pullout at the side of the road - on my way back I did stop there for some water and a snack.

Gorgeous autumn gravel

I rode the brakes all the way down the gravel part of the ride. It was pretty loose gravel and I didn't want to slide out, plus there was a limit to how much jolting my kishkes could take (I don't know how people ride fast on gravel without full suspension bikes). By the time I got back to pavement my hands were tired from gripping the brakes. Maybe it was the way I was zooming along once I got back onto pavement, but I messed up and missed a turn (the web site description does note that this is an unmarked turn) and so I didn't do the exact loop they laid out. My route was a slightly different loop and the good news is that I eventually found my way back to town.

Enjoying the day

I figured that parking downtown would be time-restricted and so I had parked at a little neighborhood park outside of the downtown area. At the end of my ride I rode past my car and continued into downtown Frederick. Frederick is a cool little town with a lot of nice dining options, but my ride had taken longer than I anticipated and I wanted to get back before traffic started building, plus I wasn't really dressed for fine dining so I just went into Starbucks and got coffee and one of their ersatz panini.  

The requisite coffee shot

Then it was back to the car and back to Arlington. With an audio book and a few calls to make the ride didn't seem all that long, which is a good sign.

Well, I ruined my goals of not doing any of my #coffeeneuring rides at SBUX and doing them all in Arlington, but it was worth it for a pretty country gravel ride on a glorious autumn day.

My Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/755717907