Coffeenuering Trips 6 & 7: Not much to say about either.

Trip 6 I have very little to say about, since I just biked to school (blaaar school on Veteran's Day) and had coffee there. It was a pour over coffee from the nice hipsters outside. I'm not really sure how it differs from drip coffee, but it tastes less bitter than plain black coffee, so there's that. I also had a chocolate croissant. I was kind of really low energy that weekend and it was pretty much all I could do to get out of the house and to whatever it was I had to do along with coffeeneuring. If it weren't for the combined forces of things I had to do and things I wanted to do, I probably would have just stayed home. Also, later that night, it snowed. Then it snowed the next night. I guess winter is here-ish. It passed by briefly. Probably coming back to stay relatively soon.

Coffee, Croissant, Cluster

I maybe should have written about this sooner, but I kind of got side tracked. I guess I did have an interesting Monday aside from this, I was in a fake explosion, and had my senior portraits done. And on Tuesday I learned that I can, in fact, graduate in May, even though mistakes were made and I'll have to take 5 classes. Although I thought that would have been the case anyway, but I thought one of my classes would count and it didn't, but it doesn't really matter, and there's nothing to be done now except take next semester as it comes. For half of it I won't even have class on Friday.

No pictures of coffee, instead pictures of people. I think Margaret has a picture of my food....

So I tried to make up for that this past Saturday by biking down to Southside again, and totally not cheating off other coffeeneur's ideas of where to go, I went to Delanie's. Which is a surprisingly convenient ride, although I didn't know exactly where it was so there was a moment of confusion as to where we were actually going (for all of 10 seconds). It was also surprisingly warm considering it snowed the day of my previous coffeenruing ride, so I got a blended latte with caramel and chocolate. Although partway through I realized a frozen drink was rather optimistic. I also had a danish. Then Rory and Margaret left, and I stayed to get a bit of knitting done. On my bike ride home I decided to not take the cyclocross shortcut, and instead biked down the sidewalk on 2nd, and found protractor 434, which I had mistakenly assumed would be between 433 and 435. Considering I also found 414 up in Shadyside, and it is the same color as them, I wonder what route they took to get down there...

414

Weird thing is, I was super tired on Saturday. I nearly fell asleep after drinking coffee. And I wasn't the only one. It was a totally lazy day in Pittsburgh. Feeling really tired. Increasingly tired. Here's some summary, I guess:

In conclusion(6):

Date: 11/11/2013

Coffee shop: (Mini) Tazza D'Oro (which is bigger than Big Tazza D'Oro)

What I had: pour over coffee and chocolate croissant

Miles: 2.6

Party: shank/cluster denizens (although they didn't bike, they were mostly just around that day)

In conclusion(7):

Date: 11/16/2013

Coffee shop: Delanie's

What I had: Blended Latte with caramel and chocolate and a danish

Miles: 11 apparently. Wow, it did not feel like that at all.

Party: shank, Margaret, Rory

Bonus Fake Injury:

Headwound Selfie

Coffeeneuring Trip 3: In which we learn that bananas and peanut butter and waffles are not good biking food.

Wow, that was some really dense food. Maybe I should have put together my own thing, and not gone with peanut butter (apples and caramel?) or had some kind of tea instead of coffee? (Or gotten clarification that an "espresso drink" is a latte). But dang, I could not finish that waffle. And biking back sloooooowly was the only way the return trip was going to happen

Funky Monkey waffles are not great biking food.

I feel like this doesn't quite do it justice, the plate is over half the size of the table width, and there's some kind of peanut butter sauce hiding behind that chocolate. So much to eat and it's all that heavy sweet flavored stuff that sits in your stomach like wow. such banana. so food. much dense. (I'm a little sad blogger wouldn't let me stick that in comic sans). And the coffee was quite something as well

This is more than just an espresso...

That was an "espresso drink" with vanilla-bourbon syrup. Super sweet and to me it barely tasted like coffee, but Margaret disagreed. I guess I'm used to more bitter coffee though. Maybe I'll try something else next time (because there is so going to be a next time in general, although not Sunday afternoon). Although the hot chocolate looks absolutely ridiculous (and the whipped cream is super sweet).

O_O

There was a 30 minute wait to get in, but they do let you leave a number and wander off. This allowed for some halloween costume shopping to happen. It's surprisingly hard to find a purple blouse that buttons up to the neck, but I did find one. Now I'm just not sure it matches my vest. Guess we'll find out.

Woo, higher collared women's blouse! Also, the return of the Errandoneuring jacket.

On the way back we both decided that campus wasn't our jam and went home (up Neville after that waffle, oh goodness), but I stopped by the newer bike store off Highland (on a bike it seems more like it's off highland, so I could get replacement screws for my Bontrager bike rack. The old ones are lost forever somewhere between Confluence and the Pinkerton tunnel due to Gregor needing a bit of a kludge upper bike rack connector. (I managed to forget where I squirreled away the other two screws after removing it, but after some searching managed to find them and reassemble a more Raz-appropriate bike rack). In the process though, I noticed that Haavis is missing the two screw holes to secure a bike rack. I guess I'll figure something out when I get her fixed up. I've been saying that for a while now.

Older picture of Raz with his bike rack.

In conclusion:

Date: 10/20/2013

Coffee shop: Waffles INCaffinated

What I had: Vanilla-bourbon latte + Funky Monkey waffle

Miles: 10.4

Party: shank, Margaret

Bonus Duck:

I was planning on going downtown or to the Strip District yesterday, but I seemed to have gotten some early morning bleh that made my back ache. So no bikes yesterday. But if I had, this guy would have been in my pictures.

Coffeeneuring Trip 2: In which assumptions lead to their platitudinal conclusion.

So there's a couple things to keep in mind while biking around to get coffee. One of which I encountered during my first trip, which is whether or not my destination is cash only. Unfortunately this trip I learned that assuming somewhere that sells coffee would be open at 11:00 isn't always a reasonable assumption to make.

Anyway, I had a thing that I was supposed to get to at 11:00, 11:45 at the absolute latest and thought it would be a good idea to have some coffee in me prior to being busy all day. And I wanted some company this time, so I planned to leave around 10:30, go to Oh Yeah! with Margaret, and get to the thing only slightly late.

Unfortunately, I had the hours wrong, and by wrong I mean I assumed they would be open. Not my finest moment. After a little biking around we ended up going to Bagel Factory in Shadyside. And to be honest, Baggel Factry kind of sucks. The coffee was okay (again, just got plain coffee), the cupcake was good, but nothing special, and the bagel was... meh. Almost worse than meh. Too much cream cheese that didn't quite taste right. Bleh. Yes, I think bleh is the word I'm going to go with.

Oh well. The company was good, even if the service and food was suboptimal. And that just leaves Oh Yeah! for a later date. And coffee happened, and this tided me through other people ordering Jimmy Johns... can't eat that at all because allergies.

Anyway, all that led into puzzlehunt! It was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed! I only sort of screwed up my lines in the opening meeting! The puzzle I put the most time into went well! The puzzle I put distinctly less time into went pretty okay but apparently horrified some people! It was better than the alternative though. And I only had to sleep all Sunday to get the icky stress feelings to go away. I love and hate staffing puzzlehunt for that reason. On the one hand it's so cool to see what goes on behind the scenes, on the other hand everyone is super stressed out and it just makes me feel awful.

As usual, I got a new idea for a puzzle the week before, so lets see if we can actually finish this one in time for next semester's hunt.

In conclusion:

Date: 10/12/2013

Coffee shop: Bagel Factory

What I had: Coffee + cupcake + baggel

Miles: 3.1

Party: shank, Margaret