Even in Kyoto

When I checked social media on Saturday, I was reminded that the 15th annual Coffeeneuring Challenge had begun!

Thankfully, our grocery co-op has a coffee and espresso counter. They also often have donuts, so long as the donuts of the day haven't all sold out. At the time I got over there on Saturday afternoon, there were still donuts available, hurrah! Pumpkin donuts, no less. I felt inspired to take a photo of my donut that included my bike's Safety Donut.





The creator of the Coffeeneuring Challenges encourages participants to come up with their own themes for their rides. I'm now thinking that, in keeping with the overall aim of the Challenge, my theme might be something like, "Pause to appreciate and enjoy." This was very much true of the Honest Weight stop. I'd been running around all day, and the few moments sitting outside the co-op were much needed.

I managed to organize my day yesterday around food. With some good bicycling included, to provide a good appetite. Hooray!

First up was a Coffeeneuring expedition to a spot called Standard Fare, as suggested by RAC. Unfortunately I had a misadventure on the ride there, where I slammed on the brakes too abruptly and the front brake grabbed, sending me over the handlebars. My left thigh got caught on the bike's left grip, and I found myself sprawled out in a Superman pose on the pavement. It seems my head did not come in contact with the ground in any way, at least (helmet has no scratches!). But I have some bruising on my left leg and some scrapes on my knuckles. It took a minute to recollect myself, but then since we were close enough to our destination we just walked bikes the remaining distance to breakfast.



You won't be able to tell from the photo below, necessarily, but RAC greatly enjoyed her oatmeal with a crunchy quinoa topping. I don't think we've looked up yet how to make a crunchy quinoa topping ourselves, but she was inspired.



I had a lovely crispy waffle with strawberries, and L had a wee (but tasty-looking) breakfast biscuit sandwich followed by a more substantial strawberry-hazelnut scone.

Their coffee was quite good! So I drank a second cup, which is more than I should, but I couldn't resist.



After that we stopped by Berkeley Bowl West for some provisions, which was great because it let me scratch the itch to visit Berkeley Bowl, even though I don't really need to be buying much food while here for a short trip.



There were lots of great vehicles to ogle in the bike parking area.





After that we swung by a nearby hardware store to get an allen wrench multitool, to straighten out my bike's grips and handlebars, and then I set off towards Tilden to meet up with lab members from my time at Berkeley for a lab reunion and picnic in the park.

Biking up to Tilden definitely made me nostalgic for all the bike rides through the Berkeley hills. There are just so many lovely glimpses of the bay as one switchbacks one's way upwards, and yesterday the marine layer cleared to the point where I had great views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, downtown San Francisco, and the Marin headlands. And the architecture and garden landscapes are so colorful and varied in the bright California sunshine.

My only quibble on the ride to the picnic site was that Google was absolutely certain that I really wanted to do some mountain biking to reach my destination. I was definitely not interested in any sort of repeat of the earlier crash, so I had to take it very easy on some muddy, rocky, and steep sections. And so I managed to arrive still mostly in one piece, just very sweaty in an outfit that definitely wasn't intended for that sort of activity. Whoops.



In general I'm not all that big on reunions, but this one was 100% worthwhile. More people managed to make it to the reunion than I'd imagined, including several of the undergraduates who worked with me on research projects and who have since graduated and continued on to do great things (medical school, grad school in Biology). We all had a lot of fun when CMW asked us to go around and each share one memory from our time with the lab. There were lots of great stories.



My time in CMW's lab stands out as a special period, in that it was a place where an amazing set of thoughtful, hardworking people came together to do top-notch science. An excellent example of good community-building in science.

Then I biked back to R and L's house along Arlington Ave, going as gingerly as I could down some of the screaming downhill descents.



Back at the homestead, R had cooked up a glorious big pot of Freezer Chili (i.e. chili that used up lots of random things stashed away in the freezer), and presently some friends came over to join us for a backyard chili and cornbread feast and even more catching up.

So, other than the bike crash, an absolutely lovely day, one to savor and remember.

I made a whole album for the Olympic Peninsula trip, complete with photo captions, but it's too much to turn into a blog post because there are 130 photos in there. This is just the first one, of the food we carried with us, but it will take you to the entire album filled with beautiful Washington coastal scenery.



The views at Clallam Beach, Crescent Lake, Cape Flattery, Second Beach, and in the Hoh rainforest will stay with me for a while and bring me peace.

At Second Beach, I found a banana slug. Rat lungworm aside, it has been a long-term goal of mine to lick a banana slug. My last opportunity to even find banana slugs on the Olympic Peninsula was back in 2013 when I bike toured there, but the only slug I encountered on the bike tour wasn't actually a banana slug, so I didn't attempt to lick it.

When I licked the one at Second Beach, my tongue did NOT go numb. So I licked it again, and once again, nothing. So then I started to doubt my banana slug identifying abilities. After we got back to the motel in Forks, I checked with my brother and sister, and with the app Seek, and all agreed that the slug was indeed a banana slug. My sister suggested that maybe it was necessary to check more than one slug. So when I found another one in the Hoh rainforest the next day, I tried again. But again, nothing.

It might be the case that the slug needs to be concerned, but not yet agitated, about being eaten, when it is licked. My sister has recommended against attempting to lick an agitated banana slug, because at that point it will just slime you, which is apparently very unpleasant. It is a highly effective anti-predator strategy. So perhaps I am just adding to the dataset, that if you lick an unconcerned banana slug, your tongue *won't* go numb.

I am undecided on whether I will continue this overall experiment, or decide that I'm satisfied with having fulfilled this longtime goal of licking a banana slug.

--

On Saturday morning, I went to an event called Coffee Outside, sponsored by the app that I use to log my GPS tracks when I go on long bike rides.



I tried to participate last year in Albany, but the overall experience was underwhelming because there wasn't any sort of associated public gathering. So it was just me going on a bike ride and then pausing to drink some coffee by myself. But this year, I'm in Seattle, where there are lots of people who like to ride bikes and drink coffee and do outdoorsy stuff. Perfect!

When I arrived, there were a bunch of EZ-up tents set up, and a bunch of parked cars and vans, and I was confused, because that didn't seem like bicycling. The people there were set up for avalanche rescue training. They had their own coffee and croissants, but that wasn't what I was looking for. My cell service was spotty enough that I couldn't check to see whether I had the date, time, or location wrong. After a few minutes, however, other people on bikes started to show up, and it appeared there was a failure to communicate about who got to use the picnic shelter. Not a problem, there were plenty of tables since it was a clear morning without any rain, so after some diplomatic negotiations we settled in to brew.

I brought along the backpacking stove that apparently used to belong to my cousin Zachary. It makes big flames during priming, which are very dramatic and made me wonder about backpacking fire extinguishers.



I was glad to find that it worked, and that it still had the instruction manual so I could use it properly.

There was a good sized crowd!



Some of the coffee-drinking setups were very elaborate and entertaining, and I greatly appreciated getting to enjoy them vicariously. This one nearly resulted in catastrophe, when the person holding the heat diffuser accidentally tilted it too far and the espresso pot and cups started to slide off.



I liked how this couple figured out how to use their cargo bike as a table. They said maybe with more advance planning in the future, they might bring along a battery and an espresso machine.



Ultra-lightweight backpacking setup:



I like the tiny folding table. The people who brought it said they got it because they'd gone on one too many trips where they just couldn't find a level surface anywhere. But also because they like cute bikepacking accessories made of titanium.

There were lots of Jetboils, as you can imagine. I'm not a huge fan of all the disposable fuel cartridges, personally. I can understand why people like them, for the portability and ease of use.

Winner of "best shirt" as judged solely by me:



This guy was definitely a professional Coffee Outside brewer. I hadn't seen a small vacuum brewer of this size before.


He said that at one point, there were 4 different Coffee Outside weekly meetups happening in Seattle, but then, as is typical, a bunch of people moved to Portland instead, so now there are just 2 regular weekly Coffee Outside meetups.

His bike had some really cool racks, that could fold up to become platforms, or fold back down to allow pannier attachment. I might have to shop for some of these someday.



---

Boat progress:


Still sanding down the epoxy on the outside. After watching even more videos about sanding, my tools for yesterday were a cardboard-backed piece of sandpaper, a brush for cleaning out the sandpaper when it clogged, and a rag instead of a brush, to clear the epoxy dust from the place where I sanded. Every spot where the epoxy is shiny has to be sanded back until it's matte white.



There are still some fairly large and complex surfaces that need to be sanded on the outside, so I am probably going to head back to Fisheries Supply today to peruse the shapes of the various hand sanding tools some more.



----

On Sunday morning I joined annikusrex, F, and friends M&M visiting from Maine, for brunch and then another coffee shop bike ride. M appreciated that I've been trying to draw something at each destination, so he also worked on a drawing of F while we enjoyed our coffee:



F tried to make a face during the drawing, adding to the challenge!

After that, F worked on a drawing of M, but only got as far as drawing M's coffee cup:


We also checked out the newly opened Overlook Walk, which provides a pedestrian connection from the historic Pike Place Market down to the waterfront.



It was a warm and sunny Sunday in October, and there was at least one enormous cruise ship moored at a pier, so there were THRONGS of people checking out the Overlook Walk.

Then I came home again and continued sanding.

Yesterday was the "soft opening" day for the start of the 2024 Coffeeneuring Challenge, something I've been training and practicing for all year long.

A couple of days after I arrived in Seattle, my mom pulled out an old Steno pad notebook for me: the log where my dad would record his weekly coffeeshop bike rides.

One of the things that's mildly encouraged for the Coffeeneuring Challenge, is to come up with a theme. So for this year, my theme will be revisiting some of the coffeeshops my dad visited over his years of coffeeshop bike rides. I may not manage to finish out this theme in its entirety, because there's a limit of 2 coffeeshop visits per week, and I plan to head out of Seattle towards the end of October. But I'd better give things a good try before then.

In any case, yesterday I decided to start by going back to ETG Coffee in Fremont (note, that's a FB link because they don't have much internet presence), a longtime family favorite. After having spent more time in Paris last summer, I have even more appreciation for small businesses that occupy small spaces, such as ETC.

I think maybe they've upgraded from one to two chandeliers? There's another one you can't see in this photo, more towards the middle of the space.



However, at least at this moment, the shop has been rearranged a bit, such that there isn't any indoor seating and you can't really hang around inside to ogle the chandeliers, the sculptural details, or the ceiling painting. There are still the 3 chairs out front, however.



This mug/thermos doesn't fit as well in this holder as my old Bulldog Espresso one did.

I had something of a large breakfast before setting out, so I resisted the temptation to get a thyme-gruyere gougères this time. (I think my sister and I indulged in several on one expedition in the past, because they are super yummy!).

After that, errands.

Well, actually, first I went back to check out the plant shop I'd noticed on my way over to ETG. I think it might be one that threemeninaboat mentioned from her recent trip to Seattle? They had giant racks outside containing "rescue plants," and upon inspection I noticed they had a rescue plant that I've been looking for, the satin pothos! So of course I got one. But I do have to wonder how a shop winds up with that many rescue plants.

There were tons of fun things to ogle inside.

Cute terrarium fountain setup with carnivorous plants:


Gorgeous, big, healthy vanilla bean orchids, only $68 each. I am waiting before I commit to trying to grow another one, until I have a better living arrangement for managing orchids. But I can always admire them.


I never knew there were Goth begonias, with amazing spiky leaves??


From there, I of course went over to visit my BFF's at Fisheries Supply. This was a surprisingly low-budget trip for more chip brushes, some Scotch-Brite 7447 scrub pad, and a better paint roller.

Also a good day to stop by Gasworks Park and look at all the boats out on Lake Union.


Someone thoughtfully installed a stationary exercise bike up by the sundial. Can't really beat the views up there, anyway.


It still kind of boggles my mind how this was an oil and gas refinery, now a Superfund site and park and playground.




I was hoping that the Fisheries Supply would have a riffle rasp set, but they didn't. So then I proceeded to go and look at: Artist and Craftsman Supply (they did but it was way too expensive), the University District Farmer's Market (nope, but honestly I wasn't expecting to find them there, I just wanted to check it out), Tweedy and Pop's Hardware (nope), and the University Bookstore (nope). After picking a couple food items up at the HMart, I decided to go through the UW campus on my way home, and was rewarded with a running fountain, small throngs of people, and a faroff view of Mt. Rainier. "The Mountain is Out" all the Seattlites endlessly tell each other, whenever skies are clear enough you can see the mountains.





Today I will travel in the opposite direction. There will probably be more photos.

How is it mid-August already?! (don't answer that, heh)

Yesterday I did manage to get a fairly comprehensive revision of what I must call "the 2018 manuscript" over to my coauthors. So that's a good milestone, at least. Then I spent the afternoon in this space:



I'm tracking a range of things in the leafcutter colonies I got started back on July 19, including their initial brood production sequence. This does give me mild flashbacks to similar work with seed-harvester queens years ago. Thankfully, although the leafcutter queens also dislike having the extremely bright scope lights pointed directly at them, they are less inclined than the seed-harvester queens to pick up their entire clutch of eggs and try to run away with it.

Here's what a seed-harvester ant queen looks like up close, with her first clutch of eggs:


Now try to imagine counting the number of eggs in that three-dimensional clutch, while an ant queen frantically runs to and fro, attempting to protect her precious babies from the invasive bright light. Oh, and doing this in a room that is just a little too uncomfortably warm. Repeated around a hundred times, for a hundred ant farms. Note, the setup involved in getting a photo such as that one is too time-consuming to replicate 100 times over. And repeat it all the next day, or the day after that.

So I used to need to take periodic breaks to sit in the (cool) hallway with my eyes closed, after a bunch of that.

And in any case, as I said, the leafcutter queens are generally far kinder, although their eggs are often distributed across the 3-dimensional surface of their fungus garden, so there's more of an egg hunt involved. I am also still working on the best ways to get good illustrative photos of the ants, their brood (eggs, larvae, pupae), and their small fungus gardens. It is really tricky to take good photos when your subject matter is tiny and mostly whitish/transparent, and there's a clear plastic barrier causing all kinds of reflections between you and the subject matter. I had an undergraduate research student years ago who got pretty good at it all, but I lack the time and access to the extremely fancy camera and lighting she had. That's all I can really say about that for now.

Anyway.

The remaining randomalia comes from this morning's bike ride, where we re-rode the People's Ride of yore. This was a ride that a good friend started as a contrast to another bike ride, the "Friday Ride," known for being fast-paced and competitive. The People's Ride was a good lap with a couple modest climbs mixed in, and was no-drop. It was actually the first bike ride I ever did on a regular basis where the goal was just to go on a bike ride instead of riding to try and get somewhere.

One participant this morning wound up with a flat tire, which gave me time to notice another person's awesome spoke card:



At the end, JC and I stopped at a donutdoughnut shop, because the Farmer Market across the street wasn't open yet. This was a fancy, decadent, raspberry-pistachio doughnut:


Good coffeeneuring training.

Sometime thereafter I met up with another friend, RG, at the Farmer Market. The barista that morning was obnoxious, unfortunately. Not the barista who I have encountered there previously.

I periodically find myself wondering whether some of the artistic types in Tempe have addled brains as a result of prolonged heat exposure, drugs, or some combination of the two. Anyway, the Farmer Market wants to be a venue for artists, so sometimes that's fun, but other times it can be obnoxious.

The bike parking can provide a sense of the cultural hodgepodge:


Apparently someone is selling used bikes off of this bike rack.

This isn't a great photo of the bike formerly in the tree at this corner, now on its own high post, but still shows you that the corner still exists.


I am still very fond of Farmer Ave and the dudefort at this corner.

I made it out rowing on Tempe Town Lake this morning!



At the turnaround:


I connected up with the Rio Salado Rowing Club this time around. This was a change of pace from trying to row with the City of Tempe the last couple of times I've been in Arizona. The funny thing about rowing with Rio is they're the club where I first learned how to scull, although I didn't really row that much with other people from the club. Since then, they've grown and are more active, which is wonderful to see.

I was also very amused by their boat-naming scheme. This morning we were in the Monsoon. They also have a boat named the Gila Monster, and another one called the Superstitions. But by far, the best name is in the photo below:


Yes, a pair named the Prickly Pair, ha ha!

After I got back to the house (drove to rowing and back, bleah), I had to eat cold food (melons FTW) and then pass out for a while. It was hot today and this morning told me that if I want to row here I need to drink more beverages that contain electrolytes.

And now I am lurking in another old Tempe haunt, the Tempe Farmers Market. The Tempe Farmers Market opened up a couple years after the local grocery co-op, Gentle Strength, died. It was a long, drawn-out death for the co-op. Sometime in the early 2000's, they ran into financial trouble and wound up selling the land their building was on. The new landlord informed the co-op that eventually the existing building would be torn down and replaced with a high-rise with a Whole Foods on the first floor, so they had some time but not infinite time to find a new location. But then the expense of relocating and the risk involved in moving to a new location/etc led to a cash flow shortage, and abruptly, the co-op was closed and gone. Thirty years of history reduced to ash, the same story we saw play out time and again with businesses out here.

For a number of years, the Tempe Farmers Market operated as a market, and carried a number of convenient and good products: fresh-baked bread, eggs, dairy, and produce grown in the neighborhood 2 blocks away. When the US housing market collapsed in 2008, the lot where Gentle Strength stood wound up sitting as a flat, empty gravel lot for around 10 years. To give you a sense of the impact of the housing market collapse, it took the movement of heaven and earth just to get a pair of nearly complete high-rise towers finished in downtown Tempe at that time.

When the Whole Foods finally opened up, I could see on my visit to the Farmer's Market in 2021 that it was having a major impact on the business. So between then and now, it seems the place has transformed again. It is now a coffeeshop by day, bar/speakeasy by night, and there's a stage set up in here for live music as well. Walking in here last week made me realize I have strong sentimental attachments to this place, so I hope it succeeds in this form. The owner has always tried to support local artists, which is a big part of what creates a meaningful sense of place.

Also, the coffee is excellent. This morning I'm having a smooth and delicious Vandola:


And the space continues to have the funky character it has always had, from even before the Tempe Farmers Market days.

Less funky part in homage of history:


Behind the bar:




More fun side:

Well, that was a full weekend out doing stuff.

I promised S I would reserve this past weekend for whatever adventures he was up for, and so he selected a Saturday kayaking expedition to Troy for us. I suspect that was a wise choice relative to sailing, because by all indicators there was very little wind.







We pretty much had the entire river to ourselves. We saw a single fishing boat on the way up, and were waked by a single power boat on the way back. I still find it so hard to believe that this stretch of river is so underutilized.

Once we returned to Albany, I determined that it was imperative that we go and visit the Savoy Taproom in order to properly follow the rules for the 13th annual Coffeeneuring Challenge, as it is unclear whether it would "count" if we biked to the boathouse, kayaked to Troy, drank coffee in Troy, kayaked back, and then biked home.

But surely, a Savoy Spiked Coffee enjoyed on the bike ride home would count.

We also finally attempted to use the World's Tiniest Scrabble Board:



Somehow we need to get some tweezers or something going for the sake of tile management with this board, although the tweezers might need to be plastic so the magnetic tiles don't just stick to the tweezers. We also concluded that in general this board is best reserved for extreme Scrabble emergencies. The mid-size travel Scrabble is a million times more pleasant to play.

Sunday morning turned into a bit more of a whirlwind than anticipated. While I was baking up some pumpkin muffins, S noted that it would really be a good idea to mix up one last batch of pesto for the year, so I shifted gears and got that done. Then it was the usual housekeepery tornado up until it was time to meet up with Albany Social Cycling for a Sunday ride out to Indian Ladder Farms, the local Massive Fall Celebration destination*.



I've been wanting to ride out there for a while, just to learn more about what the roads are like out in that direction. Overall the ride out along Krumkill was quite scenic and pleasant, although I have to note that roads without a shoulder aren't my favorite, even if most of the traffic out there was very patient with us.

We did wind up making a new friend along the way:




Once again the skies were overcast to a point where it was difficult to adequately photograph the scenery, so you'll just have to trust me that this is a lovely scenic view of Thatcher State Park:



It's apparently another 7 miles or so over to Thatcher, where there's a good couple-mile climb to get up to the escarpment, where there's a fantastic view looking back out over the Hudson Valley. That means that the ride out to Thatcher might actually be similar to the Tempe-based ride out to South Mountain in distance and scope. It sounds like the climb to Thatcher isn't quite as extreme, but the views are pretty great. Cycling ambitions for another day.

The Helderberg-Hudson rail-trail also runs most of the way out to Indian Ladder Farms, so we took it for the return route, and it was quite lovely as usual:


(this is a short video if you click through to watch)


(another short video)

We did get to see the trail section where new bridge construction recently failed, which was interesting.

Inbound towards Albany, the rail trail has a gentle downward grade, so it makes for a lovely return route. I'm glad that we took a different outbound route, though, because it's kind of tedious to slowly crawl upward along a pretty flat, straight bike path. Much better to have lumpier hills to traverse.

As soon as I got home, I turned right back around and headed over to the grocery co-op, where I picked up groceries and some supplies to cook up a Pumpkin-coconut curry. The neighborhood squirrels had started to gnaw on one of the pumpkins I'd bought the week prior and put out on the front porch, so I figured I'd better get it cooked up sooner rather than later. I used a recipe out of 660 Curries, and the recipe and the pumpkin did not disappoint. I didn't even do the recipe full justice because I was missing a couple important ingredients for the sambar masala, I used way more pumpkin and cauliflower than the recipe called for, I used green beans instead of "drumsticks**," and I got whole pigeon peas instead of split pigeon peas.

Regardless, it was delicious.



And now, back to work. I feel like I'm finally managing to keep up with work, but just barely.



*As in, if you know of any people who constantly run around shouting, "I LOVE FALL!!" this is exactly the kind of place they are wanting to visit and live at for the entire fall. This place had a cider-drinking taproom, multiple gift shops, a bottle shop, a cafe, cider donuts, and a new pizza garden. They have a wide selection of apples and squashes and gourds, animals for petting, pony rides, the works.
** According to the cookbook, these are some sort of vegetable that is similar to okra but not entirely the same? The suggested replacement was asparagus but asparagus isn't exactly in season right now.

Yesterday was 100% grading and insect care and getting home late after a paltry office supper. Let's not speak of yesterday any longer.

Today, by contrast, I decided I would be FREEEEEEEEEEEEE to do whatever I felt like doing! Well, as long as I got in some erg meters for the Holiday Challenge.

So I got up and went to rowing practice, enjoyed the post-practice coffee with teammates, then set out towards the Troy Farmer's Market. I had a brief detour when I passed the boathouse: the tide was low, and my teammate E was rather keen to use the opportunity to search for a seat that fell out of one of our boats when it flipped a couple weeks ago, just off the dock. So I pulled out my kayak and briefly went hunting for it. I did spy 2 cinderblocks, and finally figured out that a creepy/ominous object sometimes encountered at lower tides was a half-submerged plastic traffic barrel. But no sign of the seat. I suspect it was swept downriver and also buried in the (extremely disgusting) sediment. It was very tempting to stay out on the river and just kayak all day, but the market beckoned.

It was a beautiful, sunny day - the temperature got up into the 50's. I have come to realize that I love biking along the river in these conditions, because when the leaves are off the trees you can actually see the river while riding. I mean, the path is nice when everything is green, it's just nice in a different way when the trees are bare.

In Troy, I visited another coffeeshop called Jacob Alejandro, for one final coffeeneuring bonus trip:

The pastry was a savory apple-cheddar scone; delicious. It's a little silly, how many nice spots there are to go and get coffee in Troy. Better than NO spots to get good coffee, I suppose.

There weren't all that many farmers selling produce at the market, so the only produce I bought was a couple heads of garlic. I am always glad to get milk from Battenkill Dairy, though, and bread from one of the bakeries, and Battenkill even had eggnog this week. I have decided that this is a good year to try out all of the 3 various eggnogs for sale at the co-op, so I was delighted to extend my testing efforts to this fourth variety from Battenkill. I'll say more once I've finished all of my taste testing; I'm not there yet.

And then, to the hardware store, for lights to replace those early-generation LED horrors. I found something that will work, and of course while I was in the hardware store I found another tempting shiny object that I simply couldn't resist:



I have to admit I'm kind of surprised these aren't multicolored. But on the other hand, it's also a little strange to have the lights *inside* of the disco balls. So whatever.

The 12th Annual Coffeeneuring Challenge has begun.

The last time I participated was in Berkeley, which was a ton of fun. I of course also always think of my dad when doing these things, as he was a Coffeeneur well before it caught on more broadly. I haven't really had the bandwidth to even think about coffeeneuring out here, but as I think more about it, I think I might be able to pull it off this year. I should at least try!

I can only count our morning trips to Stacks Espresso once, but this one seems like a good one for the purpose:


Hooray for skull cookies! I should be able to make it to the Troy Farmer's Market this Saturday, and there are at least 4 3 good places to get coffee in downtown Troy, although that reminds me of some really terrible news, which is that the Troy Daily Grind has closed! Apparently the owner got tired of running 2 coffeeshops over the span of 20-30 years. We just can't have good things.

I definitely need to make one of my Coffeeneuring expeditions a Coffee Outside one. Time to build a travel case for one of the siphon brewers. Ideally I'd like to haul it, a folding table, some chairs, and the Shroud of Myrmecos somewhere pleasant. Hmm.