Small Engine, Big Tank: Coffeeneuring #7 2012-11-10

Every year I bake a birthday cake for Liam (the son of our best friends). I've been doing this since his very first birthday. This year marked the end of Liam's 7th trip around the sun, and thus it was time for me to make him yet another cake.

Over the years, Liam's cakes have gotten more elaborate. I let Liam choose the theme, but after that I'm free to make whatever I like. This summer, Liam learned to ride his bike without training wheels, so sometime around August he decided he wanted a bicycle cake. With history as my guide, I knew I would invest a significant number of hours into the creation of his cake.

Liam's birthday is November 11th (Sunday). His party was scheduled for 1pm. November 11th is ALSO the day that Lynne & I planned to meet to do our final coffeneuring. 9am.

I planned to spend all day Saturday November 10th decorating Liam's cake. With history as my guide, I knew I would invest a significant number of hours into the creation of his cake. (Last year's cake involved 36 hours spread out over nearly a week.) This year's cake, while not as complex, was still quite an undertaking. Although the cakes themselves were already baked, I knew the entire day would be spent on it's construction.

What does this have to do with coffeeneuring? Well, I was worried that November 11th would arrive to find me with his cake unfinished, me scrambling to put the finishing touches on it the morning of the party, and therefore unable to meet Lynne to coffeeneur. Since this was the FINAL day of the FINAL weekend of coffeeneuring, I did not want to miss it!

And so, since I decided to do an "insurance coffeeneur". What's that? Well.... sometimes Lynne & I do "insurance perms". Both of us are working on another R-12. Some months, there's a big ride (400K, 600K etc.) scheduled late in the month. While neither of us ever DNF brevets, there's always that chance, and so, as "insurance" against breaking our R-12 streaks, we will sometimes do a 200K perm earlier in the month. You know, just in case.

So, on the morning of the 10th, I decided I needed a quick "insurance" ride. The grocery store is 1.2 miles (2.4 miles r/t) from my house. I needed more powdered sugar for the cake fondant so I decided to ride my bike, get some coffee, buy the sugar, and hightail it home. Perhaps this trip is not within the "spirit" of the casual, relaxed coffeeneuring events we'd had up to this point, but sometimes life intervenes to interrrupt our best intentions.

My dutch bike (a REAL dutch bike: the Gazelle Madelief) has a grocery pannier permanently installed, so I decided to take that bike to the local Fred Meyer. As I was pedaling towards the store, I realized I could have fun with the dutch theme. Rather that going to Starbucks (I'd sworn that I wouldn't use that as one of my coffeeneuring locations!) I decided to ride to the nearby Dutch Brothers Drive-thru instead!

Dutch Brothers has a walk-up window so I parked my bike and ordered a "Cocomo". I think it's basically a latte with coconut flavor. It wasn't great, but wasn't awful either. I wouldn't go out of my way to order it again.

Dutch bike at Dutch Brothers

My Gazelle Madelief at the grocery store.

Groceries purchased, I returned home to work on Liam's cake.

I'm pretty good at copying cakes I find online or elsewhere. To make Liam's cake I was inspired by one I found on a blog, but decided i could one-up it by making the wheels actually spin! To do so, I purchased lazy susan bearings online at Amazon