bike the barns 2008

yesterday was the second annual “bike the barns:  tour de csa.”   longtime readers might remember last year’s event and let me assure you that it was just as much fun this year.  this year, the ride featured a totally different route and four farms we hadn’t visited last year.  the ride started near enough to our house, that we just biked to the starting point (instead of trying to drive there and find and pay for parking), so we biked a grand total of about 70 miles yesterday.  we fell asleep around 9:00 last night (ergo, no time to blog).  but before we fell asleep, we enjoyed some gorgeous weather and some fantastic food.

i forgot to take any pictures at breakfast, but we both very much enjoyed the apple croissants from cafe soleil and were pleasantly surprised to see so many people (among the 500 participants!) that we knew (but hadn’t known they were doing the ride).  the ride organizers asked us to stagger our start times for traffic control reasons, so we got a bit of late start, but we were on the road by 9:00.  the first stop (26 miles into the day) was at the blue skies berry farm (one of my favorite stops at the farmer’s market each saturday) where we enjoyed apples from my favorite cider source (ela orchard) and some fantastic crumbly handfuls of granola from nature’s bakery.  riders were also invited to wander out into the raspberry patches and enjoy as many raspberries as we wanted — yum!

(at the bottom of this picture, you can see my favorite new biking accessory–keen sandals with cleats that attach to my bike pedals.  love. them. so. much.  they’re almost as comfortable (even for walking!) as a normal keen sandal and waaaaay more comfortable than any other biking shoe i’ve ever used.  i can wear them all day at work!)  lunch was the next stop, a mere 8 miles down the road at tipi produce.  although we were too late to enjoy homemade corn tortillas, we were still treated to pulled pork and pulled goat tacos and a variety of salads (cabbage, beet, kale, sprouted lentils….) and slices of watermelon for dessert.

(sorry the picture’s a little blurry.  i took “little silver” along, not “big black,” and i forgot i had to press the “macro” button if i wanted it to focus closer until the end of the day…)  after a nice break for lunch, we hopped back on the bikes for another 18 miles heading back towards town where we stopped at blue moon farm for some bruschetta:

more apples (after i bit into it, mine was very attractive to a persistent bee):

and possibly our favorite treat of the day:

homemade oatmeal cookies with homemade ice cream on top and your choice of a raspberry or a ground cherry for garnish!  oh man did that ice cream hit the spot!

we wearily climbed back onto our bikes and finished our trek home where we jumped into the shower (that’s my favorite part of long-bike-ride-days), changed into fresh clothes, then headed over to a friend’s house for a big party.  we had a wonderful time visiting with friends from out of town (hi, beans!) and met some new friends.  but like i said before, we fell asleep by about 9:00.  best kind of tired to be.