The Friday Cyclotouriste

map

This Friday’s ride was a short commute to Mill Valley and since I forgot my camera I’m including a map instead.

There are many possible routes using little side roads and bike paths, but these bike paths are not visible on Google maps, hence the gaps between the red route lines.

I left a little past 8am and rode at a slow, meandering pace for about an hour. My destination was an intensive specialty coffee training workshop with Willem J. Boot of Boot Coffee Consulting, a remarkable fellow with a true mastery of his subject. The state-of-the-art, teaching studio (equipped with numerous roasters and high-tech coffee industry gadgetry) is continuously abuzz with instructional exercises laid out in ritualistic fashion by Willem’s able associate, Jodi.

The class was also graced by a special guest, Graciano Cruz, of Los Lajones estates in Panama who spoke of his efforts to raise the quality level of coffee and with it the lives of the region’s indigenous farmers (see this description of his world class coffee).

Overall, it was a fantastic course during which I was treated to a cupping of the fabled Gesha coffee from Panama, as well as some delicious Ethiopian, Kenyan, Guatemalan, and Taiwanese (yes Taiwanese) samples. The location of the Boot Coffee school is marked by the southern most of the blue placemarks on the above map.

(Note: The Friday Cyclotouriste’s espresso reviews may need a complete overhaul now that my sensory awareness of coffee has been exposed to Mr. Boot and the SCAA and CQI criteria.)

The other placemarks on the map pinpoint two other highlights of this ride: (1) my closest encounter yet with a Red-Tailed Hawk (only about 20′ away sitting in a nearby tree) and (2) a voluminous patch of black berries that I stopped to gorge on during the evening ride home.