A challenge on Flickr is barbed wire and I was out after breakfast to try to get some good shots of the barbed wire down the road. I suppose the usual associations with barbed wire are negative ones like prison, war and concentration camps. It is used to keep people in where they don't want to be or out of where they want to be, it is aggressive and confining. However, in this rural setting it simply encloses a cow pasture and was very pleasing to contemplate with morning dew, cobwebs, autumn leaves, lichen.

There was nothing special about today's ride. It was short as are most of my/our rides these days. The predicted blue skies never made an appearance and the temperature stayed stubbornly at 11C. Our loop was through the forest on a kind of bumpy track part of the time, then on smooth roads for the ride back. The fall foliage is beautiful and although all my photos look somewhat similar, I can't stop taking them. That's also a reason for this post after more than a year of not blogging here. I want a place to show my pictures.

I am having a hard time getting myself out the door for a ride these days and the rides are usually short, just long enough for me to find a photo OP, then home. We are still having mild days, so I should be taking advantage of them.

A new challenge! Here are the rules in short. For more detail, have a look at the Coffeeneuring website.

• between October 6 through November 18, 2024,
• ride your bike 7 times,
• to at least 6 different places (you can repeat 1!)
• at least 2 miles round trip every time,
• drink 7 total cups of coffee (or another fall-type beverage), and
• document your coffeeneuring (either photos, Strava tracks, journal entries, control card, etc.) just in case the Coffeeneuring Challenge Committee and the ever-striving Intern ever conduct an audit.

Here are my rides with interactive maps and slide shows for each day.

Ride 1
October 6, 41 km
First day of our five day tour circling Munich

Ride 2
October 10, 54 km
Last day of our five day tour circling Munich

Ride 3
October 14, 24 km
Ride to Wessling where the cafe was closed, but found another - before the rain came.

Ride 4
October 18, 4 km
Baked my own cake for this very short ride to a picnic spot on the Würm, a pretty stream that runs close to where we live.

Ride 5
October 25, 21 km
A ride through the woods and coffee/tea al fresco

Ride 6
October 27, 27 km
Visiting with two granddaughters and one great granddaughter

Ride 7
November 1, 8.5 km
In spite of the beautiful fall weather, we were lazy and only rode far enough to have coffee/tea and some very decadent cake.