Cycling September/October 2026

Some photos from my September/October cycling events.  Most of them group rides.

This is the Tunes, Toon, and Loons ride.  Or maybe Toons, Tunes, and Loons.  A bassist for SallyForth and Favourite Daughter I'd gone to see at the Harriet Bandshell and Edina (I'll get to a music post soon) Insta-ed that the group ride was happening and I thought it sounded fun.  It met at the coffee shop at Broken Clock Brewing and I biked all the way into North Minneapolis.  I ordered a coffee as I was early and....bassist! I said her name and she looked at me with confusion and I remarked I'd seen her play and was there on her advice.  She gave me my coffee and let me know we were starting at the OTHER coffee shop.  Which was fun, because I biked down to the other shop with her boyfriend and friends on a nice warm up ride.

This is all of us at the coffee shop.  Besides her mom (and dad) and me, a pretty young cloud worrying about water conservation and cleanliness in the lakes area.  I'm way in the back representing the "new" state flag.

We stopped by a few different spots that were highlighting their sunken gardens for water runoff and how they stopped pollution getting in the run off, and then ended up back at Broken Clock for music.  That's the bassist in the background.  Good beer.  Wish I lived closer.  My kid and I like Venn because it's a coffee shop that turns into a brewery.  Good place to work.  Amusingly, I saw a FB post by the new social director at Clock Works looking for local acts and said, "Um, maybe check with the bassist at the coffee shop in the building.  She knows a lot of local acts." 

I did think about going to a DJ Dance Ride going on that night, and then decided I wasn't going to make several more hours and didn't want to pedal home that late.  So I popped up to Animales to see Sarah Morris and check out the venue where we were going to have our monthly friends' dinner.  A much better choice.  I was famished and the DJ dance ride only has smores.

This is the DJ Dance ride.  I went to the last one of the season.  Raining at the start, but only barely.  Cleared up and stayed nice and cool.  Huge turnout.

Here we are blocking traffic near my sister-in-law's old apartment.

First stop, one of the light rail stations that wasn't in use yet.

Some actual dancing! For a while I was next to a kid who looked like he was out of Newsies.  He definitely upstaged me.  At one point at the stop, a clearly high guy came up and asked if I knew how many stops there were left.  I said no, but I thought one, and he noted he absolutely had to plan for the right time to get out the homegrown.  I'm not sure how he managed to stay on the bike as he was.  Dancing...sure.  Falling looks like dancing.

There was a bike with a flame where I could cook a smore.

A better picture of everyone toasting their mallows.

Video of the park stop where we danced and had smores.
 

The DJ Trailer had wheels, but also a spot so another bicycle could help pull it.  Pretty heavy.  Here's The local City Council President sitting in as one of our DJs.

Nice picture of the park.  Some people really went all in with the lights.  I felt like I was skimping a bit.


From the Give Us Wings ride with Ming.  It was raining the whole time.  These are my socks at breakfast at the OPH afterwards.  Ming and I still managed to get lost this year, even though he was in charge of some of the signs.  But we figured it out, turned around, and helped a few other people get "unlost" who did exactly what we did (they weren't following us, so it wasn't our fault like it was last year).


From the Twin Cities Bike Classic with Mean Mr. Mustard and Ming.  Got in a pretty long ride.  A little extra even as we parked at the Pancake Bistro a few miles from the start and carbed up before t he ride.

Had been a while since I'd been to the Minnetonka Train Depot.  Was a good ride.  Talked to a bartender from Venn for a bit who's excited about doing RAGBRAI next year and is practicing some longer rides.

Whew....that might seem like a lot, but I got in a lot more bicycling doing rides to outdoor music venues this year than I did to group rides.  Group rides just happened to anchor the end of the year.  I have music rides in my queue.  I'll catch up on those sometime soon as well.  Get my year a little better documented for posterity.