I must say, after a day of pounding the singletrack trails of the Powderface area in the Elbow Valley out in Kananaskis Country, sipping on some Calgary brewed Big Rock Beer, eating some garden grown salad greens and barbecued vegetables and pork, then sitting down to a hand ground cup of french pressed 2006 Carmen Estate - Best of Panama, roasted by Novo Coffee and provided by Phil and Sebastian, life is pretty good here.
So yeah, I think the biggest thing I need to say to my very few readers (well, actually stats have been up in the last few days!), if you live in Calgary, make Phil and Sebastian your coffee destination. If you haven’t been yet, or you don’t know where they are, they have a kiosk in the Calgary Farmer’s Market, located in the former CFB Calgary Currie Barracks.The two of them, plus Kat, formerly of Cafe Fantastico in Victoria, and Will, provide the city with some of the finest coffee available, bringing in goods from Intelligentsia, Novo and Hines. They’ve got a 3 group semi-automatic La Marzocco FB80, a few Anfim grinders, a Ditting and a Clover 1s.
It’s like a mini-Elysian Room.
Seriously though, I can honestly say that if they did not exist, and if John wasn’t bringing in 49th Parallel coffee into Bumpy’s, I would be much less happy with my situation in Calgary. So thank you John from Bumpy’s and Phil and Sebastian. I am now glad to be in Calgary.
In other news, I have been out pretty much every weekend for some sort of mountain adventure. Last week had my friend Quinn and I camp in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. I even brought the trusty hand grinder and the french press to have some of 49th’s Wild Forest Washed Gizmeret Ethiopia coffee. We hiked on the Saturday up Elk Pass, into BC, down into Elk Lakes and up to Petain Falls. If you ever get a chance, do this (really long) hike, and you will not regret it. The falls are spectacular.
Today, Quinn and his friend Karla and I rode the Powderface Creek and Prairie Creek trails on our mountain bikes. I tell you, after a couple of years not riding technical high country trails, it hurt, but it was so awesome flying down the slopes, avoiding trees, roots, rocks and mud.
Here’s a picture from our Petain Falls trip (just click on the link… wordpress isn’t giving me an option to thumbnail this dude).
Hey Peter, hitting the singletrack are you? Nice!!!
I dropped by P&S’s coffee spot on the weekend for the first time and had a delicious espresso (Hines) and a Clover of the Abeba (I had already roasted their other two offerings). Kinda funny story, as I was ordering the coffee Phil from the sidelines says “Is your name Shaun?”, turns out he has seen my blog. I will readily admit that this place would be my go-to place if I needed a quality coffee. And even though I never drink coffee anywhere else but in my own kitchen now, these guys make a compelling case to drop in for a lovely experience. I do like their coffee! If you are at their location sometime soon be sure to thank them for me again.
10 more days until I am in a 24hrs of Adrenalin solo category pain-fest. Yikes!