"Every Huck in a Day" Epic Bike Ride
We truly love every coffee shop partner we get to work with – there’s something unique and delicious at every cafe, and we’re grateful to live in a city with such a vibrant and diverse coffee scene. This past Sunday, we celebrated this by challenging ourselves to ride to every location of one of our longest-standing partners.
Huckleberry Roasters holds a special place in our heart because they were among the first to take a chance on us. Our founder, Zach, got to know some of the Huck baristas when they opened their second location in the Dairy Block. Huck willingly hosted a “bread pop-up” event when Rebel Bread consisted of just this 4-foot table and a few sourdough loaves (pictured below). Huck was excited to try a blueberry-walnut-cinnamon loaf crafted in honor of their warm and colorful company vibes (we don’t remember if the loaf was actually any good). And Huck said yes to being one our first wholesale partners on opening day as a brand new bakery.
Bread “pop-up” at Huckleberry Roasters
We’ve loved watching them grow, and having had the opportunity to grow alongside them. Today, you can you can visit eight Huckleberry Roasters coffee shops in Denver, each of them unique and worth their own visit. And so that’s what we decided to do to celebrate this awesome partnership - to visit every Huckleberry Roasters cafe, in a day, on bike!
Here is the plan we made going into the ride. We knew we wanted to visit all eight locations, which meant that we had to do it before the final stop closed at 4pm. That’s doable, right?
“Every Huck in a Day” Epic Bike Ride Route
Seg 1 | 6:45am - start at Rebel Bread, bike 11 min (2 miles) to
Seg 2 | 7:00am - Huck Baker, bike 1 hour (13 miles) to
Seg 3 | 8:30am - Huck Southglenn, bike 1 hr 20 min (13 miles) to
Seg 4 | 10:30am - Huck Congress Park bike 34 min (6 miles) to
Seg 5 | 11:15am - Huck Dairy Block, bike 15 min (2 miles) to
Seg 6 | 11:45am - Huck Pecos, bike 15 min (2 miles) to
Seg 7 | 12:15pm - Huck Tennyson , bike 10 min (1.5 miles) to
Seg 8 | 1:15pm - Huck Wheat Ridge, bike 30 min (5 miles) to
END 2pm - Huck Larimer, return to bakery (3 miles)
Total # Hucks: 8 | Total # miles: 48
We begin the day at 6:45am as planned at the Rebel Bread Production Lab. Never a team to pass on an opportunity to show our spirit, we pass around “Every Huck” bracelets to commemorate the beginning of the ride.
The first segment is a short neighborhood ride to the closest location, Huck Baker. When we enter the shop, we are not only greeted by the golden hues of an early morning sun, but cheering baristas! What a cool way to begin the adventure. We place our orders which include the first Avocado Toast of the day. As we sit on the patio overlooking South Broadway, feeling excitement and maybe a bit of trepidation about the day ahead of us, we hear a POP and then a release of air that “sounded like a bus backing up.” After only a mile of biking, at our first stop, we now have our first flat tire.
Unbeknownst to us, we had a bike mechanic on our team in the form of Joy, our Production Director! Joy changes out the tube and repumps the tire without drama. We all watch on, impressed, and we really wish Joy was continuing on with us, as she is clearly a valuable member of our team!
After chatting with our team member Adam who came by to see us off, we head out about an hour behind schedule. This time we are embarking on the longest segment by far, a 13 mile ride to the suburban-most location, Huck Southglenn.
The ride to Southglenn was beautiful. Riding along the Platte River, navigating the Mary Carter Greenway Trail, and experiencing the Big Dry Creek Trail were highlights of the entire day. Being out on the trails in the still-early morning sun felt remote and it solidified the reality of the adventure. A particularly run-out downhill steals the attention of two of our members, who, speeding down in total euphoria, completely miss our turn! It felt incredible to be with this group of people, doing this incredible thing, in an incredible landscape that is in our backyards.
When we arrive at Huck Southglenn, it feels like our first big victory. We are greeted with warmth and enthusiasm from the cafe manager, Heather, and we enjoy a few more Avocado Toasts and the A/C.
It was time to return to the route, another 13 mile push back north towards the city, this time mostly on roads. We were heading to Huck Congress Park, the third stop on our route.
The ride through the neighborhoods of Cherry Hills and Englewood is surprisingly bike friendly, with big bike lanes on relatively quiet roads. There are some epic downhills that felt as if the route itself was encouraging us forward. A few people in the group point out neighborhoods they used to live in or currently live in (we even stopped at someone’s house), and we realize that we were going to get a very thorough tour of Denver on this adventure. For the first time that day, we also experienced fatigue from both the exertion and the sun. There were some doubts about what we had gotten ourselves into - we still had six more locations to go and most of us had never done a 50-mile ride before.
After passing through the beautiful Wash Park and taking a clandestine “shortcut” through the Speer/Country Club neighborhood, our gang of bikers pulls up to the patio at Huck Congress Park, where we are greeted by two bakery team members waiting for us! The weather is hot, but we take over the patio under the umbrellas and enthusiastically share our adventure thus far with our friends.
At this point, we are over 26 miles into the 48-mile ride. The remaining five Hucks are all within 5 miles of each other, so while the big physical pushes are behind us, the mental challenges of just keep going lie ahead. We are also an hour and a half behind schedule, though we haven’t really discussed this yet as a group.
The next segment is an urban tour of Cap Hill and downtown Denver, with a brief ride on the Cherry Creek Trail. Even though this is the segment of the ride with the most traffic, the narrowest bike lanes, and the hottest sun, we are flying. Our new team member, Brinna, breathed new life into the group and it was awesome to experience the parts of Denver we know well, but in slow motion. One of our group members, Dani, was stoked to be back in her old stomping grounds and we were all thankful to not be driving.
When we arrive at Huck Dairy Block, we’re ecstatic. We’re having so much fun as a group, the day is beautiful, and the riding has been smooth and adventurous. We start talking about the ride in general. We couldn’t come up with a great reason to do it in the first place, other than it sounded like a fun challenge. While this ride was inspired by the many commuters and bike enthusiasts at the bakery, the group that did the ride are not mega-bikers. One member, Megan, the Director of Gino Panino, bought her bike the week prior! Yet here we are, a ragtag group of individuals who got up early on our day off for our own personal reasons, now, together at Huck Dairy Block, really starting to come together on the mission.
The fifth stop is Huck Pecos. Zach, Rebel Bread founder and the day’s Lead Route Guide, navigates us beautifully through Commons Park, over the Platte River, under I-25, and into the Highlands.
After a quick stop at Huck Pecos (our first “quick” stop of the day, to be honest), we ride uphill a few miles to Huck Tennyson. The team at Huck Tennyson is so enthusiastic and supportive of our ride. During our lunch of avocado tostada and burritos (the second burrito of the day for one of our team members), the group goes over the timeline. We realize that if we don’t push our pace, we could miss our 4pm cut-off time and arrive at our last stop, Huck Larimer, after they close. What stands out most about our time at Huck Tennyson is that we no longer wondered if we could do it. We now know, both individually and as a group, that we are capable of this mission and we are working together to realize it.
We wrap up our lunch and are wished a “safe ride” by the Huck Tennyson team as we head out to the seventh stop, Huck Wheat Ridge. Happily, Huck Wheat Ridge is unique in that they have a drive-through so we literally rode-through! We are by now all over-caffeinated, so the giddiness of the ride-through was just what we needed. And now, after over 40 miles and 8 hours of riding, we are heading to our final destination, Huck Larimer.
The ride to our eighth and final Huck felt...lightweight. For the first time that day, the clouds covered the sun and it even started to rain. We were riding downhill, in the direction of our destination and our cars parked at the bakery. We agreed it didn’t even feel like we’d been riding “all day,” we just felt free.
We arrive at Huck Larimer to a small festival. It was 3:40pm, so we had 20 minutes to spare. We order our final drinks of the day (the Salted Coconut Espresso being the day’s favorite), take a photo, and do our high-fives.
As it goes with any good adventure, the summit is anti-climatic. We achieved our goal, but the real excitement came when we realized that we were capable of it a few Hucks ago. We’ll remember most how it felt to anticipate this unknown in the days leading up to it, how the morning sun felt on our skin as we cruised along the Platte River, how it felt to feel tired and doubtful, how it felt to arrive at Huck Dairy Block, how it felt to retrace our steps as the most current versions of ourselves, and how it felt to be part of a team with a shared goal in a beautiful city. Every Huck in a Day was indeed an Epic Bike Ride!
Thank you so much to the Huck team members for cheering us on and, especially towards the end, putting up with our wildness!
View our route segments on CoTrex:
Huck Southglenn to Huck Congress Park
Huck Congress Park to Huck Dairy Block
Huck Dairy Block to Huck Pecos
Huck Tennyson to Huck Wheat Ridge
