The leaves that are green turn to...

The leaves that are brown
Originally uploaded by jsteel.

Mark texted me Sunday morning proclaiming that it was a quite marvelous day, a clear reference to a suggestion I'd mooted earlier in the week about going for a ride out to the Forêt de Rennes to see the changing colours of leaves, something perhaps more novel to me than to him, but nonetheless fairly notable. He was right, too; the day was magnificent, cool but aggressively sunny and with a deep blue sky.

We rode out via Thorigné-Fouillard to the forest, which was fairly well-attended by families, joggers and a few other cyclists. I'd packed a couple of jumpers, since my weather report had said 6 degrees, but we both wound up riding in T-shirts, since the sun was warm. The leaves were indeed impressive, although perhaps not as colourful as those outside my appartment or office window, which are quite dramatic. The ride was pleasant, too, for plenty of chat about filmmaking, tech toys, and rising house prices. We rode back again through Thorigné, but this time sticking more to cycle paths, heading down through fields to Cesson, then along the canal back from Cesson to Rennes.

We had dinner at Mark's, too, at which point the conversation turned to work things. Mark has pretty much become my principal sounding board for a lot of the ideas I've been implementing and writing about, so while it was good to avoid work during the ride, it was nice to chew that familiar fat again once safely within doors and lubricated by a glass of bordeaux.