Those are the claims. These articles, light magazine-style reading and meatier research articles, come out all the time. I always at least scan them to see if there’s anything new for me.
I’ve saved up a few of the light reading ones in case you might be interested. If nothing else, I always seem to expand my vocabulary by one or two words. E.g., ergogenic = performance enhancing. If you don’t know what nootropic means, it’s used and defined in this article discussing coffee as a fitness supplement.
And the title of this article interested me, as I’m sure it will many of you: Exploring the Relationship Between Coffee and Cycling.
“While you do get a performance boost from coffee, the culture is more rooted in sitting together and taking your time for a coffee before, during, and after a ride.”
Brian Megens, owner of Fixed Gear Coffee in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
It’s hard to really socialize when riding together, so it’s nice when there’s that moment you can relax altogether, linger over a simple cup of coffee (& maybe a snack), and chat without worrying about your collective safety. We like to ride early Sunday morning because it’s the best time traffic- and temperature-wise. And our riding buddy always hangs out afterward with us on the lanai for a cuppa Bea’s Knees Farm coffee, while overlooking the trees. It is really such a pleasure to take that time together. Sometimes it can stretch out for as long as the ride!
A couple of Sundays ago we met two guys from the San Francisco Bay Area who had just knocked off a bucket item: climbing from the ocean (Waikoloa) to the summit of Mauna Kea. The photo of this post shows their cross bikes (their faces were cropped for privacy). That’s over a 14,000 foot sustained climb, with a gravel section. Ooophh!! It’s beastly for numerous reasons. I’ve been on a driving tour to the summit where one of the normal, healthy passengers unexpectedly (to him, not the tour operators) required oxygen just to be at that elevation. We have a good friend who biked this from Hilo a few years back, and then a few days later also climbed Haleakala in Maui. I mention these climbs for those of you cyclists who might not have known about these “opportunities.” I wanted to give each of those guys a bag of our coffee so they could return with some of the ‘aina (land) as my token acknowledging their feat, but I thought of it after we separated and didn’t know how to reach them.
If being on a boat instead of a bike is more your thing, I came across this article, Five Best Coffee Makers for Boats. Good marketing for a specific audience.
Ride on! Hopefully fueled by the Bea’s Knees coffee …