My Coffee Run on the Motorcycle (And the Story Behind It)

So it was a Saturday afternoon, I needed coffee, the weather was decent, and that was all the reason I needed to throw a leg over the Yamaha MT-09 SP and go for a coffee run on the motorcycle over to Reading Coffee Company. Simple enough premise. But if you know me at all, nothing stays simple for long.

Fair warning before we go any further: this one’s about coffee. The bike is in it, but it’s mostly just the reason I’m outside and talking to a camera. If you’re here for the twist throttle and the lean angles, this might not be your episode. But if you want to hear about how I accidentally converted a man who hated coffee into someone who drank four cups in a sitting, stick around.

I was also running low. Poured the last of my house blend from Reading Coffee Company into the grinder that morning, and I figured I had maybe three or four pots left before I was completely out. That’s basically a coffee emergency. Seemed like the right time to take a ride.

The Podcast, the Garage, and the Fancy Frap

So this story starts a few months back in the winter. On the side I do a cigar podcast called Smoke and Steel. The name comes from the smoke (cigars, obviously) and the steel (my metal box of a garage, and also two motorcycles in the background). It’s not a motorcycle podcast. It just happens to happen near motorcycles.

Recording in that garage in January and February is exactly as miserable as it sounds. Propane heater running, everyone layered up, trying to stay warm enough to talk without our teeth chattering.

One cold night, one of the other hosts, Eric, was on his way over and offered to stop at Wawa. He asked if I wanted anything. I told him a black coffee. Just coffee, nothing in it. He was a little surprised. “You just want plain coffee?” Yeah man, that’s what black coffee is.

He showed up holding two cups. His was immediately identifiable from across the room. The smell hit the second he walked through the door. Whatever was in that cup had flavor syrups, powders, and probably a few other things I couldn’t identify. Some kind of frappe situation. We gave him a hard time about it, because that’s what we do, and it became the running joke for several weeks. Every week he’d show up with his fancy drink and grab a black coffee for me, and we’d roast him for it. He’s a good sport about it, which is why it stayed funny.

Why Eric Hated Coffee (And Why It Made Sense)

Eventually the winter wrapped up and the topic of coffee came up again during a recording session. And we figured out why Eric couldn’t drink the stuff without half a bottle of creamer in it.

His wife bought their coffee at Costco. The mega tub. I joked it looked like a Lowe’s bucket full of ground coffee, and that’s what they’d run through every week. To make that palatable you’d need every sweetener and flavored creamer on the shelf. His wife, for the record, drinks it black. One of the other guys, Mark, pointed out that her coffee game was stronger than Eric’s and the room agreed. No shade to Maxwell House drinkers, but that stuff is rough. Folgers falls into the same category for me. It’s just not good.

Once we knew the backstory it made a lot more sense. Eric hadn’t been converted to bad coffee. He’d just never had good coffee.

The Night He Actually Had a Real Cup

A month or two later the guys came over to my house just to hang out, no recording, no agenda. My wife was home and able to handle the after-school logistics, so I actually had a free evening.

It was cool enough that making coffee sounded like a good idea. I had just picked up a bag of Bird’s Brew and the House Blend from Reading Coffee Company. The Bird’s Brew was open and loaded in the grinder, so that’s what I made. A full pot, enough for everyone.

Eric came through the door and I mentioned I had coffee if he wanted some. The look on his face said everything. He was polite about it because that’s his nature, but he was basically bracing for impact. He poured himself half a cup. Shyly asked if I had any creamer.

Jim, who is one of the more unfiltered people I know and a genuinely entertaining human being, told him to sit down and just drink the coffee.

So Eric sat down and started working through it. And you could see his whole demeanor shift. He looked up after a few sips and said something like, “This is actually really good.” And then he kept going. That half cup turned into four full cups. He was hitting the Bird’s Brew hard by the end of the night.

That’s what good coffee does. When you’re not fighting through bitterness, it turns out the stuff is actually pretty enjoyable. Especially sitting around with friends smoking cigars, which is a combination I’ll stand behind every time.

Back to the Ride

So that’s the backstory. That’s why I care about Reading Coffee Company and specifically about Bird’s Brew. And that’s why running out of the house blend on a Saturday with good weather is all the excuse I need to make a coffee run on the motorcycle.

I wasn’t even sure they’d be open. It was close to 4:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday, which is kind of an ambiguous time for a coffee shop. We were going to find out.

My plan was to pick up two blends I hadn’t tried yet. The Bird’s Brew is probably my favorite of the two I’d had, and part of me just wanted to grab another bag of it. But I also want to keep working through what they offer, so I figured I’d let the moment take me when I got there.

When I pulled into the parking lot. I thought I was in luck. The lights were on and I could see two people working inside. I hopped off the bike and began walking toward the door. Thats when I spotted the CLOSED sign. As it turns out, they close at 4pm and I missed them by about 15 minutes.

---

Ride With Me

If you want more content like this, subscribe to the WaltInPA YouTube channel for more riding content. Share this post with a friend who rides, especially if they have opinions about coffee. And come hang out in the WaltInPA Discord where good people talk about riding (and probably other things too).