Stopping for Coffee

On what Marcus Gomersall has taught me about riding my bike.

I really need to reindex my shifters…

Leg Day is a newsletter about pursuing joy as a city cyclist.

There are a lot of cycling YouTubers. There are few I would ever recommend to someone else. That’s in part due to my own vanity—no one needs to know how much time I’ve spent watching race footage and strategy breakdowns about courses I’ll never experience—but it’s also because the stuff that crosses my feed wouldn’t make any sense to most of my friends. Genial Josh, for example, can bike just as fast, if not faster, than me, but I doubt he’d be able to tell you what an FTP is. And I’m pretty confident learning the definition wouldn’t make biking any more fun for him.

A few months ago, a video came across my feed that I immediately wanted to share with my partner, probably the person with the least tolerance for bike bro energy in the universe. It’s called “Why I love commuting by bicycle and how you can too.”

The video is very gently produced. It’s basically just edited footage from bike rides under a resonant baritone voice over. I was immediately drawn to how un-optimized it felt. There’s no blaring “COMING UP” intro section, no off-platform promotion, and maybe most of all, no mention of power, calories, or speed.

Over the next few weeks, I’ve watched most of the Probably Riding back catalog. I couldn’t help it. The places he was riding—Seoul, Tokyo, London—looked so much like Brooklyn. But our rides looked so different. I have a tendency to take the same routes over and over and over. Marcus clearly has favorite paths, but he’s also always exploring. He’s looking for beautiful places where he can enjoy his morning coffee, bike shops where he can find unique components to swap onto one of his many Rivendells, and, of course, restaurants that serve soy milk noodle soup.

Watching the channel has actually made me re-evaluate how I’ve been riding my bike, and to fight the (male???) tendency inside me that makes me want to only set fitness-based biking goals. It’s made me remember what drew me to cycling in the first place.

A couple of weeks ago, Zwift, basically Second Life but for degenerate cyclists and runners, set me up with its new indoor stationary bike, the Zwift Ride. I pair the bike to my iPad and can ride in its virtual worlds to my hearts content. I’ve definitely appreciated it, especially since I have had to return the zippy carbon fiber bike I was borrowing from Buycycle. (More on that experience to come.) Even after a few months of riding clipless, I hadn’t quite gotten deft with my clip outs at stop lights. If I had ever been cut off by a car and forced to a stop, I am pretty confident I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from falling onto the sidewalk.

Zwift is on the small screen, “Survivor” is on the big one.

There are no cars in Watopia, or most of the Zwift environments. (Would it surprise you that the one exception is Zwift’s “New York” map? That map is just Central Park with the addition of elevated glass roadways, but we’re so far in the future that there are flying cars in the background.) I can clip in and really push myself to go as hard as I can without any worry I’m going to have to swerve to avoid someone who isn’t looking for me. For at least the next few months, I imagine I’ll do all of my workouts there.

Since that’s become true, I’ve been able to recommit myself to making my rides in the meat space more fun. I can convince myself to go at the gentle pace that allows me to soak in my surroundings, to look for new ways to get between frequent destinations, to meet up with friends, to stop when I see something I haven’t noticed before.

To boot, have you noticed that there are a lot of new coffee shops in Williamsburg and Bushwick? Do you want to go try them out? Join me THIS FRIDAY MORNING for the first-ever Leg Day coffee ride! We’ll meet at Little Zelda in Crown Heights, then ride JALOPY PACE up into North Brooklyn.

For those who don’t know, a jalopy is a worn-out vehicle. Something prone to break down at any moment. Jalopy pace, then, is one someone could maintain without effort even if they’re on the most janky bike in the world. Hopefully, that’s easier to intuit than me just saying 11 mph. Right? Am I forcing this?

No, it is the readers who are wrong.

We’ll make three stops. The first will be Larry’s Ca Phe, which features Vietnamese-style drinks and pastries. Then, it’s on to Three Legged Cat, which opened in East Williamsburg earlier this year. Our last stop will be Dayglow, the one I’m most personally suspicious of. That’s because a) the company mainly makes money from home-delivery subscriptions b) how many cafes have a Crunchbase page c)their first cafe was in Los Angeles … worse, Silver Lake. It could still be great, but we’ll be taking a close look.

My one request: Please be prepared to order only drinks and foods you are confident you can finish within 15 minutes of receiving. I love a hot drip coffee, but I’ll probably stick to espresso drinks so that we don’t get stuck in one location while I gingerly sip to avoid a burnt tongue.

If you’d like to come, reply to the email and let me know to look out for you! And forward it to your other friends without full-time jobs that can spend three hours biking around for coffee on a weekday! Look forward to seeing you!