Before - every morning a hand ground mocha pot. Small Japanese SS grinder. Takes a long time but I do my extended hamstring and Achilles stretches while grinding. Makes for a better ride later. I go Starbucks dark, 1/2 decaf. Currently a big pot; makes 2 coffee cups worth. Lifetime high.
On ride - stop at 3 or 6 mile point for a double shot of espresso. Currently both shots caffeinated, again a lifetime high. I'm picky about espresso places I"ll stop at regularly. Those two pass. Both as nice places to be / quality ownership and improving the locale and good espresso from well maintained machines.
My journey with Italian style coffees started when a mentor and for a month, my boss, took me to coffee break at the original Peet's in Berkeley. Cappuccino. Around that time, I visited my cousin in Seattle and she took me to the original Starbucks. Served my Starbucks at breakfast. And my sis gave me a Bioletti mocha maker and some Italian coffee. (She was staying in Italy that summer, dating an Italian who became my bro-in-law.) Didn't take me long to figure out that Starbucks had much fresher coffee roast than any package I could get from Italy and that the Starbucks worked great in that mocha pot! (A few years later, when I lived in Seattle and Starbucks was the local brew, a friend of my sis stayed a night with me on her way to a conference. Made her a mocha for breakfast. She thanked me, saying it was her first cup of good coffee in the States.)
I know preferring Starbucks beans puts me outside of what's hip. But that first cup of dark roast in Seattle many years ago simply tasted just right. And it still does. In Portland, many brewers go out of their way to roast coffee to be as different as possible from Starbucks. My taste buds don't like it. A few locals that I know of do dark roasts I like but aren't available in most of my usual stores. Peet's is good and they are making inroads here. And Peet's is both a (small) part of my journey and the inspiration for Starbucks' founder. (And in defense of Starbucks - without them, we would still be drinking the crap coffee we called mud. I drank urns of that stuff as a college student and the next 10 years of work, not knowing there was far better.)