Sharing stories about coffee, stories, and stoke
Viewing entries in
Reflections
It never fails. At some point on a ride deep into the forest here in the Pacific Northwest my mind begins to wander ... and then play tricks on me. Every blackened tree stump becomes a bear and sounds have a way of being amplified beneath the tree canopy. Snap. Flutter. Foot steps. Rock tumbling.
I like to think of myself as a minimalist. In today's world that is a statement full of contradictions. I type this on my MacBook Pro while listening to my pop punk Spotify playlist while drinking a $3 cup of black coffee as I communicate with friends on my iPhone. Hypocrite.
More than Monday it is today ... Tuesday ... where it begins really sinking in. The weekend is over. Monday is a jolt to the system. A shock. We're in denial. The weekend can't be over. So we fuss, fume, and post memes about Mondays and the weekend we just lost.
Loam Coffee is now two years old. A mere toddler. We've seen nothing but continued and sustained growth from the beginning and for that we're grateful for you. We're learning lots along the way. At the same time we're not in any rush. Even a quick glance over the media from this weekend's Sea Otter Classic revealed bike brands and other companies who we all love and support who've been around 20 ... 30 ... 40 years. We don't want to be a quick flash in the pan, but to continue the methodical planning and relentless (and mundane) work to build something that will last long after us.
Everything around us in life reflects value systems. As I mentioned in a previous article I also moonlight as a professor. The common theme of what I teach revolves around cities whether gentrification, bikeability, community development, urban history, and so on. That might be odd admission particularly in the mountain biking world, but I love cities. I love BIG cities. But I also love the wilderness.
Drinking coffee is odd at times. No, not the actual process of drinking coffee itself but the stigmas attached to it. On one end of the spectrum you have blue collar miners packing a thermos full of (probably bad grocery store) black coffee in their lunch pails for the day. Gritty, hard-working, tough as nails and their coffee smells (and tastes) as bad their clothes at the end of their shift (or worse). At the other end of the spectrum you have bearded skinny jeans-wearing city-dwelling hipsters who're faux-gritty also drinking black coffee. The difference though is not about who's drinking coffee but the actual quality of coffee itself.
