The Coffee Guy's blog

Observations: Round 1

Driving around I notice a lot of motorbikes out in the late summer weather.  What gets over on people who hop on the back of these transportation modus.  I am not talking of the driver, just the passenger, read; daredevil.  I see the pliant biker-babe-wanna-bees perched on 4 square inches of  HD Deuce seat, legs hiked up on micro-pegs, wearing a mini skirt!  Then gets all shaken out of place with the car drivers ogling her thighs right up to her thong.  Well, when he said, "We are going out on the bike tonight.", what was her reinterpretation of that statement?

That the bike was paying?

With eyes on the road.

The Downunder Visit Coffs up Coffee

I joined.   After all, how could I decline the invite to the official Downunder Coffee Club? 

Unamazed that this site is actually the home of a Coffee House in Shanghai!  It’s no wonder we are a confused lot, us coffee hounds.  Recently in New York, New York, we hunted for the heralded restructured Canadian Coffee icon Timmy’s.  We found all six in downtown Manhattan.  Well all six would fit into the accessible washrooms of a Canadian location.

Really!  Small stalls crowbarred in between two retailers, or sandwiched between the communal serving counters of a KFC and Pizza Hut.  One small sign, half a coffeemaker , and seven lonely donuts.  And we wonder why they can’t make a go of it.  We have this image of a freestanding restaurant with a drive-thru and parking lot.

Manhattan has NO PARKING LOTS AT ANY STORE.  There has been no space in NYC for a hundred years.  These kiosk units will die a sorry death based on the traffic I saw in their first few weeks of existence.  Too bad.  But this is a city which rocks!  The M&M store is four floors high!  Pretzel carts have a larger footprint, lower taxes and overhead and better service.

The Aussies chatted and flew, then flew the coop to the NY of NY.  Great destination and no worries mate.  Updated our understanding of family matters through a lot of confab and bull sessions.  Had a perusal of pics and flew our own flight around the scenic area.  Hope the video tells the story. 

Of course you can see flight examples of prior escapades in flight on the links provided beside.   Returning the flight to the lower half of the great orb next year.  Up and down the central coast to reconnect with the ever expanding family on the large island.  Perhaps gussy up to the odd bar and sample the Lager and Shiraz from the last great unexplored lands.

So why does one call a coffee shop a coffee shop from somewhere when they are not there?  Are you an underground shop?  Is that the black market?  Do they sell black coffee?  Does the colour reflect even if there is cream in the coffee?  Why don't they not have tea shops, only Tea Houses?  Can you house coffee in a shop?  Does green tea have a reflection?

The colour does not reflect the quality.  All stated issues are not for sweetening the deal.  Sugar is always dissolved unlike in a sour!  Whatever happened to the cube?  Not Rubik’s, I have it.

With the raspberry parfait, what causes the fait to be set as a par?  Can the extent of this unfinished dessert be the penultimate causality of our system of governance?

These and other questions will be answered in time, (not the magazine).

Mark Hull Du Calumet, first of the coterie of York, Son of Don, Scion of Karl in the House of Pfunkstadt, Connubial of Suzanne, Yeoman to the Hun of Honda, Prevailing in the Seat of Hespeler.

 

Foisting Ferris in the Euler, No Day Off

Basel is not world renown for the best fests in the neighbourhood.  But if you can host a Euler Hotel, you are destined for better things.  The Fall fair is the staple of middle Canada as much as corn and that revolting concoction known as Pumpkin Pie.  Pie! It’s supposed to be sweet. Dessert.  Savoury and satisfying.  Not the look of baby KaKa, and the consistency akin to play-dough.

Lets run the numbers, cuz’in’ I know you all love when I do that.  One pie pumpkin, $1.00 retail.  Not the Homer grown kind.  Yield, 9 cups of usable flesh.  No skin off my pie.  One shell of flour water and fat, $0.85.  Hopefully Hydro generated electricity, $0.07 per Kilo Hour Ohm, 687 Hour Ohms used, $0.04809 total cost per pie.  Sundry waste spices left over in your spice cupboard long since amortized.

9 cups of Pumpkin makes 3.45 pies.  $2.9325 for shells, $0.1659, for power.  $4.0984 for 3.45 pies paying retail for everything.  $1.19 a piece rounding up for the simple.  Now you tell me that the Pie Factory can’t make this atrocity for half that?  Should be selling for $0.69 at the corner store.

To top it off you can’t spoil this stuff.  Shelf stable for over a year and with no loss in quality, you just’a gotta put an expiry on it.  Nookular fallout be damned.  This stuff staves off excessive REM s. You are out there slogging about in your lead laden suit and along comes Joe munching on a decade old P’Pie with none of the side effects.   Nope it’s not on my menu.  Spread your wings over the field of agent orange and muster your largest Pigeon dropping on those Pie Pumpkins.  Short of frozen Pumpkin bowling, these gourds are out of their own!  Thick skin blobs making driving hazardous on driveways around the country.

Now Ferris of the Bueller drove for miles with impunity in a Ferrari, dusting caution to the wind and not a Mia Sara complaining about wind in the wires or cross-fired plug nickels under the hood. 

No longer is the Ferris the wheel in the Fall Fairs.  They have swinging falling twisting rides that make that wheel of fortune for the Carney’s more obsolete than the cable operated brakes in a Polish second world war half track.  Not more interesting than climbing a ladder, and a lot less entertaining than the Bueller type.  This is a story of the little guy making the Man pay.  Making the establishment crane their neck, incurvate at the knees, crack like corn on the hot pan of oppression.

You can Buell how you wish with the P’pie just don't offer it up at my fest.  Gourd yourself on all the American stand-bys you wish.  Alamode or with cheese.  Cuz in the end you know that Apple Pie without the cheese is like a hug without the squeeze.

Mark Hull Du Calumet, first of the coterie of York, Son of Don, Scion of Karl in the House of Pfunkstadt, Connubial of Suzanne, Yeoman to the Hun of Honda, Prevailing in the Seat of Hespeler.

 

Labour Knows Best when Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

YA THINK?  Whose?  What’s?  When?  It’s all a’gotta do with the inquiring mind.  You have one, you don't have to read any further.  Oops, gotcha.  Reading on.  Well it’s not the catch I was looking for to be lasing over these words with microscopule eyes, but now that I have you...

In the sands of the lot we camp, within smoke shot of dozens of un-abandoned fires smoldering amongst the Pines, I smell therefore I am here.  Cognitive dissonance be gone. My relaxing attire consists of albumen soaked shorts with cotton gauze shirt.  Just what is needed to attract and feed at the appropriate rate of blood loss bodies in the air.

Passive reflection only ignores the occurrence at your ankles.  Bites and mites sucking the life blood from venous cavities in your derma.  What forces people to stand alone as they complete the nurturing of babies and their brethren?  You scratch, smear the blood laden bodies on your skin only to attract more who cometh from local environs.  More gas, more bodies, more blood, More gas, and the cycle continues.

You have the power to leave and retreat: conceding ground to the onslaught of bodies in the air.  Shall I talk of crawlers from the good 'ole Terra Firma?  Ants and pedes of the centa type.  Scurrying slithering gnawing on the tender parts.  You, nay WE succumb to skitching about flicking and twitching till our body temp rises.  Amortizing in the air to only attract more of the frenzied fiends.

Now night falls and smoke rises.  Unburnt char laying in cooling fire pits.  The aroma of grease wafting to the nostrils of vermin.  They too would love fresh over charred.  No self respecting Char Coon would topple your Tin if your finger were leaning their way.  Cats and rats and elephants as sure as you’re born, the loveliest of all was the Char-a-Coon.

The work week-end is nigh and the campers are wry. Strapped and wrapped, taped and caped, crusaders of the open sites.  Let slicing be the need we can surely pass to the heed of campers of yore.  Don’t eat where you sleep and don't pee where you eat.  All will pass through cept the smoke gets in your eyes.

When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
Oh, I of course replied
Something here inside cannot be denied

They said someday you'll find
All who love are blind
Oh, when your heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes

So I chaffed them and I gaily laughed
To think they could doubt my love
Yet today my love has flown away
I am without my love

Now laughing friends deride
Tears I can not hide
Oh, so I smile and say
When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes
Smoke gets in your eyes

Mark Hull Du Calumet, first of the coterie of York, Son of Don, Scion of Karl in the House of Pfunkstadt, Connubial of Suzanne, Yeoman to the Hun of Honda, Prevailing in the Seat of Hespeler.

 

Kawi Mania not Saki

As reported today in The Jakarta Post, Malang has a tour to the famous Kawi Coffee plantation.  The East Java town boasts eateries in abundance, no smog, safety and of course coffee.  Now you may be wondering why I might be in the perusal mode for the Post.  Easy, Kawi don't come easy.  There is that song after all.

I was befuddled by the molyexactitude of the Japanese construction model.  While we are not all aware of this we have become dependent on it both for costs to us and security to us.  The Japanese engineering model has brought all modern production to the same common denominator.  You cannot open it.  You need a tool and a technique you do not have and cannot buy.

In the Asian model it started with parts supply.  There was none.  You could not buy them.  This was pushed along by the American automotive producers by the introduction of Torx screws.  At first you could not buy the driver for these screws.  Forcing the consumer to go to the dealer for simple things such as bulb replacement and regular maintenance issues.

Then came the aftermarket manufacturers, probably also from some competing country in the east, to produce Torx drivers for the public.  Then came along Bell Canada.  Torx with a stud in the middle.  Second course, same as the first.  Now we have a dearth of equipment products, tools, fasteners, and techniques which we are either not equipped with or know of.

Back to the Kawi.   While I have been known to dabble in the Asian bike scene, sic the FacePlant groups Bad Ass Motorcycle Gang, Vintage Small Bore Motorcycles, Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Aficionados, and Kyle Koolidge Knows Best, this last one has me stumped up a mountain.  Logging not intended, my dunny was full.  I went by the specs and spec’d out the settings.

In repose a visit to a guru was in order.  Loading into the Ford we hauled ass over to the air.  Uhh, err..  Ayr.

Not in.  As in doesn’t work. Won’t run.  Waited and confabbed with the locals both on the rod front and the machine front.  Connections aside we departed with a number and nothing more for our labours.  Off for beer and wings, sucking it back like a drunk on a paid bender.

More playing and screaming those four bangers up and down the road. Screwing the throttle to nine big ones and all stayed together.  Off goers the choke and on comes the depression.  No chokums, no runums.

The ride is nice all finally adjusted to body size and shape.  The bike goes walkabout next week.  A couple and we are off and running.

Mark Hull Du Calumet, first of the coterie of York, Son of Don, Scion of Karl in the House of Pfunkstadt, Connubial of Suzanne, Yeoman to the Hun of Honda, Prevailing in the Seat of Hespeler.