The Burr Under My Saddle

This week I’m on vacation. While preparing for the trip, I had an interesting Shopping Moment that I’d like to share.

The moment involves coffee, as so many of them do.

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[Still Life With Coffee

I’m at the supermarket, and I’m going through my shopping list, and I get to the coffee aisle and realize that I’m going to need some. So I’m staring at my options – they even had a fair trade blend, which I ended up getting and may complain about later – and I grab a package of coffee.

Instinctively, I have picked up the whole bean coffee. I remember that the place I’m heading to doesn’t have a coffee grinder, but I find myself standing there trying to work out how much effort it would take to pack my burr grinder and take it with me. Because, of course, the coffee will taste better if I grind it out in the middle of the woods instead of using pre-ground coffee.

It is then that the epiphany hits me like a wave. I am seriously considering packing a coffee grinder for a camping trip. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but at some point in my life I have apparently turned into a complete yuppie cock.

I put the whole bean back, and picked up a package of ground coffee.

(We will omit the discussion about packing the laptop and connecting to the Internet from the road. I lost that battle long ago, and am utterly at peace with it.)