delivery guy

Chicago pals Daniel Tucker and David Meyers found a way for my Madison/Chicago commute to function as something more than just a private two and a half hour meditation. They are both roasting and peddling coffee as small scale cottage industries. The fair trade organic beans are being supplied by Madison’s own Just Coffee. And guess who is driving regularly enough to make the deliveries? Yes, yours truly!

Tonight I made the first of probably quite a few more deliveries. Three bags @ 150 pounds each. I did not notice any appreciable increase in gasoline consumed. At least not on the highway. The stopping and starting in the city with a fully loaded vehicle does eat gas quickly. Still, this is a very good way to stack added value to the energy being consumed through transporting only myself, and to do my part in cultivating micro-economic activity and increased self-sufficiencies. Helping out in this way also gives me a reason to connect with more people in Madison–in this case, the fine people at Just Coffee. Their enterprise started out as an expression of their solidarity with the Zapatista rebels. These ragtag Madison activists found that the best way for them to get justly grown coffee from Chiapas to North American markets was to buy, roast, and sell it themselves through their own company. Now they have fair relationships with growing co-ops in other countries. The coffee I delivered was grown in Peru and Nicaragua. Check out the Just Coffee “politics” page.

The final bonus is that David is paying me in fresh roasted coffee.

The only downside is the smell inside the car. Unroasted beans do not have much of an aroma. Instead, there is the earthy but not terribly pleasant smell of burlap sacking. Drag.