Sharing stories and adventures about all things coffee, stories, and stoke
Viewing entries tagged
desert
There’s a certain rhythm to exploring by road. Long stretches of pavement cut across wide-open spaces, pulling you deeper into places where the map feels more suggestion than prescription. In southeastern Arizona, the road itself becomes part of the story ... passing through dusty towns, slipping between mountain ranges, then disappearing into dirt tracks that beg for exploration.
That was my recent experience exploring that part of Arizona.
I’m often asked to describe or define what the term “loam” means. Simply put, it is dirt. More technically, “Loam is a type of soil that’s got a lot going on: loam contains clay, sand, and decaying organic substances.“ That describes perfectly the soil we build trails and ride on here in the Pacific Northwest. But the Loam Coffee origin story began in a place not known for its rich soil … the Sonoran Desert. So, how did Loam Coffee come into being? Let me tell you a story …
We all have our origin stories. Each business has one too. I do know this: if it wasn’t for the countless hours spent out on the trail in the Sonoran Desert there would be no Loam Coffee.
One of the reasons why I rode a singlespeed for a decade was because I had grown to hate derailleurs. There is nothing worse than being out on a ride, whether a speedy commute to work, a trip to meet a friend at the coffee shop, or on a long climb while mountain biking up Syncline in the Columbia Gorge, and then hear those dreaded noises ... Clank! Pop! Pow! The sound of the derailleur in rebellion. With so many moving parts and a stretching cable it seems like we’re always tinkering with our derailleurs. Or there are those moments when a rock or log rips our beloved 11-speed derailleur clean off.
