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 tineke takes a picture and … |
 yoshi, right back at ya’ |
 open air conveyance. a truckload o’ cuppers |
 old john gordon coffee mill, mostly wood. |
 the left is caracol, peaberry. the right is gordo, oversize, perhaps maragogype. |
 they make em good in texas, guatemala. |
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Part 3 On Sunday there is a parade on the boulevard Las Americas. It’s not a carnival, just a parade of people wearing their best sporting outfits, identifying themselves with Puma, or Pepsi, or Adidas, or Bancafe, or Municipal, the champion soccer team here … and a peculiar fact is that they are also parading their purebred dogs. No mutts, just a lot of Pekingese, Labs, Huskies, Samoyeds, Dachshunds and Shepards. C combined with the pony rides in the center median, it’s a real poop fest. There was also a large gathering that might at fist glance be taken as radical political happenings, but the numerous Mylar banners for bottled water and soda was a dead giveaway, Peppy speeches and dance contests boomed from a speaker system that would put Motley Crue to shame, and the gist was “make a stand, be a radical, keep the city clean,: Uniformed beverage distributors walked through the crowd giving out free waters and sodas which, I suppose, was a test to see how many ended up crushed underfoot. Many, I assume. What can you say about the crass “show ‘em what you got” attitude here. Is it just a toned down version of the ultra-deceptive SF Bay Area thing where the dude in activity sandals, patched shorts and a faded t-shirt could buy your entire city block and ship you all off to Bangalore … if he was so inclined. Are gringos just that much more secretive and insidious? I mean, I could afford better clothes … I don’t HAVR to wear dead peoples shirts (in other words, thrift store clothes. But I do. It’s just one of the many, many, many consumer options you have in the US. The fine art of looking like trash. My Polish ancestors dressed to the nines on Sunday. You put it all put it all out there, you kicked ass. But poles aren’t exactly a select group, and I guess they were carrying the mutual burden of a massive historical debt: to prove to the fancy ass protestants that they weren’t dirt people. When worlds collide, then the “business people” of the coffee-producing world get together with the mish-mash, rag-tag coffee buyers and roasters of the consuming world, the slipping of gears (and occasional striping of metal) is heard. And in the worst cases, you can freeze a piston in the cylinder or bust a cam. But that’s just me speaking. Maybe everyone else is getting along just fine. I never am. That’s about it, end of commentary. |
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 hot dog with arms |
 how are we rating samples? paul lets us know. |
 tryign to show respect, but mr. duh seems like he is mocking |
 eduardo, breaks a cup |
 at anacafe lab. a sieve shaker and screens for coffee, either ground or whole bean |
 the lab at anacafe. |
 sample huller to peel coffee out of parchment, anacafe. |
 enough sample roasting capacity??? 2 probatino roasters, 2 4 barrel probats. thats 10 samples at once, and about $50,000 of machines you are looking at. |
 anacafe lab |
 genetics … well, not manipulation, but basically seedless reproduction of coffee from plant material. |
 looking over the results of test tube coffee reproduction. |
 another view |
 labeling of soil-less and seed-less plant reproduction. we are not talking genetic manipulation here, just controlled plant growth from cells, rather than seeds. |
 more of the same |
 nematode analysis – looking for nematodes and checking root health in coffee plants |
 coffee plant roots, close up. coffee has an extensive, widespread root system, and a deep tap root. |
 royal blend coffee? no, |
 gas chromatography and mass spectography lab at anacafe |
 soil analysis for coffee plants |
 we volunteered to test anacafe’s new computer tablet based scoring system. here is stephen hurst from mercanta and in the background hidetaka hayashi, from hayashi coffee institute |
 mr. duh, california man |
 a little rain storm in guat city |
 oops, angus of portland fell and hit his head on the corner of a chest in the hotel. |
 a sidetrip with geoff watts to talleres rea, a roaster manufacturer |
