It's Only an Hour a Week

Mr. Don:

            I am waiting to test my new detector on a fluorescently-tagged protein as it elutes from this capillary electrophoresis column and I have heard all of Terry's, my co-worker, jokes.  It is a slow process and makes your slow cooking and coffee percolating look like a 100 yard dash.  So......

            I recognize your penchant for the vagaries of the stock market and may I suggest, with great respect, that you move into the Futures Market and invest heavily in coffee beans.

            I was listening to our esteemed leader, the one you put into office, on my way home last evening.  Now we are all aware of his contributions to literacy in this country.  However, after his arithmetical wizardry in counting votes during the election, his mathematical prowess has never been in doubt.  Until now!  He was speaking at some volunteer organization in Pennsylvania, I believe, and he used the occasion to call on Americans to provide 4,000 hours of service.  Now it is only an hour a week scouting, and considering I have been at this scouting game for ten years or so, which by the way he would discount, by inference from an aside he made to a dedicated volunteer at the podium, it means that you and I have to continue spending a weekend a month plus summer camp for the next seventy years or so to complete our duty.  We will not delve into the fact that you are missing on Monday nights for the whole of the winter.  By the way, what do you want for your 100th birthday?  We are truly middle aged.  Do you remember the scene in On Golden Pond when Katherine Hepburn was trying to lift Henry Fonda's spirits on his 75th birthday by claiming they were middle aged?  He retorted something to the effect: "Middle aged my foot.  People do not live until they are 150.  We're old!"  No longer. Thanks to your man in the White House - we have not yet reached the halfway point.

            Now back to coffee futures.  I just weighed, sorry it is in grams, but that is all I have available at my desk in a scientific establishment, a scoop of coffee - 18 grams or grammes, if you were from The Island.  Maxwell House tells me there are 311 g in the small can, so that is 17 scoops per can.  I use one scoop to make two cups at least twice a day, plus the two cups in the morning at home and at least two or more in the evening.  For the sake of argument, let’s say 4 scoops per day.  No wonder I make so many trips to the bathroom - more later on this subject.  Are you still with me, as I launch into the heavy stuff of multiplication?  4 divided by 17 times the number of camping days a year times seventy years will tell us how many small cans of coffee to buy.  Let's for the sake of argument say we leave on Friday night and come back on Sunday afternoon - that is, two whole days per trip.  With twelve trips a year, plus six days at summer camp gives a grand total of 30 days a year.  All told 494 cans of coffee and that is just for me.  I do not know the packing fraction of beans translated into ground coffee, but it must be somewhere in the realm of 50%.  That's 988 cans of beans - not those beans, Donald.  Now add your fair share and 1976 cans are needed.  Think of it - almost 2000 cans for the two of us – 1359 lb, 6/10 of a ton, or if you prefer - back to The Island – 12 cwt.  In addition, if you don't drive everyone away with your mindless trivia games and ghost stories, we could attract more "It's only an hour a week" participants, some of whom I must add may be new and not get off with only seventy years, thus each requiring an additional 14% of coffee beans.  All told just for our troop this adds up to a lot of coffee – more than all the tea in China, as my Dad used to say.

            Keep this inventive prospect secret.  It could make the killing you are about to make on coffee futures looks like small potatoes (got to put something Irish in for Rosemary with St. Patrick's Day just around the corner).  Rich K and the EPA boys (is that politically correct?) will probably be soon outlawing urinating in the woods.  Now is the time to act and patent an environmentally conscious, portable, easy to use collection and, in advanced versions to be introduced later in the marketing strategy, recycling device for biologically processed coffee.  It must be readily available in an emergency, and satisfy strict design criteria such as discreet and, most importantly, safe - I cannot emphasize this point too strongly, since application of finger bandages to other appendages may be traumatic to say the least.  Bring your conceptual design this weekend.  If this prototype device will not fit in a tent, and for you to get all of your beauty sleep, work on making noiseless zippers for the tent!

Paul