The story of how I became involved in coffee:
Before Coffee
It was the winter of 1992 (or '93, I can't quite recall) and I was working for the St. Cloud Times as a route delivery driver, the job consisted of driving a van full of newspapers to stores, street-side newspaper boxes and carriers homes.
The route followed I-94 from St. Cloud to Avon, Albany, Freeport, New Munich, Melrose and Sauk Center. From there it went north on U.S. Hwy 71 to Long Prairie and then it would follow back roads through Grey Eagle and St. Rosa before coming back to St. Cloud. As I recall that's around 140 miles. I worked four days a week, another guy would drive the other three days, my days were Sunday through Wednesday.
Route
Back then the Times was an afternoon paper during the week which meant that I showed up for work at 10 AM and worked until usually 4 or 5 PM -- pretty good hours, actually. But for Sunday I'd have to show up at 10:30 PM and would work until around 7 or 8 AM.
I saw some very beautiful things while driving that route. I remember a Sunday morning driving away from St. Rosa, the field surrounding a small creek I was crossing was clouded in a very dense ground fog, but the rising sun had colored it bright orange. I saw an entire herd of deer cross in front of me one winter afternoon, I will never forget the way the buck looked – so proud, so impressive as he led his does across my path. (Then there was the doe I hit, I only knocked her a little off balance thanks to my hitting the brakes early enough – I just tapped her in the ass a little bit.)
It was on a bitterly cold Sunday morning in the deep winter, I was in Sauk Center, it was 3:45 AM, I looked at the bank thermometer and it read “-35° F” and I knew something had to change. I started looking for a job the next day.
