Every time I spend time on a rowing machine at the gym (it has been a pretty frequent occurrence lately), there's a number of thoughts that go through my head. The first one has to do with Viking slaves. I think to myself, "wow, hundreds of years, the Vikings went through a lot of trouble to enslave entire villages in order to force them into the involuntary rowing that powered the Viking ships. The Vikings had to force people to do this thing that has now become a voluntary activity that I do for enjoyment. I'll admit that in my case, there isn't some demanding overlord standing over me with a whip in his hand, but I find it striking that a lot of people pay good money for that service now in the form of personal trainers! After all, it's part of the fun of going to the gym to have someone pushing you to your limits and beyond.
The other thing that comes to mind when I'm sitting on that rowing machine is just the sheer pointlessness of gym activity in the grand scheme of things. We pay the gym good money for the right to visit their facilities and expend energy that could have been used doing actually productive things. Even the Vikings, despite their questionable motives, were at least resourceful with the human resources they requisitioned. The rowing done by their slaves actually made their ships go somewhere. But what does anyone get out of my rowing activities? Other than my own personal satisfaction of having beat my 4km speed record, nothing!
I think gym activities are actually part of what's wrong with America. Don't dismiss this as unfounded or slanderous, and don't think I'm somehow against personal improvement or don't love my country. Just hear me out. When we look at the world we live in, we balance the results we see against the effort we're putting in. When there seems to be a disjoint between how much effort we put into life and how much we have to show for it as a country, we start looking around for people to blame. Maybe the financial sector is making risky investments or making dirty money gambling with the retirement accounts of the hard-working middle class. Maybe those middle class guys are actually not pulling their weight, maybe they're dragging down the economy by stretching their credit and living a lifestyle that is actually beyond their means. Or maybe those lower-class people are sucking all the money out of the economy through expensive government aid programs. Somebody has to be not pulling their weight because we're all in massive debt together and that just wouldn't be possible if everyone was putting in as much as they take out.
So where does the gym factor into it? I think my gym activities skew my perspective of how much of the pie I think I contributed. When I look back over a long hard day and think of all the effort I put in today, I subconsciously factor in that 45 minutes of intense physical activity, even though I really know that it doesn't factor in as something I contributed to the world. But since I'm so used to seeing the world as a balance beam between the effort I put in and the results I reap, it makes me feel like I contributed more than I really did. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this one. If you ask any American, you will probably find that they will say they put in more than get. Everyone will say that it's someone else dragging their feet and bringing down the economy, and we're so sure it can't be us. I wonder if gym activities (and other personal activities) trick us into thinking that we give more than we get.
I think we should take a lesson from the Vikings. Not from their barbarism or twisted sense of superiority, but from their resourcefulness. It would be cool if gyms were a place where you could go to get a decent workout and also make a meaningful contribution to the world. I'm not sure how that would work. Maybe all the treadmills should power the electricity in the gym, and maybe there would be some left over to sell or give back to the city, which would reduce power costs and transition some of our power dependency onto a more environmentally friendly power source. I wonder how much power could be harvested if every treadmill and elliptical machine in the country were used to generate electricity rather than consume it (the ones at my gym consume a lot of electricity). It's got to add up to something pretty substantial. Or maybe we could make exercise programs that involve building homes for the homeless or cleaning up public parks, or building bridges or doing construction or any number of other physically demanding activities that also yield a productive result that can be enjoyed by many. I wonder how many forms of public service could be marketed back to the public as an exercise program. The gym could stop being a place where I pay money to get rid of my energy and it could start being a place that finds resourceful ways of putting my manpower to work. But hey, that's just me.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Manual Espresso
This morning, I ordered a short latte from a local Uptown Espresso. I was shocked that after the barista took my order, she did everything by hand. I watched as she ground the beans, dosed them into the portafilter and tamped them down. She attached the portafilter to the machine and timed my shots by hand. And how was the coffee? It was delicious.
I really appreciate when things are done by hand. Almost every other coffee chain I know has fully automated machines. You push a button and the machine grinds the beans, doses and tamps the grounds in the same precise way each time, and pulls shots that come out more or less exactly the same each time. The automatic method is obviously popular for lots of reasons. It enables chains like Starbucks to achieve s sense of consistency across all their stores. Whether you're walking into a Starbucks on the upper east side of Manhattan or in downtown Seattle on Pike St., you know that the beverage you order will taste exactly like the ones you've had at other Starbucks establishments. It also renders a major factor of barista training unnecessary. Pulling good, consistent espresso shots is an art, and it's a lot easier to train new employees how to push a button than it is to teach them how to time shots. This also allows them to spend more of the employee training process on other things like customer service or individual recipes (i.e. how many pumps of what goes in this or that drink). It also enables them to service more customers with a smaller staff. I've read somewhere that a single Starbucks store can serve hundreds of customers in a single hour. That wouldn't be possible without automatic espresso machines.
But still there's something that really draws me to the manual approach. On most mornings I pull my own espresso shots. I prefer my own espresso to the ones I could get at my local Peet's or Tully's or Starbucks. Do manual shots always taste better than automatic ones? Not at all. There's plenty of things that can be done wrong. I'm always trying new kinds of beans too, which means I constantly need to adjust the fineness of the grind, the pressure I apply to the tamper, and the duration of the shot. Sometimes, when getting used to new beans, the result of all my hard work doesn't even taste like coffee. But when you get it right, it makes everything worth it.
Some enthusiasts claim that the best manual shots are consistently better than their automatic counterparts. I don't know if that's necessarily true. A lot of time is spent fine-tuning the automatic machines to produce the most consistently high-quality espresso possible. Of course, there's a little bit of a tradeoff between consistency and quality, but in general, they can make decently good coffee. But then again, it's not necessarily the quality of the brew that draws me to the manual process. Like all manual processes, it's the personal aspect it introduces. You can curtail your espresso to be exactly the way you want it? Do you want a lighter brew or a heavier brew? Do you prefer it to have a hint of bitterness or would you rather shoot to extract all the aromatic flavors of the beans without the bitterness that comes toward the end of the extraction? You won't find any buttons on an automatic machine that'll let you make any of those choices. If you don't want to make those choices, it's fine. You can keep your Starbucks. But there's something about my coffee every morning that says it was made specially for me, just the way I like it. That's why manual espresso will never go out of style. Not because it's better than the automatic kind, but because it's more personal.
I really appreciate when things are done by hand. Almost every other coffee chain I know has fully automated machines. You push a button and the machine grinds the beans, doses and tamps the grounds in the same precise way each time, and pulls shots that come out more or less exactly the same each time. The automatic method is obviously popular for lots of reasons. It enables chains like Starbucks to achieve s sense of consistency across all their stores. Whether you're walking into a Starbucks on the upper east side of Manhattan or in downtown Seattle on Pike St., you know that the beverage you order will taste exactly like the ones you've had at other Starbucks establishments. It also renders a major factor of barista training unnecessary. Pulling good, consistent espresso shots is an art, and it's a lot easier to train new employees how to push a button than it is to teach them how to time shots. This also allows them to spend more of the employee training process on other things like customer service or individual recipes (i.e. how many pumps of what goes in this or that drink). It also enables them to service more customers with a smaller staff. I've read somewhere that a single Starbucks store can serve hundreds of customers in a single hour. That wouldn't be possible without automatic espresso machines.
But still there's something that really draws me to the manual approach. On most mornings I pull my own espresso shots. I prefer my own espresso to the ones I could get at my local Peet's or Tully's or Starbucks. Do manual shots always taste better than automatic ones? Not at all. There's plenty of things that can be done wrong. I'm always trying new kinds of beans too, which means I constantly need to adjust the fineness of the grind, the pressure I apply to the tamper, and the duration of the shot. Sometimes, when getting used to new beans, the result of all my hard work doesn't even taste like coffee. But when you get it right, it makes everything worth it.
Some enthusiasts claim that the best manual shots are consistently better than their automatic counterparts. I don't know if that's necessarily true. A lot of time is spent fine-tuning the automatic machines to produce the most consistently high-quality espresso possible. Of course, there's a little bit of a tradeoff between consistency and quality, but in general, they can make decently good coffee. But then again, it's not necessarily the quality of the brew that draws me to the manual process. Like all manual processes, it's the personal aspect it introduces. You can curtail your espresso to be exactly the way you want it? Do you want a lighter brew or a heavier brew? Do you prefer it to have a hint of bitterness or would you rather shoot to extract all the aromatic flavors of the beans without the bitterness that comes toward the end of the extraction? You won't find any buttons on an automatic machine that'll let you make any of those choices. If you don't want to make those choices, it's fine. You can keep your Starbucks. But there's something about my coffee every morning that says it was made specially for me, just the way I like it. That's why manual espresso will never go out of style. Not because it's better than the automatic kind, but because it's more personal.
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