Much to my dismay and subsequent panic attack, I discovered that I’m out of coffee. I am ordering Kona coffee online and was wondering if anyone has had IM coffee? Is it good? Is there a better brand of Kona beans out there?
Thanks much for your shared wisdom.
Is there really an Ironman brand of coffee? I don’t want to sound like a geek, but I think that is kind of cool. I would prolly buy it.
Looks like a cool guy\company\operation.
Sure, it is enhanced with vitamins, minerals, electrolytes and pre-sweetened with maltodextrin.
hmmm…Christmas present idea for my IM friends…
There ya go…a monthy shipment of IM coffee personlized with your picture on the bag Miami. Now that would be a x-mas gift that keeps on giving!
Yes, but how does it stack up to “Phil Liggett’s Morning Brew”?
And a special formula to reduce the need to visit the porto-john before the race.
My family has about acre of organic coffee going on the big island so I know a little bit about growing it. I haven’t tried this brand but it looks like it is grown in the same area as many other kona farms. They also menioned on thier website that only sell “estate quality”, not sure what they do with the other beans though as every bean that you pick certainly isn’t “estate quality”… $30/pound for 100% kona with shipping is not out of the question. I’d give it a shot.
JT
Generally speaking, just about any kind of authentic Kona is going to be good. It’s kind of like buying Cabernet from Sonoma or Napa. The growing conditions for it are so perfect that it’s more of a matter of ‘good,’ ‘better,’ or ‘outstanding’ than a question of good or bad. After reading the ‘about the coffee’ in the ironman coffee website, I am a little curious as to why he does not explain more to me about how he grows, harvests, and roasts hish coffee. As a coffee enthusiast, this is all information that influences my purchase much like technical info I might want if I was to purchase any expensive bottle or wine or a tri bike.
If you really want to save some $$ and drink some fresh Kona, invest in a home coffee roaster, and then order unroasted Kona and roast it yourself. Unroasted Kona beans will set you back $17/lb @ current market price versus $27/lb roasted with an MDot label.
Great info - much appreciated!
Sorry, I excluded my opinion in previous post that I think the IM branding is definitely a cool marketing idea by this guy, and if I go to Kona for the Ironman, I will definitley check out his Cafe! My previous rant was more of an objective answer to the “does anyone know if this stuff is good or where to get good Kona?”
Looks like a cool guy\company\operation.
Dusty is a very good guy. He made it to the top of Everest in April, solo with no oxygen, then completed the Honu Half on June 6th. I’ll try to find the newspaper article link and post it later. He looked exhausted and gaunt, but still got an IM slot for October.
You may have to enter a username and password to access the story but that’s all. Here is the story, with some pictures, or I copied the story with no pictures below:
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2005/06/12/features/features01.txt
Live or die today I will get there
KONA RESIDENT SHARES HIS DAY-TO-DAY, SOLO JOURNEY UP MOUNT EVEREST
by Ron Eland
West Hawaii Today
Dusty Boyd says he committed his life to conquering the highest point on earth – Mount Everest.
Sunday, June 12, 2005 9:22 AM HST
Last month he did just that, and that commitment almost cost him his life.
The 40-year-old former corporate businessman turned Kona coffee farmer is just one of 650 recorded climbers who have stood at the top of Everest’s 29,035-foot peak. Not only that, he climbed it alone and because he feels it would be “cheating the mountain,” he did it without oxygen.
Despite a lack of food and water, temperatures dropping to minus-40 degrees and no sleep for several days, Boyd accomplished his goal on April 20. It was his second attempt at Everest in less than two years. In December 2003, he came within a few thousand feet of the summit before weather forced him down.
This time, he was smarter, healthier and more driven than ever to summit. His journey began March 29 with a 23-hour flight from Kona to Delhi, India. From there he traveled to Katmandu, Nepal, an area that has proved to be unsafe these days for Westerners.
He would meet up with the same Sherpa (Tibetan guide) named Phurhel he used in 2003. The two were joined by a 4-foot-8 Tibetan porter who weighed less than 100 pounds but was able to carry nearly double his body weight in gear and supplies on their way to base camp.
“It is one of the greatest feats I have ever seen, especially since we got to base camp in four days,” Boyd said.
Once they make it to the base camp, the porter left the duo and returned to his village. Boyd said there were more than 400 people at the base camp including climbers, Sherpa and cooks. He called the entire scene “miserable, disgusting and circus-like.” He also said it was a depressing place because of all the monuments dedicated to those who died attempting to conquer Everest.
After a day at the base camp, the two set out for the ice fields – one of the most dangerous part of the climb.
“The ice fields are like Vegas – it’s a roll of the dice,” he said.
He said the daytime temperatures would hit 80 degrees while at night they would drop below minus-20. The high temperatures made the ice fields slick and dangerous, as the melting ice made the ground unstable.
The two made it through the ice fields in around four hours. That’s when Boyd realized things weren’t going as planned.
In a journal he kept the entire trip he wrote April 15, “My Sherpa has bad headaches – he looks bad. Miserable, misery-filled night. Sherpa is gurgling – pulmonary edema. I give him Diamox (a pill to help prevent Acute Mountain Sickness), it reduces his headache but gurgling continues. We sit in the tent, he’s bad. Because the days are so warm, the nights are that much colder. The hot/cold is killing my Sherpa.”
After three days on the mountain, Boyd helped Phurhel back to the ice fields. That’s where the two would part ways.
“He is very, very ill,” Boyd wrote. "He is so ashamed and he cries. A show of emotion is very rare for a Sherpa. He hugs me and asks me to come down. I tell him that this is my time – I have committed my life. The look on his face reminds me of my mother’s when I left her.
“He begs me to take oxygen at least to sleep with. I say no. It’s me and the mountain – no cheating. I tell him to wait seven to nine days. I’m going light and fast up this beast. ‘After nine days, go home Sherpa, I’m not coming back’ are my last words to him. He nods.”
Boyd takes as little gear necessary which includes food for just five days. In his journal he wrote, “My life, it has all come down to this.”
April 16
That first day he wrote, "Wake up at 2 a.m. by phenomenal cold. Snow is causing the top of my tent to sag. I absent-mindedly hit the top of the tent and I get showered by a mist and snow. Now I’m wet. Wet is death at minus-40. Real Trouble.
“Coldest of my life. For the first time I realize I could die. I know four Australians are camped 75 feet away. I think ‘can I make it to them?’ And then I make one of several life decisions – I will get up, get out and climb. The sun is still three hours away. Real trouble. At this altitude it takes 90 minutes just to finally get a tent put up, backpack on and climb. Any stumble, any mistake, you die. My thermometer reads to minus-20 – the mercury is gone – it must be at least minus-40 degrees.”
April 17
Because of the cold, Boyd’s heart rate is racing – 115 beats a minute – as he begins to venture out. At home, he has a heart rate of 45 beats a minute.
“I told myself that if I can move for an hour and a half, the sun will be up and it will warm my body,” he said. “At that moment I thought I was going to die. I was truly scared. I’m pretty messed up at that point. I couldn’t feel my feet or hands. I asked myself, ‘Why are you here?’ After the sun came up, I felt better and I was able to move on.”
That evening he experienced his second straight night without sleep.
Regarding that night he wrote, “Asphyxia and hypoxia keeps we awake all night. As you begin to nod off, because the air at this height only allows your body 33 percent oxygen, you suffocate. Over and over again. Pure hell, misery. Worse, I have seen this with other climbers so I know what I have and how miserable it is. Death introduces himself to me.”
April 18
He started his day by taking a Diamox which he said made him feel “fantastic.” By 10 a.m. he was on his way to Camp 4 at 26,400 feet. He reached the camp several hours later just before yet another storm him.
“The storm came at me like a snake,” he said. “You can see it rolling at you. It hauls ass. The worse part is that you’re on a ridge and I realized why they call it the death zone.”
April 19
“At this point, everything was in slow motion,” he said. "The good thing is I was familiar with the area – I had seen it all before. I hadn’t slept in three days and I was kind of losing it.
“I decided that if I was going to do it (attempt to summit), now was the time. But at that altitude, you’re only getting 33 percent of the normal amount of oxygen. You’re body is dying. Each step took me what felt like a minute as well three breaths. I knew I was messed up but I felt strong. With no oxygen and no food or water I decided that I needed to rest.”
April 20
After several hours of wind and snow, Mother Nature relented and Boyd set out at 1 a.m. with the hopes of making it to the summit by early afternoon.
“I said, live or die, today I will get there,” he said. “I now know that had I had all my faculties and oxygen, I would have gone down. But I didn’t so all I knew was up.”
On summiting the highest point on earth – at around 2 p.m. – he wrote, “Top of the world – no oxygen. Oh my god, look at the other side. There’s a storm rolling up the side of Everest that looks like a tsunami. Because Everest is 29,035 feet, you can’t see the other side so you have no idea what’s coming. Trouble. So this is how they die. Seventy percent (of those who are killed) die after summiting. Now I understand, you are blind to the conditions until you stand on the summit ridge.”
After taking several pictures, many of which one can see the storming rapidly approaching, he took a step backwards and tripped, falling face first in the icy snow. He said he doesn’t remember how long he was there but he was peeling skin from his nose and hand – he had removed a glove – for the next 10 days.
“At 29,000 feet, the earth comes at you in slow motion,” he said. “I was foggy, sleep deprived and had gone three days with no food so my brain barely recognized that I was falling and you’re truly helpless to stop yourself. About 8 inches before my face hit the snow, my brain finally said, ‘Hey, you really should try and put your hands out and stop yourself.’ I face planted about a foot from a 9,000 foot drop down a glacier and certain death.”
As he makes his decent, he passes two climbers who he described as looking like a pair of Darth Vadars because of their oxygen masks. No words are exchanged. At 27,000 feet, he sees something that spurs nightmares more than a month later.
“I saw two dead bodies about 10 to 15 feet from me,” he said. “They looked as if they were asleep. It really messed me up because they were just sitting there. They looked so perfect.”
Not far from where he saw the bodies, he decided to make camp and prepare for what he called the worst night of his life.
“It was pure hell, it was miserable,” he said. “I just kept saying, ‘please let me go to sleep.’ I was beyond tired. At that point, every hour I climbed felt like I had just done an entire Ironman. I truly thought I was going to die. There was no elation (of summiting); I just wanted to make it through the night and focus on staying alive.”
April 21
This day, he did very little due to the loose snow from the night before. He tried to rest of regain what little strength he had in order to complete the decent.
April 22
“I was very eager to get down but I kept doing stupid things like not being able to turn on my (portable) stove,” he said. “But I made it to the ice fields by noon.”
There, he found several other climbers so he decided to go an alternate route without the use of rope.
“It’s nothing to be proud of – it’s the riskiest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.
By the time he got through the ice fields it’s dark and it again begins to snow. It’s so bad that he can’t see anything ahead of him so he has to rely upon his GPS (global positioning system). He passed the base camp because he knew that at 17,600 feet, his Sherpa’s friend had a small tea house where he could spend the night. At 11 p.m. he made it.
“That was a glorious sight,” he said. “I was shivering beyond control so he (owner) piled blankets on me. That’s when he told me that my Sherpa had gone back to the base camp to look for me. It turns out that we passed one another and didn’t even know it.”
April 23
“That morning my Sherpa arrived and I can’t explain how happy I was to see him,” he said. “He held my hand and never asked once if I had summited. Plus at that point my lips are so chapped that I can’t speak. I slept for 12 hours and he never left my side.”
The journey back
Boyd spent two days at the tea house before he and Phurhel had to make the four-day walk back to Katmandu. He said he lost 28 pounds during the climb and has since suffered gastric and urinary problems. Despite his life getting back to normal, he’s still having a difficult eating solid foods.
“It traumatized me,” he said. “I will never climb a mountain like that again.”
If he knew then what he knows now, would he have still taken on Everest?
“I never would have gone,” he said. “It’s made me realize just how much I love my son and daughter. It made me a man – man enough to realize that I was a jackass for doing it and it was completely selfish. It was all vanity. My ego kept pushing me. But luckily, that mountain drove the ego out of me.”
Never was a big fan of Kona coffee. Not worth the price in my opinion. Maybe it was just the roast or something.
My favorite is Kootenay Crossing from Kicking Horse Coffee:
http://www.kickinghorsecoffee.com/
This stuff is oh so friggin good.
Recieved some Kona as a gift one time, not really impressed. Personal favorite is a bean called Celebes Kalossi.
http://www.thecoffeecritic.com/fusion3/html/celebes_kalossi.shtml
Damn good stuff.
sweet.