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It’s Friday and I’m flying again.  There was a time that meant business, very likely in Washington, D.C.  At this stage of my life, flying usually means vacation or visiting family.  Today, the destination is Salt Lake City to see our grandkids (and their parents … it’s a package deal).  If you’ve been a reader for a while,  you know air travel is a challenge for my Inner Curmudgeon.   It has three of the things he hates: waiting (especially in lines) and confined spaces packed with people and their cell phones.  And the worst thing, small cadres of business folks traveling together, compelled to have loud business meetings in the airport lounges … or worse, in the row behind me on the aircraft.

Talkers and Bloggers

Several miles from our house, across the 91 Freeway in Yorba Linda, CA, is Java Joe’s,  a good old fashioned coffeehouse, the kind that used to be common before Starbucks took over the caffeinated world.  Beyond my knee-jerk dislike of things trendy, I have nothing against Starbucks.   They make fine coffee and many people seem to enjoy the ambiance of their coffeehouses and the friendliness of their baristas.  And that is part of the problem.  Most of our local Starbucks are rather small places full of people chatting up each other and the friendly baristas. Not  good place for reading, contemplation or quiet conversation.  Java Joe’s is an expansive space with comfortable chairs and sofas spaced far enough apart that everyone doesn’t have to be involved in everyone else’s conversation, which is why Muri and I like it for an afternoon coffee date.  We arrived last Friday pleased to find only a few people inside.  We ordered our coffee.  I settled into one the easy chairs in the corner and logged onto the free wireless.   We stayed for fifteen minutes.