When I was very young, I'm talking negative numbers here, I bumped my head for the first of what would become many times when my pregnant Mother was in a car accident with a dump truck. It took some time (I had to wait to be born, develop leg muscles, and then spend some time being handicapped by a tortuous 'foot correction device' that was basically a short 1x4 with my shoes nailed to each end) but I walked away from it.

I grew up in a small Kansas town playing baseball, bumping my head, asking questions, being asked questions ("Are you okay?"), having lights shined in my pupils by old men in white coats, riding bikes, wrecking bikes (damn you Evil Knievel) and bumping my head.

Shortly after a serious concussion worthy head bumping brought on by the bright idea of jumping over a large snow drift onto a parking lot coated with a sheet of ice, I joined the Army and escaped Kansas for the first time. I bumped my head some more. I met Russell. I went on Temporary Duty to Central America and saw my first coffee tree. We dreamed of opening a coffee shop. I bumped my head yet again and got married, had kids, and ended up back in Kansas.

I started working at a place in Westport (Kansas City), Missouri called the Broadway Cafe. I changed diapers. I bumped my children's heads. I started a bakery. I failed at a bakery and must have bumped my head because I ended up back in the Army. I did escape Kansas again. Two years later I was stationed back in Kansas.

I got divorced. I went to grad school. I went to Italy to study. I bumped my head on the bottom of a fountain in Asolo, Italy. I went to Rome to attend World Cup Rome and met Ward Barbee and realized I needed to be back in the coffee business. I bumped my head into an empty wine bottle yielded by one of three Romans and received complimentary stitches and a guided tour of a modern Roman emergency room. And then took a cab back to my hotel room.

I came back to the states and went to Ward's Portland, Oregon coffee convention and met Terry Davis, owner of Ambex. I called Russell and said, "I need to move out to Virginia and we need to roast coffee." He asked, "Did you bump your head?" When I assured him I hadn't in at least two weeks, I moved out and we started roasting coffee for The Easy Chair Coffee Shop, which he'd opened several years before.

Eight years, many head bumpings (including a wake up in the trauma unit of Roanoke Memorial Hospital - I'm not making this up), trips to coffee farms, and six plus years of coffee roasting and intense industry education later, we're ready to step it up from small coffee shop roasters.

Stay tuned (or watch your local news for accident reports) and pitch in to help write the next chapter.