Episode Eighty: The Byte-Chase Stafford

Chase is an art teacher-but it was in his art class in high school that HIS art teacher told him something that would change his life. Oh, and he almost had to jump off a balcony once, into the pool below, during an earthquake.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 80 of Bite Sized Blessings.

And yes,

Once again,

I'm in a hotel,

Traveling across the US to Portland,

Oregon.

Right now,

I'm in Omaha,

Nebraska.

I'm on the third floor of the Hampton Inn.

And I'm using my time this evening to finish the podcast for this week.

This week's interview is a little different.

I get to interview my friend Chase Stafford,

Who,

In addition to being a very accomplished coffee barista,

Coffee taster,

And coffee importer from countries all over the world,

Is also an artist and an art teacher at NMSA here in Santa Fe,

New Mexico.

As you'll hear in the interview,

There have been a couple miracles in Chase's life.

One,

I think,

Pertains to those people that are in our lives who become mentors,

Who change the course of our lives with something they say.

Maybe we don't take it in at the moment that they say it,

But maybe a few years down the road,

Those words come back.

They come back to us and they change the direction of our life.

Chase is in the same position now as a teacher at his school.

And this interview has me wondering just what he's saying to those kids,

His students,

That will affect their lives in the coming years.

He also tells some wonderful tales of his coffee adventures and travels,

Some of which include miracles as well.

So now,

Without further ado,

Episode 80 of Bite Sized Blessings.

We have the hostel guide,

The guy that's running the hostel,

He talks on the phone and he says,

OK,

She's going to come here and pick you up in a taxi in 10 minutes.

And she's going to take you to a bus stop where she's going to buy you tickets to the farm.

Right before we get out of the taxi,

Though,

Right before we get on the bus,

She says,

You're going to go up to this kind of gas station,

Restaurant,

Convenience store in the middle of nowhere,

Oaxaca,

Called El Mirador.

It's called El Mirador.

This is the Wi-Fi password.

We write down the Wi-Fi password.

You get on the Wi-Fi and you're going to text Alejandro,

My son,

And Alejandro is going to come pick you up.

So Dylan puts in the phone number and I put in the phone number into our WhatsApp.

So we both have the number.

But in WhatsApp,

The numbers format and there's a format.

As soon as you put in the number,

It formats to its proper formatting.

But the number is not formatting at all.

So I look at her and in Spanish,

I say something like,

You know,

I don't think the number is correct.

Can you repeat it?

And she repeats the number.

And Dylan goes,

No,

It's correct.

I'm looking at his phone and my phone and the format's wrong.

And I was like,

It's not it's not the right number.

We're about to drive six hours in the middle of the jungle and we have the wrong number.

And I'm like,

Dylan,

Please believe this is not.

And so he asks again.

She goes,

No,

Yeah,

That's correct.

And he's like,

See,

And I was like,

We're screwed.

This is it.

I'm going to be eaten by a panther.

I love this quote by Barack Obama that he said something like running the country is a lot like steering a ship.

And if you just take this ship immediately in the direction you want to go at cap sizes.

So you have to slowly over time point the ship direction.

So I think about looking at the person that I was 10 years ago,

15 years ago,

Two years ago,

Three years ago.

And sometimes it doesn't really feel like a whole lot's changed.

But it is that especially from the outside,

Looking in,

You know,

People probably see more about me than I see about myself.

Sometimes you're too close to know what's actually happening.

But I feel like all my experiences have always been something that I took in to make changes through every way,

The way I move through life.

I remember creating these analogies for myself when I make work,

Which would then help me create analogies of how I would go out and operate in the world.

I had this professor one time say we're doing figure drawing.

She wants to draw the entire space.

It wasn't just about the figure because the figure exists in the space.

So she had us walk in a circle around the room and around the model.

And we had to walk in this big circle and we had to kind of put our hands on things.

And as we're moving,

She said,

I want you to imagine that the entire room is filled with oatmeal and that as you get closer,

That oatmeal is kind of pushing up against other objects and you can actually physically feel the space all of a sudden between the interstitial spaces.

You can feel in between.

So we're doing that.

We're walking in circles.

And,

You know,

Some people are like,

This is hokey and weird and I'm sitting there soaking it up.

But through that ability to create analogies or to think of the world in a different way and maybe it roots back to the problem solving.

Prior to going to this Panama,

Mexico,

Guatemala trip,

I thought I'd had some pretty major memory loss issues.

And I started to I couldn't remember,

You know,

A lot of us talk about this.

So this isn't like too shocking for people.

I can remember what I ate for breakfast and was like,

Oh,

Yeah,

You know,

That's just way.

But I can remember what had been said to me seconds ago.

Tasks I couldn't hold on to anything in my brain.

So we're in Mexico and we're having this cup of coffee from Finca Chilene.

And as I was saying,

It was tasting really borderline effervescent,

As if it had been carbonated,

Kind of like a white wine and like a like a floral red fruit.

And I really loved it.

And turns out it was a carbonic coffee.

And Finca Chilene,

He's a fermentation expert,

And he taught adding yeasts and different fermentation methods to the coffees to farmers and shoppers for years.

And him and his son broke off and did their own farm in Oaxaca.

So we're hearing about this farm.

And I was like,

This is the farm we want to go to.

We got to be there.

So Dylan books a flight to Oaxaca.

The next 40 minutes,

We're sitting on a plane from Mexico City,

Getting to Oaxaca.

And we make it we're trying to figure out how we're going to get to the farm,

How are you get to the fireman?

We're looking around.

And remember,

We don't know anybody.

We don't have any connections.

We get a connection to a girl named Kate and Kate and I have a different connection today,

But we've never actually talked or met because we couldn't find Kate.

We've just missed connect the entire time.

And Kate has an amazing roastery and cafe and Oaxaca,

Said throw.

If you ever go,

You find Kate's roastery.

I remember the name because never got connected.

But we get there and we miss connect with Kate,

Miss connect with Kate.

And we wake up the next morning and Dylan is frantic,

Done.

We're not super frantic,

But he's a little upset.

He's like,

We're here on a job.

We have a mission and we're kind of failing and we can't we can't fail.

We can't show up empty handed.

We need to prove that this travel program is worthwhile to our boss.

So he continues to create a travel program to send baristas to buy coffee.

So.

We sit there,

We sit there,

We sit there and I have this stroke of brilliance and like we could Google it.

So I just search on Google Finca Chellin and it shows up with a cafe across the other side of Oaxaca Centro.

So five,

Six blocks away where it was a hotel and Finca Chellin had their coffee at this hotel in bags.

And that's where they sold it.

So we went over to the hotel and we sit down.

We're having this really bad cup of coffee.

It's just made out of like a Mr.

Coffee.

So it's really watered down,

Just tastes like paper.

And we're sitting there drinking this coffee and we talked to the hostess.

And we're like,

Do you know how to get in touch with this farmer?

And she's like,

No,

Like,

Oh,

Crap.

And he's like,

But his wife is going to be here in about an hour dropping off the coffee.

And I was like,

OK,

That's it.

That's you do know how.

OK,

So we kind of walk around for a little bit.

We make it back.

His wife had already left.

So we start to panic.

And she's like,

But don't worry.

I got her number and she wants you to call her.

And so I'm kind of what the hostess like.

What's with all this push and pull?

Like,

No,

I don't know how to get in touch.

She's gone.

Oh,

But we can get this all sorted out.

So we get in touch with the farmer's wife.

Dylan had been in a Spanish intensive and spoke better Spanish than me.

But in Dylan's words,

He has to close his eyes and turn all the lights off.

No one can be moving in the room and he could speak Spanish really well.

But so we have the hostel guide,

The guy that's running the hostel.

He talks on the phone and he says,

OK,

She's going to come here and pick you up in a taxi in 10 minutes.

And she's going to take you to a bus stop where she's going to buy you tickets to the farm.

So now we're on this bus right before we get out of the taxi,

Though,

Right before we get on the bus.

She says you're going to go up to this kind of gas station restaurant convenience store in the middle of nowhere.

We'll talk called El Mirador.

This is in Luxata.

It's called El Mirador.

This is the Wi-Fi password.

We write down the Wi-Fi password.

Get on the Wi-Fi and you're text Alejandro,

My son.

Alejandro is going to come pick you up.

So Dylan puts in the phone number and I put in the phone number into our WhatsApp.

We both have a number.

But in WhatsApp,

The numbers format and there's a format.

As soon as you put in the number of formats to its proper formatting.

But the number is not formatting at all.

So I look at her and in Spanish,

I say something like,

You know,

I don't think the number is correct.

Can you repeat it?

And she repeats the number.

And Dylan goes,

No,

It's correct.

I'm looking at his phone and my phone and the format's wrong.

And I was like,

It's not it's not the right number.

We're about to drive six hours in the middle of the jungle and we have the wrong number.

And I'm like,

Don't please believe this is not.

And so he asks again.

She goes,

No,

Yeah,

That's correct.

And he's like,

See?

And I was like,

We're screwed.

This is it.

I'm going to be eaten by a panther.

This is it.

So we make our way up this mountain and we're in this kind of small like like charter bus.

It's like a quarter size bus and they're playing some delisted movie that stars Meat Loaf,

The lead singer of Meat Loaf as the antagonist.

I think it's Patrick Swayze or somebody.

And it's essentially just a bunch of trucks that are driving into each other and exploding.

And they're transporting illegal weapons.

But Patrick Swayze,

If it was Patrick Swayze,

I don't remember.

Patrick Swayze had no idea that he was transporting illegal weapons and he he's gotten out of this life,

But they pulled him back in that moment.

So I'm sitting there and we're driving through this really sick fog and these tiny roads.

And we're swerving out of the way of rocks and cars.

And I'm sitting there watching these trucks,

Like driving off cliffs and exploding.

And I was like,

This is probably my fate.

And I'm starting to get a lot of carsick.

And the movie is obnoxiously loud.

It was one of the most loud.

It didn't need to be that loud.

There's three of us in the car in the bus.

So we finally make it up to El Mirador and it's golden hour on the side of a giant mountain in Oaxaca.

And the sunset is absolutely gorgeous.

We're standing in a forest looking out over tons of mountains.

And we type in the Wi-Fi password and Dylan's like,

OK,

Now it's time to text Alejandro.

And I'm sitting there going,

Well,

At least I have a sleeping bag.

So Dylan goes to text and Dylan goes,

Huh?

The number is not right.

And I was like,

No freaking way.

Like,

Oh,

My gosh.

So upset.

And so Dylan is like,

Oh,

No,

What do we do?

And I just sat there and in a different language,

I had to recall and piece together this number back.

And I realized that they had added a one in the middle of the phone number and that one needed to be moved to the beginning.

And I somehow put it together and the number formatted correctly.

And then at this point,

You're thinking like,

Well,

God,

I hope this is Alejandro.

And so we text Alejandro three minutes,

Four minutes,

Go by five minutes,

Go by.

I'm sitting there sweating like we're sleeping and we're camping tonight.

And Alejandro text back.

He says,

Oh,

Yeah,

On my way.

Be there.

Be there in five minutes.

And we make it to Finca Chilene and we get to stay at the farmer's house there and have some of the most incredible Mexican coffee that I've ever had in my life.

But the kind of the point of that that story is.

And this actually got my teaching job.

That story got me the teaching job at an MSA here in Santa Fe.

The point of the story was the artist's brain,

The idea of problem solving.

I think a lot of the times we arrive at something that's really difficult in our life and you're confronted with dealing with it or shying away.

And a lot of us don't really realize what we're capable of doing.

So being an artist,

I would run into problems all the time that nobody's ever solved because no one's ever thought to create what I'm creating.

So there's really not a whole lot of solutions to find on Google or to read in a book.

You have to work through it.

And I think that was one of those moments where it was kind of sink or swim.

And we swam.

It was great.

You swam.

Dylan was over there,

Like slightly drowning.

And you knocked.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you for listening to Episode 80 of Bite Sized Blessings.

I need to thank my wonderful and hilarious guest,

Chase Stafford,

For sharing all the stories of his travels,

His adventures.

I'm very grateful he didn't end up having to jump off that balcony into the pool below.

I need to thank the creators of the music used as well.

John Bartman,

Taiga Sound Production,

Chilled Music and Frank Schroeder.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to other artists,

Musicians,

Change makers and books I hope will lighten and brighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Rate and review the podcast.

No,

Seriously,

Go ahead.

Ratings and reviews help other people find us.

But I'm just kidding.

That's not my only request.

I have another one as well.

Be like Chase.

Cultivate an artist's mind.

Try to see the world and all its permutations from every single angle.

And maybe one of those angles will help you solve a problem when you absolutely need it to.