"The best laid plans o' mice and men gang oft a-gley" as the Scots would have it. Translated, that means that we found ourselves, along with many thousands of other travellers, stranded by the Iceland volcano. It could have been worse, we were stranded in a comfortable hotel in Anaheim, California, but what was originally intended as a 2 night stay turned into 5 nights.

Fortunately, we saw the way the wind was blowing (pun) as soon as we landed in LA and realised that the UK portion of our trip was defunct. Lots of time spent on the internet and several international phone calls allowed us to escape to Europe via Chicago and Madrid to ultimately end up in Venice, just a 90 minute train ride away from the Lelit factory in Brescia.

This newsletter has been assembled on the long plane ride home,so it might be just a bit rough around the edges, but below is a photo essay on the 2010 Anaheim SCAA conference.

Alan   

Where to begin? To start with, it's difficult to appreciate the sheer size of the show just from photos, but it's BIG.	Just the space set aside for the US Barista Championship is huge, and there's a free espresso bar out of shot.
Here, a couple of weary Guatemalans in National dress take a short break from their booth.	A quick snap of the Bodum stand. They seem to have moved away from the electronic brewers.
There were the usual clutch of commercial roasters on display, this one from Portugal and looking a lot like a Probat.	I'm not real certian that these Taiwanese guys with a Locomotive Roaster were serious, though.
Commercial Superautos, this one from WMF, were prominent. Most of the Rancilio display was the Egro Superauto machines.	This flash Astoria machine had designer looks but was a traditional espresso machine at heart.
Innovative new products were a bit thin on the ground. GeneCafe introduced a supersized version of their roaster.	The Mypressi Twist people were giving great displays and were swamped with buyers.
Paul Pratt had his new line of Cafelat injection moulded knockboxes and shaped SS milk jugs ...	as well as this incredibly innovative group cleaning brush. Why didn't I think of that!?
This is Bunn's new turbo-type drip brewer, more or less another attempt to get better drip extraction.	But the Magic Power supposedly aphrodisiac coffee takes the cake for the most unusual product!