Nuisance Log Part 3 - Warm Brown Water

I love coffee. I mean, I freaking love coffee, can't go a day without it. I drink it usually first thing in the morning after getting dressed. If I don't get it first thing in the morning or reasonably thereafter my day is ruined beyond repair, and all hell will most certainly spill forth upon this earth.

Usually I make my own coffee at home, carefully, lovingly, using the finest beans I can afford, measuring precisely, adding just the right amount of cream and sugar. Sometimes hazelnut flavored cream is incorporated for a subtle note of praline nuttiness. The end result is a thick, dark, fragrant, hot mug of deliciousness. Guaranteed to jump start your day, like a pleasant, rich, sweet slap-in-the-face.

Sometimes I travel, which removes me from my home coffee laboratory. I am left to crawl begging and desperate from my hotel room to the nearest coffee shop, praying that what they have to offer will be a quality substitute. I prefer a local coffee shop over a Starbucks any day simply because of the consistent quality of the java from these establishments. Starbucks tends to burn their coffee, and it all tastes vaguely of kerosene for some reason.

Sometimes there are no coffee shops nearby. I will steadfastly scour the area looking for one, sometimes driving miles out of my way, enduring traffic jams, hostile neighborhoods, packs of wild animals. Dunkin Donuts is often my sanctuary in the cataclysmic zoo that is the American cityscape. There seems to be a Dunkin Donuts in every city I visit, and more often than not there are several of them strategically scattered around. Their coffee is always fresh, even at 3am on a Tuesday. Not very strong, but there is nothing like a "large hazelnut with cream and sugar."

Sometimes I spend an hour driving around looking for a coffee shop or a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts only to have my spirits crushed and my plans cancelled. At this point I will resort to emergency tactics, which often bring me to the first gas station I see. This is the beginning of the end.

I frantically burst into the gas station market, and there, floating like a steaming oasis in the middle of the floor are various pots of coffee. My initial reaction is always the same: salvation at last! I rush over, knocking people out of the way, hockey-checking the rotating sunglasses kiosk, diving for that little styrofoam cup of morning sunshine. Panic stricken, I pour that black gold into my cup, find the piss-warm cream bottle laying on its side and dispense a generous dollop, and shovel in several scoops of sugar.

I pay the man.

I get back in my car.

I let the scalding coffee cool off for a few minutes.

Finally, after what seems like eons, I take a sip.

Warm brown french vanilla flavored water.

I toss the abomination out my car window aiming for the bus shelter full of commuters, vengeance in my eyes, an audible growl on my lips. I head back to the hotel at mach 4, breaking all known traffic laws, hurling obscenities at anything within earshot: people, animals, children, religious leaders, veterans of foreign wars, orange traffic cones, more commuters in bus shelters, etc.

I collapse in a heap of myself on the floor of my hotel room, broken, crestfallen, reaching to the ceiling with a claw-like hand. I manage to drag myself to the window, and there, shining like a beacon of victory, next to "Pams Flapjack Palace" a sign: "House of Java," behind the hotel on the street I didn't notice before.