Me and Caffeine

Never Too Much Coffee

If you have been around me for 24 hours you are not going to believe. . . I didn’t drink coffee in high school.

I didn’t drink coffee in college.

I did drink gallons of iced tea. Daily. But no coffee.

And I loved coffee ice cream.

Speaking of coffee ice cream, my mom preferred her half and half with a little coffee and sugar. It’s probably why I loved coffee ice cream so much, well before I started indulging in a coffee habit.

However, in my early twenties, while traveling throughout Washington’s rural backwaters, en route to a river’s launch site and making a habit out of breakfast at roadside diners, I succumbed to societal pressure.

You see, I’d kindly request hot tea as the waitress hovered above me with a brimming pot of black coffee eager to fill my mug and be on her way. She’d have to overcome her instinctual reaction because no one - ever - asked for hot tea. She’d catch herself in mid-pour, give me a look as if I had just said out loud that I was a tree hugger, or a relative of Jimmy Carter, and bustle back toward the kitchen.

Sometimes my tea and single cup of hot water would arrive a mere moment or two later. Sometimes I needed to add a gentle reminder when she rounded back to take our food orders. Regardless, one round of hot water and one tea bag was all I was going to get. Meanwhile, everyone else was enjoying their bottomless mugs of coffee. Refilled before they were empty and, occasionally, when they no longer wanted a refill. The waitress was no longer making eye-contact with me.

I have an oral fixation. I need to be drinking something hot in the morning and something cold, like iced tea or beer, in the evening.

Eventually I had no fucks left to give and I switched over to coffee. And, as anyone who has ever spent any time with me knows, especially on a river, I drink coffee from dawn to dusk. If my too expensive Stanley thermos does not get topped off in the morning before getting out on the river, I am one talisman short of being content. The joke about the Scotsman who falls into a vat of Guinness and fights off his rescuers bravely could be applied to me and my penchant for consuming coffee.

I’ve never looked back. I no longer consider a cup of Earl Grey worthy of my time.

And, because I started my habit pre-espresso stand, I am a coffee Everyman. I am as comfortable and at home with any diner’s weak-ass coffee as I am with a Stumptown cold brew.

In fact, I believe it is imperative to be a coffee opportunist. Because you may find yourself somewhere without an espresso machine for miles. Or you might be at the launch site on a remote river in Idaho and discover an insufficient amount of coffee was purchased and you have to beg the bedraggled ranger with bedhead to sell you his number ten can of Folgers.

I happen to like the flavor of Denny’s coffee. It’s tolerable and it’s consistent. Whenever I have to choose a Denny’s I know exactly what I am getting.

And I can make almost any coffee tolerable with cream. Which combined with my all-day consumption has ramifications. Others my age have beer guts. I’ve developed a “coffee with cream” gut. What can I say? I just can’t drink it black with the same satisfaction.

Throughout a day, I follow a very precise regimen of stimulants followed by depressants. And then more stimulants. And then I go to bed. And - until I had to worry about the impending apocalypse - I’d sleep like a baby.

Wait a second, you’re thinking. What about the copious amounts of caffeine?

I’ve only once in my life noted any effects from caffeine and that was when I followed my usual morning indulgence of several mugs of coffee with a Red Bull. I have no idea why I drank it. Probably out of curiosity. We were doing a whitewater-free, very low water river trip on the lower stretch of the Skykomish with sixty partiers who constituted the staff of a hamburger joint in Redmond, along with their friends and plus ones. The Red Bull was something their management supplied and, besides being curious, I was never one to turn down free stuff.

That amount of caffeine gave me a roaring headache. Now, just thinking about Red Bull gives me a headache.

Remarkably though, it didn’t give me the jitters.

I was very familiar with jitters. I’d seen caffeinated jitters. In Rebecca Gibson’s high school biology class.

It was an experiment with Coca Cola and a starfish. I distinctly recall how the starfish reacted. It was like it was being defibrillated. From that day, until that fateful roadside diner revelation, I shunned Coca Cola and coffee to avoid caffeine and its effects, not realizing, at the time, black tea was just as caffeine-rich.

As it turns out, according to my 23andMe records, my genetic makeup includes a couple of genes that metabolize caffeine sufficiently and quickly enough that I am capable of consuming enormous amounts of the stuff without feeling the effects most of you associate it with.

It is my lone superpower.

12 Noon? Must be time for my third cup.

###

It’s the Age of Information. Still. Now that there is way too much information, you need some place that distills that information into manageable units. Sign up for the Morning Brew. Clear, concise and pithy.

Also, if you want your own Orion mug, go online to somegirlspottery and make some girl happy! Dyana Fiediga creates much more than Orion mugs. Booby mugs, for instance. It’s a great opportunity to support a small, very small, business.