My new stainless steel coffee cup kept my coffee very warm. It was more the shape of a narrow tumbler, no handle, stainless inside and out. It fit perfectly into the cup holder. The only plastic was the black lid with an attached hinged stopper. As I drove to work I thought that I would get along just fine drinking from this one.
In the last 10 or 20 years I have left a wide variety of coffee cups all the way from the southern border of Iowa to the Panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. I can buy a large refill of Java at any convenience store in a 700 square mile area for less than a dollar a cup. Because I provide my own cup, in this day of 3 dollar something a gallon gas, a cup of hot coffee is perhaps the last American bargain while on the road. I do admit that the quantity and the temperature of the Hojo is offset at times by the quality and the taste. But after a few years you learn where to find the better product. My problem is I tend to leave my mug at my destination, only to notice its absence many miles down the road on my way back home. Surely I have stocked many breakrooms.
Because of my forgetfulness, I gave up on the insulated mug a few months ago and began using a Dixie cup paper container. If I used cream and sugar, I would order what they call in Canada, a double double. I believe it is a double sugar and cream with a double cup. The second cup is used as an insulator for the first. If you drink it black, as I do, you just order a double cup. Keeps it hot longer. That’s what I’ve been doing, I fix myself a double cup every morning. I don’t need an insulated mug. And I felt it was a cleaner drink. Let’s face it, an old coffee cup gets pretty scuzzy after a few weeks of use. I could refill and make my double cup last all day. I don’t think I have left the setup anywhere and we can buy them for me by the hundreds at Cosco.
Last week I began thinking that it was pretty wasteful using two paper cups a day so I went to the cupboard and dug out the new stainless one that my son gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I evaluated it on the way to work and was very satisfied. I don’t like to drink hot coffee from plastic so the stainless is great but totally stainless mugs are getting very hard to find. Because I wasn’t planning on drinking a lot of coffee I thought I’d give it a try.
But sure enough, after a couple hours at work, I couldn’t find my new cup. I retraced all my steps and couldn’t find it. Disheartened and busy, I had to give up the search. I used paper the rest of the week. But I continued to have that damn nagging feeling everywhere I went subconsciously looking for that new cup and imagining the mold that by now had grown inside the fresh clean steel.
Yesterday, at 2:35 in the afternoon, I moved a piece of test equipment and there was the cup. Still half full and not a spot of mold. All things are right. The world is once again spinning in greased grooves.
Such is the life of John
DistantShipSmoke 