Tuesday, January 12, 2010

New Riding Partners

Select rides for the rest of this winter and into the coming years will now feature this beauty! 1.0 litres of fun loving, coffee hauling, green hammer-textured, made in the USA! convenience. For the heck of it I actually read the leaflet that was inside of the bottle, and picked up a valuable tip! I never would have thought of this, and when I mentioned it to a few people at work, they looked at me like I was retarded! If you pour some hot water into the bottle and let it warm the bottle for 5 minutes, then empty it and pour your beverage in, the bottle is pre-warmed and keeps the coffee warm longer. Works with cold drinks too. Hmmmmm. Who'd a thunk it?
Now I'm no coffee snob, not by a long shot, but I do like the idea of stopping in the middle of my route, popping open the pour valve, and sipping on a nice warm cup o' joe. Just black coffee with a little sweetener, no foamy crap, no pinch of nutmeg, no special, super-cool recipe. Water, grounds, 5 minutes to brew, and it's ready. Good to the last drop!
Did you ever notice that the coffee at work, wherever you work, tastes different than any other coffee? It's like the work coffee becomes the standard for taste, an index of flavor,and all other coffees, wherever you get your mitts around them, have their own flavor. At least that has been my experience. I only recently started making coffee at home, so maybe the home brew will take over as the benchmark taste. I hope so, as our coffee at work is CHEAP coffee! In a one-coffee-drinker household though, it is hard to get anyone else into coffee. Kelli HATES! the smell of coffee being brewed. Something about her first job, and having to get up at 5:00 am to go to work at the old folks' home, and preparing their Sanka, has spoiled her from ever liking coffee again! Too bad, as I read recently in the Wall Street Journal that there is valid scientific data that proves coffee to be beneficial to a person's health and well being.
So, I think I'll post this bit of non-sense and load up the Stanley, and hit the road! Oh, and I'll be buying this companion piece later today too! A little creature comfort goes a long way out there! Later! Travel Gravel!




5 comments:

Travel Gravel said...

Quick check reveals the bottle and flask are both made in China. Does anyone know what Cadmium tastes like?

NoVisibleLycra said...

Well, they say great minds think alike. I'm London UK-based and I run a blog (http://novisiblelycra.blogspot.com) and I've been pressing the 'next blog' thingy at the top of the screen and found your blog, and then I found your post on the Stanley thermos flask. How weird! I've just bought the exact same one. I take it out in a rucksack every weekend full of hot water for tea. It's great. Anyway, nice blog and all that. Drop me a line if you're in London and come on a ride. Matt.

Travel Gravel said...

Matthew, thanks for leaving a comment! I have enjoyed so many other blogs by surfing ahead with that button, it's hard to stop sometimes. I read a few back pages on your blog, looks quite nice around your area. If I ever have a chance to ride in England I will find you for a tour of Boxhill! Looks like my type of riding. Also, I am highly amused, in my Yankee-ness, that you refer to your Stanley as a "Stanley thermos" I had to abstain, with all my might, from using the word "thermos" in my post, as that is a trade marked name for an insulated beverage bottle. Like saying, "Kleenex" or "Frisbee" it just comes out that way! LOL! Your old one that died must have been glass lined? Judging from the postmortem description. Hope you'll check back here once in a while. What is the gravel riding like over there? And what cool Brit phrases do you use in cycling? Later!

NoVisibleLycra said...

You're right about Thermos, it's a brand name and perhaps the brand police have yet to catch up with me; I'll have to keep looking over my shoulder on that one. My old one wasn't glass-lined but it had a kind of plastic rim, which chipped when it fell to the ground accidentally, rendering it useless, hence the purchase of the Stanley. As for cycling phrases, I'll have a think about that. We all ride Kona bikes and originally, ie when purchased they didn't have any mudguards, mine still doesn't, but in wet conditions we found a lot of mud speckled on our faces. This condition quickly became known as Kona Face. Other than that, we seem to pick up a lot of flat tyres, due, I think to thorn bushes lining some our routes. As I write this in the UK it is 0726 and I'm about to go out on a ride, unless, that is, I discover a flat tyre, which is always highly likely. Last week I had two punctures to contend with, front and back. Must go, but yeah, keep in touch. I've book-marked your blog so will return frequently. Matt.

Steve Fuller said...

Nice thermos. I have found that coffee somewhere on the ride is always tasty. The few times that I've done it have been with a generic stainless quart thermos, covered in a fine array of cycling stickers.