After a cold night under the stars in Medicine Hat I am craving coffee. I pack my tent and sleeping bag into the car without care. My last night on the road behind me combining with a cool Alberta breeze are potent motivators. As I pull out of the tiny treed refuge on the parries the vastness is over whelming. Wide sky's, long horizons, dotted with distant train cars, hay bails and never ending telephone lines. I pull over on a small dirt road and snap a few shots for posterity. Its 630 all I really want is coffee.
Driving down the highway I drift off into a hazy, creamy coffee dream. I think of how good the truck stop coffee will be. Memories of road moves with the military bring warm memories of thick coffee and chemically softened, prepackaged danishes.
"Shit" The car swerves rapidly into the other lane without my attention. I am not falling asleep and drifting off the road as I had feared. My subconscious is a better driver than I had realized. In the midst of my caffeine dream my body took control from my brain and avoided the cattle truck that carelessly pulled out in front of my speeding concord.
With death nearly averted I refocus my attention to the road. Panning the horizon from right to left, I am alert, am awake, I really need this coffee. They say scanning the horizon from right to left allows you to notice things better. It has something to do with how we read, your eyes are accustom to moving from left to right. By reversing the process your brain is forced to pay greater attention to the environment. I am not sure how truthful this statement is, but within moments I had spotted my objective. Peeking over the distant horizon, the bright read maple leaf of Petro Canada advertised gasoline at 91 cents per liter. The sign, the beacon, my guiding light also implicitly advertised coffee.
I patently wait as two truck drivers debate who will by this round off coffee. They fill their cups and move to the cream counter. In true western fashion the large cup is larger than any extra large or venti coffee I have ever seen, I doubt the extra large styrofoam cup will even fit in my cup holder. Turning around to sweeten my bean water I wait again. The men discuss the merits of different routs as the dump ungodly amounts of sugar into their gigantic tubs of coffee. Finally the move over and allow me access to what I have been dreaming of, cream, Flavored cream. and then disappointment set in. I was overwhelmed, the coffee smelt so good, so warm, so awakening. But I had dreamed of flavored cream for the past 97 kilometers of highway.
The truckers move off to admire the NASCAR jackets hanging on the back wall. I reluctantly load up on regular cream, to make up for the loss of flavor I utilize the 18%. As I turn toward the counter in disappointment, I notice the men donning jackets in the back of the store. Their faces as long as mine when the DeWalt NASCAR jacket they have pawing over proves to small for either of them. We quietly wait in line to pay for our addiction, the air is filled with disappointment and the smell of cow manure. Pulling out of the truck stop we head in opposite directions down highway 1, my next stop will be Calgary perhaps some flavor will find me there.
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