Strong coffee and high speed

I’ve developed a strong taste for cheap coffee, the sort of rot gut one can buy very cheaply from the stainless steel carts on the street. It tastes like a sweet mix of blood and dirt.

Last winter, while working as a bike messenger – NYC’s finest; the fastest and strongest thing on the street – I kept a stainless steel travel coffee cup in a pocket in my messenger bag. It fit perfectly as if it were designed for the cup.

For $.75 I could refill the cup with the cheap coffee I’ve grown to love. It fueled my legs and lungs, warmed my core and kept me going for a very modest sum of money.

Sitting here now in Starbuck’s with a cup of their Columbian blend, which is a light roast and supposedly a little sweeter, it is very bitter. Almost undrinkable …

Coffee is the fuel of work and ideas and creativity. Coffee is a late night effort to sneak in under a deadline. Coffee is a lazy Sunday morning brunch in summer in a shaded seat on the Upper West Side. Coffee is a 35 mile per hour sprint with traffic on a bike with no brakes carrying extremely urgent packages labeled “triple rush”.