What Ever Happened To […] #1024

 

[Awhile ago, somebuddy or somebunny noted–along with his or her training regimen, specimen, preferences, Garmin trackings, VO2-max vs. HR-extremities, nutritional intake vs. wastage outpour, etc., etc., etc., and, oh yeah, complete lists of all the races he or she has ever run vs. all the upcoming races he or she fully intends to do–that (are you still with me?) one of the things he or she liked to drink was de-fizzed Coke.
( x_x )
And THAT’s what’s prompted THIS.]

The Carter Administraction Presents…

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO [De-fizzed Coke]?

It used to be, back in “the glory days,” that for your beverages you would go to the store. No, not the sporting goods store or the running store or the fashion store or the triathlon store or the online store or the racing specialties store or “wherever only the very highest priced accouterments for your kick-ass successes are sold.” No, not THEM. The grocery store. Or, back where I come from, the supermarket.

You’d push a buggy-basket down the aisle and snatch cans off the shelf. Or, back in the REALLY “back in the day” day, bottles. Glass bottles! Returnable bottles! For which you plunked down a nickel or dime and, hey, got the nickel or dime back when you returned the empty bottle! (What a concept! Imagine the lessened cubic acreage required by landfills in those days!)

Whatever happened to glass “deposit” bottles of soda pop? Orange juice? Lemonade? Yoo-hoos? Hell, of milk!!! Nowadays your beverages have as many packagings as ingredients. Cartons, plastic, waxed cardboard, six-packs wrapped in plastic, cardboard cartons, six-packs of cardboard cartons wrapped in plastic… and inside of all that plastic each and every single plastic “squeeze container” ends up smooshed by your fist, pitched in a barrel (hopefully), and then into the landfill.

But I digress. The point iz… da fizz. What you’d do is–for, during, or after training runs AND out of your drop bags in ultras–you’d drink a flattened beverage. And how you got that was by opening the damn cans or bottles a couple of days in advance. Put ’em in the fridge, or not. (Usually that didn’t matter because by the time you’d be drinking it, it would be 95-degrees.) But it’d be liquid, eh? AND liquid that was very easily ingested!

No bubbles, no fizz, no carbonation, no poppies, no poopers, no floaters, no whiz-bangs, no detergents, no powders, no soap, nope! Just pure liquified sugar you could GUZZLE. And… not fart afterwards. Or puke. Or pee out all kinda uncomfortable weirdnesses behind the bushes that folks used to use… before skirts. And those “she-funnels” and dude shorts with better elastic that lets you, literally, pee on the fly.

Whatever happened to shorts with flies?

But again I digress. What ELSE we all did was: we had to plan. There was no such thing as “instant gratification.” No (more, yet more!) little wrappers containing, uh, stuff you could immediately eat or drink. No “gels” in those days. No GU. Not even fricking PowerBars! (We’d use Snickers. Same thing.) No, nothing doing. You had to PLAN your “stuff.” You bought candy bars and soda pop at the supermarket, came home, popped open all the pop cans and (remember “church keys”?) snapped off all the bottle caps and then stuffed all the candy in your shorts. Or, yeah, there were things even in those days that could contain your “stuff” while you ran. We called them “fanny packs.”

Then.

You.

Waited.

For at least.

Two.

Whole.

Days.

When wham! Bingo! Your soda was ready. All de-fizzed and ready to rock with nothing therein to upchuck you. You then had everything possible to be gained–except by the purists–from sucking down warm liquid SUGAR to keep you going or help you recover. Ah, but there were “purists” even then. The purists all drank juice. Right. Like Bernd Heinrich. He set world records by guzzling cranberry juice, which never did have any fizz. (What a concept, eh?)

What EVER happened to Ocean-Spray? Oh, sorry. It’s still with us. Only now it’s apple-cranberry, cranapple, very-berry-cranberry, grape-cranberry, crangrape (?), raspberry-cranberry, apple-orange-raspberry-grape-cranberry-cranapple, and even cranberry to pour on your Fruit Loops.

I will tell you WHAT the heck EVER happened to de-fizzed Coke. It is now zero-calorie fully-fizzed politically-correct gold-label Coke, which you STILL need to de-fizz. And in this age of instant gratification, nobody has TIME for that. And besides, it’s COKE®! Regular versus Coke Classic. It’s Vanilla Coke. It’s Cherry Coke. It’s Diet Vanilla Coke, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero, Diet Cherry Coke, Diet Coke/Coca-Cola Light, Diet Coke/Coca-Cola Light with Lime, Caffeine Free Coca-Cola, Caffeine Free Coke Light/Diet Coke, Caffeine Free Barq’s, Fanta, Diet Barq’s, Diet Fanta, Caffeine-fricking-FREE Diet Barq’s-Fanta-Inco Kola, and Mello Yello/Mello Yello Zero, Pibb, Minute Maid, Minute Maid Soft, Fresca, Monster (!), Java Monster, H2OK, Honest (!!!), Nestea, Nestea COOL, and of course that already flattened beverage (both carbonatedly and financially): the nearly disappearing PowerAde… with of course PowerAde Light, PowerAde Play, and PowerAde Zero.

Oh but yea, woe yea, they had Dr. Pepper “back in the day” as well. In fact, none other than Barney Klecker himself set a world record for FIFTY MILES drinking *only* DIET Dr. Pepper. Yup. And all of exactly ONLY four-and-a-half ounces of it (he told me himself) THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE RUN!!!

Of course, he wasn’t running for long (4 hours, 51 minutes, and 25 seconds at the time) and he did have the world record–until Bruce Fordyce came to that same old same place (Sweet Home Chicago’s Lakefront) and broke it–and the Diet Dr. Pepper that Barney Klecker drank was, for sure, (eh? ya think?) de-fizzed.

( O_O )

Yours troubly,

The Troubadour
“your friendly ancient trustless hulking rusty caffeine-full lute-plucking song-and-dance man who used to drink fifty gallons of regular Dr. Pepper in four-and-a-half miles.”

Yankee Folly of the Day:
Silver-Label Decaffeinated Diet Monster Light Play Zero Quarter ‘n’ Three Quarter 50-50, no deposit/no return, with lime or without, with fizz or without, on shelves now or wherever fine toys are sold.