Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Soda

4:50 p.m.

Today I was working at North Park Village, a recycling site run by the Resource Center, the non-profit which also runs the farm where I usually work. In addition to being a depository for people's recyclable materials--glass, metals, paper, cardboard, plastic, etc.--the site has an area where people can leave household goods and knick-knacks that they no longer need but that others might find useful. For most of the time that I've worked there, there has been this guy who comes, on average, once a day and loads pretty much all the household goods and knick-knacks that are not complete garbage into his Jeep Cherokee. I've never thought it worth the trouble to confront him about his disproportionate usage of this feature of the site, but I can only hope that he's giving all these items to a charitable cause and not selling them for some trivial bit of money--he doesn't look as though he needs it.

At any rate, I was working at North Park today, and the guy comes and loads up his car, and as he's leaving he holds out a duffel bag he had just found, and jokingly tells me to place my work gloves in the bag. Given his track record, I did not find this funny, and so faked a chuckle. He put the bag in his car, and then, as an afterthought, turned and handed me the can of soda pictured below.


















I asked this fellow what was in the can, and he replied "It's either Coke or Pepsi--it won't get you high," and drove off.

Reassuring words, to be sure. At any rate, the drink is currently chilling in the freezer, awaiting a taste test. I am not hopeful, given the dubious character of its giver and the not-so-recent expiration date printed on the can.


5:10 p.m



















VERDICT: The beverage is definitely some variety of cola. I'm about 95% sure it's not diet. It tastes slightly more syrupy than it should and leaves a slightly more unpleasant aftertaste than a typical cola, but it is otherwise unremarkable. Oh well. I guess we know now that cola ages reasonably well.