The Prodigal Travel Mug Returns

A little over two weeks ago we took the Emperor to Columbia to have some maintenance done. Panic Motorsports is closed on the weekends (they’re usually off racing Miatas somewhere), but they were nice enough to give me the gate code, so that Donna and I could drop off the car on Saturday, thereby avoiding the possibility of having to drive the 100 mile round trip on consecutive days.

When we got back home later that day and unloaded the Sonata I couldn’t find my favorite travel mug. Drove up there in the Miata drinking from it. I remember locking up the car and it wasn’t in the cupholder in the center console. Other than that I was unsure of anything else, so after the Emperor had been away at camp for a couple days I sent Steve an email:

From: Brian
To: Steve
Subj: How’s the prognosis?

And more importantly, did you find my Contigo Travel Mug?

From: Steve
To: Brian
Subj: It’s going home tomorrow.

Probably get the transmission out before the end of the day, then slam it back together and align in the morning.

Coffee mug is not on the premises sir.

From: Brian
To: Steve
Subj: Good deal

Let me know before 3:30 tomorrow if it is not. And if it is, let me know the total, because that is the first thing my CFO will ask.

I know I drove up there to drop off the car drinking from it…from that point I don’t know what I did with it. The thing didn’t come back in the support vehicle. There are a couple places I might have put it down, the roof of the Protege (you’d have seen it) and the front seat of the red Miata (probably noticeable when retrieving the keys.) The only other place might have been when I unlocked the gate…ooh, a memory just floated to the surface, my hand placing a bronze colored Contigo travel mug on a wooden fence post.

P.S. “Slam it back together” might be OK amongst us guys, but please use something like “precisely realigned” while the previously mentioned CFO is present…

We brought the Miata home and a day later thanks to Amazon Prime I was drinking from my new Contigo AUTOSEAL West Loop Stainless Steel Travel Mug in Trans-Matte Latte.

Fast forward to yesterday and I had almost forgot about losing the old one when an unexpected package arrived in the mail with a return address of Old Dunbar Road, West Columbia, SC.

From: Brian
To: Steve
Subj: Where Was It?

On the floor of the red Miata?

From: Steve
To: Brian
Subj: Nope

No, apparently you did leave it on the fence post. My neighbor in the cabinet shop came in and found/recovered it, and we haven’t seen each other in a couple weeks. He asked me if I’d lost a coffee cup and I said “No, I don’t drink coffee”. He said, “Well, it sure is a nice one” That’s when it clicked 🙂

One of my fears was that someone had found it and was enjoying drinking from the best travel mug in all the world on my dime. Well, when I opened the box and unscrewed the lid, I knew that wasn’t the case.

Maybe, just maybe, if I drank my coffee black it might have been salvageable, but the 1/2 oz of Dunkin Donuts coffee infused with Dunkin Donuts creamer/sweetener that I had left in there had turned into a petri dish full of the beginnings of some sort of alien life form. A quick rinse in some hot water removed quite a bit of the larger chunks of stringy, slimy black colored gunk. But there were still a crap ton of brownish-black large amoeba looking spots still stuck all over the sides, so I filled it up 3/4 of the way with a diluted solution of Simple Green and shook it up for a few minutes. Oooh, that’s still ugly in there. Now I started working on the insides with hot water, dish soap & a toothbrush.

I’m making slow progress when the CFO notices what I’m doing and says, “Throw it out and get a new one.” I hate to admit defeat, but acquiesce. I was confident I could get the stainless steel body clean enough to drink from, the rubber and plastic fancy mechanism top, not so much. After seeing the inside and how hard it was to try and get clean, I don’t think I would have felt comfortable drinking from it anyway.

I didn’t order a new one because I only need the one and if by some chance I leave this on a fence post somewhere too, a replacement is only $15-20 & 2 days away.