My real addiction is Mountain Dew.

(What? You wanted heroin or something?)

I drink it constantly.

I drank it while creating this page at 3 in the morning.

Chances are I'm drinking one as you read this.

I go into withdrawal if I go without it for too long.

Soon I will be shooting it up, directly into my bloodstream.

One of the first things I do in the morning is to

stagger to the frig and crack open a nice, cold Dew.

I usually bring a small cooler with a six-pack or so

with me in my truck if I'm going to be gone for awhile

so I won't have to stop somewhere and buy any.

I am deeply troubled by the fact that most fast food joints

(my main source of nourishment)

do not serve Mountain Dew.

I am also annoyed that many convenience

stores don't always have cold six-packs.

The 7-11 by my old house usually

had some in the back of their cooler,

but rarely in the front where you could reach it.

Despite my numerous complaints,

the manager refused to put more than a few six-packs in front,

which were inevitably gone by the time I showed up.

(undoubtedly snatched up by some other Dew junkie)

Yet there were always tons of every possible

combination of regular, diet, diet caffeine free,

cherry, diet cherry, diet cherry caffeine free,

etc., etc., Pepsi, Coke, or 7-UP.

You name it, they had it, and lots of it.

I don't think I ever saw anyone buy some of those goofy combos,

and even though I probably bought enough Dew there

to make the owner's mortgage payment,

they refused to stock it sufficiently.

After awhile, all the clerks knew me as

"That Mountain Dew guy".

I had free run of their cooler.

I could stroll in, walk directly into the cooler,

and damn the "Employees Only" sign.

Even then I would often come up empty handed,

unable to find a single six-pack of Dew

amongst the mountains of diet caffeine-free

saccharin-free fat-free

low-cholestorol low-sodium Pepsi.

At least they would let me grab six

(twelve if they had 'em)

single cans and charge me the six-pack price,

but I began to understand how someone could just snap,

and open fire on a crowd of people with an UZI.

Now with the the advent of the mighty 24-can Cube of Dew,

(I've bought as many as 16 Cubes at one time on sale)

my frig is always stocked.

And you can always tell which truck is mine:

it's the one with at least a dozen empty Dew cans

rolling around in the bed.

I've found that 40 to 45 mph

(depending on prevailing winds)

is the maximun speed I can go in my truck

and still be able to safely throw my empties

out the window and into the bed

without them blowing over.

(littering is not cool)

It's kinda fun actually,

and you don't really have to throw them at all.

Simply reach out and up on the roof, and just let go!

The wind does the rest.

Even so, I plan on installing a rear

sliding window soon so I can have direct,

wind-free access to the bed,

thus relieving myself of the dilemma of what to do

with all my empties when I'm driving on the highway.

Perhaps I could take my truck to Boeing,

place it in a wind tunnel and study the

air currents over the roof at various speeds.

Then calculate the optimum release point for the cans,

giving them the best trajectory

into the bed at the highest velocity,

with no littering.

I do know that even speeds up to 100 mph

will not cause the empty cans to blow out once they're in the bed.

(I haven't tested it over 100 mph because my truck

came with some lame governor that cuts out the ignition

over 100 mph which really pisses me off!

If anyone knows how to disable this, please let me know!)

But I have had very strong side winds

blow them out at speeds as low as 60 mph.

I pulled over and climbed into the bed

and stamped all the cans flat,

thinking this would alter their aerodynamics

enough to prevent them from being blown out.

I was wrong.

I was forced to pull into a rest stop

to dispose of all the remaining empties.

This was very disturbing.

Even small, lightweight aluminum cans could

potentially become a dangerous projectile,

hurtling at unsuspecting motorists

at over 80 feet per second!

What horror to think the container of my

beloved nectar that brings me so much joy

could be responsible for the injury of another human being,

not to mention a mess for someone to clean up.