The Thermodynamics of Coffee

This morning driving into town, I stopped on the west bank of the Knik. At this crossing there are two bridges: the one currently in use and the one it replaced, now slowly growing clumps of weeds and crumbling into the river. Every time I drive across the new bridge I have to force myself to keep my eyes on the road because the crest of the bridge is a particularly powerful outlook on the surrounding beauty. Today I decided to pause for a moment and take it all in. I had my camera with me. It was around 9:30am and still dark, especially because of the rain. Most of the usual mountains that amaze me were obscured by the low hanging clouds. In short, I couldn’t have picked a worse day to try and photograph that most picturesque of spots.

Stubbornly I parked my car in the pull off that was sadly covered in beer cans and other trash and full of puddles from the steady rain. I tucked my camera into my raincoat and made my way up to the abandoned bridge. It was cool and damp, but not entirely unpleasant. As I walked, I looked up at my subject: the lone mountain still visible in the dense grey. Her face, still covered in snow despite the balmy forty-degree weather of the past week, was beaming in the overcast sky. As I scurried up the rocks and gravel that barred vehicle access to the bridge, I reached for my camera and was immediately hit by intense, bitter-cold wind roaring down the valley, skating on the smooth surface of the still icy river and tearing across the bridge. My mind immediately jumped to two of the news stories from the past week —tractor trailer blown over by 90 mph wind gusts, plane crashes into office building— and began imagining a third one.

I pressed on, turning my back to the wind and walking sideways across the bridge. The first part of the bridge has no side rail or wall to prevent those who cross it from falling off the edge or to block them from the wind. A hundred meters down the bridge, however, there are trusses. I hurried to them in the hopes they would provide some relief from the wind so I could pause and take pictures. They did not. I took a few hurried snapshots and ran back to the car. The whole ordeal probably lasted less than ten minutes and left me cold and shivering despite my warm hat and coat. In total I have ten photos to show for it.

One of the ten is a picture of a small, explicit painting. Three simple brush strokes from a can. Three uninspired waves of an arm. One defiant act of rebellion so located that it will almost certainly not receive any attention from anyone worth rebelling against, let alone the authority it sought to defy.

Now I sit at my favorite coffee shop in Palmer. The rain has turned to snow, the broccoli quiche is delicious, and I am warmer. I have not been to any other coffee shops in Palmer, but this one sells pottery and paintings. There is a pleasant din and the quiet comfort of use scrawled in the scuffed wood floor. I sip my coffee.

This is a fact I know to be true but cannot yet explain: the second cup always cools faster than the first. Surely, there are always thermodynamic factors at play — residual cold from the previous cup, decreased volume in the pot means it is slightly cooler when you go back for more — but even if you rinse the cup with piping hot water and pour in completely fresh 190° coffee, the second cup will still get cold more quickly then the first. Not surprisingly, this phenomena has useful implications. When you first sit down to think, or write, or talk, or not think; you can savor the coffee. Relish the flavor and smell and warmth. As you get wrapped up in your chosen activity, the act of drinking coffee goes from a indulgent meditation to a functional task. You can no longer wait for your coffee to be drinkable you need it now. The second cup is gulped three-fourths of the way down and forgotten. When it is time to change activities, when your work has stagnated, you reach for your cup again and the cold bitterness wakes you from your trance. The cold coffee tells you it is time to go to the store or post office or head home to cook dinner.

On the solstice, the sun rose at 10:14 am in Anchorage and set at 3:41 pm. Today has been dreary. The past week has seen rain and warm weather and the snow has mostly been grey-washed away. It is not a coincidence that, in the northern and southern ends of the world where our 23.4° tilt most drastically effects the daylight hours, the Earth covers itself in a blanket of white beauty that actually insulates the area from unrelenting cold and reflects the precious sunlight and moonglow in a brilliant display that savors the day time and fights back against the pitch dark of night.

The lunch rush has arrived at Vagabond Blues. The din grows to a lively chatter. Outside the clouds have receded now. It is noon and the sun shines for the first time today. My coffee is cold.