Coke Ad

I am not a hardcore coke drinker. I do have crave, however, of coke once in a while mostly for its caffeine content. Especially with those greasy fast food and pizza. In my trip to the North Pole, I got this crave of cola and I blogged about it. Well, in this trip, the same thing happened again.

It’s strange that such environment, cold and all, one can think of a cold can of coke. It could have been I was overheated while skiing and hence I wanted something to cool me down. Or because I couldn’t sleep well the night before and needed some sort of jolt to keep me awake. Or it simply it was the taste of carbonated sugary brownish drink. Whatever it was, all I knew was I wanted a coke while on the ice.

And I wasn’t the only one. Andy too. He was telling me he felt like to have some of cola drink.

When we knew the plane would come to pick up John and Tanya, we actually plotted out a plan how to achieve our goal – obtain some of the magic drink! The plan was I would nicely ask the air crew if they could give us a bottle. If they refuse, we would sneak on the plane while helping load the sleds. And since we know where the food and drink area was (we flew in the same plane to the last degree), we could steal a bottle or two.

And the plane came. I executed our plan A. I asked Shaun, an ALE staff, who was flying to the South Pole to help out those groups who already reached the pole, “Hi Shaun, can I have a coke?”. He did not answered. I thought he did not hear me. He did. I was doing the loading with Andy. We both looked at each other. Time to do move on to plan B.

We did not have much time. Loading the sleds and saying good bye to Tanya and John did not take too long. Just when I thought of climbing into the plane, someone passed out one bottle of light coke. We were joyous. I turned to Andy, asking him if he wanted to drink right away as I couldn’t wait. He said let’s save it and enjoy it gradually. Great idea! After thanking Shaun and the crew for the coke, and saying good bye to the couple, we were off to ski for another few hours.

That night, after meal, we took out the bottle. As if it was precious (it was!) Luis XIII Remy Martin cognac , I carefully poured a little into our cups. We did not even drink the way we drink coke at home. We sipped it. Sip by sip. Talked over coke. For God’s sake, it wasn’t even regular coke, I thought. We made sure we did not drink all and have some for the next day, while we ski.

Before we went to bed, we strategically put the bottle on the side we knew there would be sun when we wake up. That way the drink wouldn’t be frozen.

All went well as planned. The next morning, the coke was in liquid state. We had some more of the taste-bud-pleaser fluid, and put it away in my sled and hoping it wouldn’t freeze away while we ski. Shortly before the break at noon, I took it out. Still good to drink. We again shared it and enjoyed to the last drop.

It’s only in these kind of situation that you know you take a lot of things for granted. A simple bottle of soft drink is nothing but in my trip, it was such a joy and we ridiculously treasured it. The bottle certainly had sentimental value to it now.

Not sure if this is enough to get Coca Cola to sponsor my next trip, but that’s my coke story. It’s real.