All Systems Go

Today marks the month-long anniversary of my departure from Iowa City, and what a way to mark the day.

As a coffee snob, it's been my duty to travel to all the hoity-toity-looking cafés in the area to sample their brews. One of my favorites is, sadly, about 12 miles away from home--too far for me to be a regular, but that's probably for the best (at least in the interest of money). My explorations took me to the general area today, so I decided to stop in for a cup of pourover coffee and a butternut cinnamon roll to take along for the rest of my Sunday adventures.

Pourovers tend to take a little while, since they're brewed at the time of ordering and in a very particular way, and usually that means there's time to relax and perhaps chat with the baristas or other guests.  This particular barista was pretty quiet at first, but he eventually asked me how my weekend was progressing.  I admitted that I was celebrating a month of living in the big city after moving from Iowa.  It turned out that he had family in the Waterloo area, which gave him much more credibility when he said, "Yeah, I thought you had an Iowan feel to you."  So be it compliment, insult, or what-have-you, it seems that almost a decade in the Midwest has left its mark.

I was out the door, sweets and caffeine in hand, when I realized that I'd forgotten to get a lid--but I'd committed to a departure, and by golly, when I commit to something, heaven forbid that I fail to follow through.  So I sat in my car and listened to Car Talk for a few minutes, demolishing the cinnamon roll and trying to get my coffee to a drivable volume.

Finally, enough was enough, and I decided it was time to be on my merry way.  I happened to notice two youngish guys going in the door of the aforementioned café as I drove past, and one of them looked oddly familiar--it was one of my friends from grad school in Iowa City, himself a recent transplant to the area!  I immediately braked (much to the dismay of the truck driver behind me), rolled down my window, and screamed, "ERIC!"  Sure enough, Eric turned around.  From that point, it was just a matter of finding a new parking spot and going back into the café with Eric and, it turned out, one of his housemates.

I hadn't talked with Eric since I moved, and he'd never been to this particular coffeehouse before, so both of us were taken aback and thrilled by the coincidence.  It seems that the big city is getting smaller--in a good way--every day.