Morning Fuel

I have never been considered a morning person. In the early hours of the day, I've been described as "cranky," "on-edge" and "Frankenstein-like" by various friends and loved ones. That is why a lot of eyebrows shot up when I declared that I was moving to Sacramento about a year ago to work a morning shift. Indeed, those eyebrow shoot-ups were waranted.

Fortunatly, a few months into the new position, I was moved to a nightside shift and I became functional again. My disjointed sleep-when-you-can schedule was left in the dust and I never looked back.

Until yesterday.

Unfortunatly I pulled the short straw and was assigned to fill in for an absent photog on the morning show. Thus, I returned to my roots and partied with all my sleep-deprived former homies. I also remembered how painful that shift can be, primarily because I couldn't get to sleep early the night before, giving me a rough two hours of preparatory sleep.

Here's how it went...

4:15 AM

I'm out of bed and ready to go, actually not feeling that bad, but I know that I'm not getting far without some assistance. To get the motors running, I reach for a tallboy of BooKoo Jugo.

That's right, regular juice is for suckers and stiffs working the 9 to 5. Us morning folk rock it out with Energy Juice, 99% juice and 1% kick-yo-ass energy cocktail (caffeine, sugar and various herbs that are basically fancy names for caffeine and sugar).

And... we're off!

6:15 AM

We're fifteen minutes into the morning show, and I've completed the first of four live shots in the two hour show. Fotunately, it's a relatively easy day, as our story is your run-of-the-mill gas prices gig ($3.99 for regular? I'm going to start gassing up with bottles of Mad Dog instead, it's cheaper and probably packs more of a punch). However, the Energy Jugo is starting to work its way out of my system and the lack of sleep is creeping its ugly head into my live truck window. But Hark! What's that yellow glow on the horizon? Is it the sun rising? No, it's the golden arches of McDonald's! Time to gas myself up so I can make it through the next 1 hour and 45 minutes of the show!

Now, as you may have noticed, McDonald's has recently been trying to hop onto the premium coffee bandwagon. The only problem is that they've kinda been half-assing it. It's hard to cut into Starbucks' share when you've got some 15 year old mixing shots of cappuccino while manning the deep fryer. While in New Zealand some years ago, I stumbled across what were called "McCafes", which were actually McDonald's coffee houses. They had a full menu of coffee, couches, and no partially hydroginated sodium-based potato-like entities ("fries"). I was fairly impressed (I'm easily impressed), and can't help but wonder why they don't go that route rather than a small curtain hiding the misguided barista efforts of Stuart the Fry Guy. Mayor McCheese should be ashamed.

10:30 AM

At this point, there's no denying it... I needed to get more sleep. We're out of town grabbing an interview for one of the nightsider's stories, and I'm feeling like my mind is slowly starting to crumble. Better gas up...

I figure a tripple shot latte oughta set me back on track. We stopped in at It's A Grind (the kinda cleverly named (but not really) coffee house), and after pounding that puppy down, we headed back into town.

As I walked back into the station, I felt that things looked a little different than when I had left. Had they remodeled? Were there new staff hires? No, turns out I was just slowly starting to lose my mind. I finally got to a point where my brain said "Alright, I'm through with you fuckin around. I keep telling you that you're tired, and you keep feeding me chemicals that tell me otherwise. Well I've had it, I'm out of here."

Shortly after this interaction, my news director wandered over to me as I stared blankly at the schedule and began a chat. I could see his mouth moving, but I could only catch one out of every couple of words. As I responded to a question that I only half-understood, all I could focus on was how slowly I was talking and how my words were slurring together.

Fortunately it was a slow day, and before I knew it I was passed out on my couch for much of the afternoon. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be off that shift, although the occasional excursion into insanity is often missed.