As a gift for Larry's 24th birthday I took him to the Meadowlands Diner (one of my personal favorites) for a cup of coffee...to start with. The rules of my game were that we need to continue driving as long as we could and stop at every random diner we passed for a single cup of coffee...I'm buying. When the game started after our first cup at about 11:00pm we were both awake and ready.

As the night progressed, we learned that continoues coffee brings a person through a number of set stages. We know that these stages exist since we both went through them (although at different rates since I weigh less then Larry.) Of course most of us are awair of the second mood due to caffeine...nervousness. Actually, this didn't last as long as we though and after about 5 cups each (and 5 diners) we went on to the next mood stage...the crash.

Ok, we were both able to deal with this little setback and continued on our way hoping I wouldn't pass out at the wheel. And then depression set in... This part really sucks. I believe it occured at the Bendix Diner. At this point Larry continued the depression and I evolved to philisophical. So the rest of the time at this diner was spent with me trying to get Larry out of a depression. About five minutes into the car he was virtually spitting out poetry as well. We started to move on to our second wind and another nervous fit. We weren't sure which was worse...the caffeine overload or the time it took us to reach the bathroom at our next stop.

As the night ended and we reached our final diner (#9), the Route 46 Diner, we both went on to our ninth cup. It was a long night and we were now both very quiet, cranky, and tired. The time was 3:00am. Neither of us remember everything about that night. I remember the worst cup of coffee was at the Tick Tock Diner(although it may have been due to my taste buds being numbed from all the cups) and that we need to go back to the Fireside Diner some day. Well, at least it was a birthday Larry could remember.

-Dave