The Unexpected Romance of Gas Station Coffee
There is a specific kind of exhaustion that only sets in after four hours on a highway. It isn’t just physical tiredness; it is a spiritual depletion caused by the rhythmic thumping of tires on asphalt and the visual monotony of passing trees. Your legs have forgotten how to walk. Your brain has turned into a gentle static. And then, like a lighthouse guiding a ship away from the rocks, you see it: the glowing, elevated sign of a gas station. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sprawling Buc-ee’s in Texas with enough brisket to feed an army, or a lonely pump in the Scottish Highlands. The promise is the same. You will stop moving. You will stretch. And, most importantly, you will drink a cup of coffee that is objectively terrible, yet somehow the best thing you have ever tasted. We tend to fetishize the perfect brew these days. We obsess over single-origin beans, oat milk ratios, and the exact temperature of the water. But there is a chaotic, melancholy magic to gas station coffee that no arti...
