It started 3 years ago - our niece and two great-nieces came up to Oklahoma from Texas for Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving, while many people were out fighting the crowds on Black Friday, we spent a wonderful afternoon cruising Route 66 with a stop at Pops in Arcadia (not anywhere near as crowded like it usually is). Pops is one of the newest attractions on Route 66 and is known for its unusual "flashback to the 50s then flash-forward to the space age" architecture and its selection of over 500 sodas!!! We left the place with 4 6-packs (yes, that's 24 in total!!) of different sodas.
Our intent was to try many of them out over the weekend before the nieces left for home. So, we sat down at the table on Friday night and started off with two sodas. We each got a glass and had a "shot" of each soda. We discussed their pros and cons in a very culinary, analytical way, and then decided to go for two more. Then, 8 sodas later, we got a pitcher and put it in the middle of the table and poured the leftover soda from the bottles into the pitcher in a combination I will call the Concoction! That is when things really got out of control!!!
After about 12 sodas, we were all on a caffeine/sugar high and the Concoction was looking pretty murky, taking on an odd greenish-brown hue. (And we were determined to try the Concoction at the end of all the soda shots!) We kept going - 16 sodas, 20 sodas and, finally (this is the embarrassing part), we finished all 24 sodas - stomachs aching, uncontrollable carbonated burps and belching, and way past high and into the giddy/giggling/stupid stage!!!
We had gone through root beers, colas, ales, fruitys, herbed flavors - through brown, red, orange, purple, blue, chartreuse, yellow, pink colored sodas - from Russia, Jamaica, Mexico, China and many different states - with names like Freaky Dog Watermelon, Love Potion #69, Road Rage, and Rat Bastard Root Beer.
We were soda-plastered. And we still had the Concoction to go - it was still murky, but now with a bluish-green brown color and what I swear was an oily-looking sheen on the top!!! Funny thing is - as, ummm, unusual as some of the individual sodas tasted (many were awesome!), the Concoction was not bad at all!!! (of course by then, our brains, taste buds and stomachs were probably in a soda stupor, unable to really tell what was good and what wasn't). Needless to say - NONE of us slept well that night and NONE of us drank any soda for the rest of the weekend.
But, that didn't stop us the next year - when our niece and 2 great nieces came up again for Thanksgiving, they brought my sister, another niece and two great-nephews. The "newbies" had heard the Pops soda-binge story and they were ready for the experience! While it wasn't quite as much fun for the five of us who knew what was coming, I can proudly say that the "experienced drinkers" were able to "out-drink" the rookies!
So began the tradition of a Pops soda run on Black Friday (or as we call it, Soda Friday) - though we are older and wiser now, and refrain from overindulging! (i.e., drinking all the sodas in one night - been there, done that, got sick! - twice!) Here are pics of the sodas from this year's adventure -
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| Chihuahua Cherry and Barkin' Birch Beer |
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| Bug Barf and Zombie Brain Juice |
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| Cream My People, Nuclear Orange Bomb, Seal Ya Later |
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| Buffalo Wing Soda, Bacon Soda, Sweet Corn - the "seasonal" favorites |
If you are ever in Arcadia, OK - stop at Pops on Route 66 and have a soda, or 24! Their food is awesome too!
Kat
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