Make: Nuun | Model: Energy | Year: 2018 | 4g |$0.39
My pre-outdoors ritual only involves two things:
- McDonald’s
- Caffeine
I’m often not terribly hungry at 5-something in the morning when I’m leaving for a trip. However, it turns out there’s a McDonald’s on the way to pretty much any trailhead which makes it a reliable way to get lots of cheap hot calories on the go once my tummy has warmed up a bit.
I’m also often not terribly awake at 5-something in the morning which is where caffeine comes into play. Most people would turn towards coffee but there’s a problem: coffee is an expurgatory, which is a fancy way of saying it makes you poop. I don’t like to poop in the woods more than I have to (especially on short notice) so coffee is out. Fortunately caffeine by itself is not an expurgatory, so we just need to find a convenient source of caffeine.
A single Nuun tablet costs about 40 cents and contains 40mg of caffeine, a little more than a Coke and a little less than half of a cup of coffee. It’s also loaded with electrolytes and possibly vitamins (depending on which one you get), both good things to start your outdoor day with. I plop one into a 750mL travel mug full of ice water and drink it on the way to the trailhead, which also helps ensure that I’m fully hydrated.
On a multi-day trip they can also be used as a no-cook coffee replacement if you carry a mug or use water bottles (although you may have to cut the tablet in half in order to get it into the narrow mouth of something like a SmartWater bottle). I wouldn’t recommend adding them to a hydration bladder since they’ll leave a residue and those things are a pain to clean.
Oh, and it says on the label that they’re headquartered here in Seattle. Fancy!