"cha-ching!"

What is this I see? Not one, not two, but three separate Starbucks in one terminal, as I walked through 16 gates. Bronzed fish bas relief type sculptures inset in the floor tiles. The skin color here is no longer predominantly pale (and my predominantly, I mean the 90-95% white of Colorado). Free wi-fi. Lots of people looking impossibly hip, and somehow still casual, modern, and yet individualized - not running in a pack when it comes to fashion. Oh, and lots of backpacks and comfortable shoes. Must be Seattle!

It's not so much any one of these things, but the collection of them that distinguishes this city from others. Yes, yes, free wi-fi is becoming more prevalent everywhere, but I remember when one of my best friends (and my personal Mac guru) used to have to carry his "airport" with him. (Oh how he loved sitting in the main admin office of the academic building where many of his colleagues worked. He'd plunk himself down on the couch most people used to sort copies or wait for the Dean and say he was in his "office." ) And here, wi-fi is pretty much taken for granted. Yes, I could go to NYC or just about anywhere in Cali and see diversity (or, I could go visit my peeps in Jerz!), but man does it calm my soul. I'm as white as they come, but one of the few things that sets me on edge living in Colorado is the glaring, blinding caucasion-ness of it all.

The fish represent something I love about this city. Seattle is devoted to not just good seafood, but good, fresh seafood. OmiGOODness, I love to eat fish. This is the good-food news about this vacation. I have the opportunity to truly enjoy my protein sources.

And oh, coffee. Starbucks in its natural habitat. I'm not much of a coffee drinker. I should qualify that. Coming from the family background that I do, and having discussed some of my personal struggles with food on this blog already, it won't shock any readers, methinks, to find that I have a self-diagnosed addictive personality. I've been addicted to a few things in my life time. Work, gum, and coffee top the list of past demons. I love coffee. Actually, what I love is the experience of really good coffee. I like the smell. I like sitting over a cup and talking with people. I like what my good friend and former roomate referred to as the daily "coffee ritual." (Life was fiiiiiiiine when she was dissertating because her internal clock was wound tight. Up every day between 6 and 7am she would creep around our tiny apartment being considerate of me, and then as I rose and began to shower would make freshly ground coffee in, yes, the height of luxury, a french press. I would arrive out of the shower to fresh coffee steeped and pressed for me. Ahhhhhh)

In college when I ran an office as part of my many, many jobs I easily drank 4-6 cups a day. But in grad school (of all the times to give up something that you actually have to detox from) I gave it up! And it was haaaaaaaaaaaarrrd. It was a tough three weeks, and I should thank my dear former roomate for still liking me after it and remaining my very good friend. I gave up coffee because I had done a lot of reading and self-education on hypoglycemia and blood sugar. I discovered that while many people focus on simple carbohydrates (table sugar, corn syrup, processed and "white" foods and junk foods) as culprits, there were a few that the masses had overlooked. For instance, maltose - the sugar in beer - has a glycemic index rivaled only by table sugar. And since beer is liquid and goes down faster than food, this means that in practice and in use, beer usually does more damage than eating an equal amount of table sugar.

Another way to look at it is what the source of energy triggers your body to do. In the case of coffee, one of the body responses is to release glycogen, a form of energy. This is one of the ways in which coffee makes people feel alert and energized, by actually giving them a burst of energy via glycogen/sugar jolting the system. The trouble is, for anyone with issue maintaining blood sugar this can cause the body to think, "Oh, sugar! I know what to do with that! Release the insulin." Since Glycogen can cause a real spike, the release of insulin from the body of someone like me is as though I just had a Thanksgiving meal by myself and instead of sending one maid to clean up the carnage, an entire cleaning crew is sent. This in turn can cause my body to crash like a train coming off the rails, if joined by other factors, and send my blood sugar to a lower level than when it started.

Since I do have an issue with over-zealous insulin, as I like to think of it, and since, at that time I was training very hard and wanted to do all I could to keep my blood sugar stable and at the ready, I gave up my coffee. (In truth, part of my thinking was, "Maybe if I give this up I can more easily work in the beer!") I realized over time that sleeping enough had its own rewards, and that on the days where I didn't get enough rest, there were more healthy ways to keep moving forward.

But when in Seattle do as the Seattle-ites do. Within one hour of coming to Seattle on my first trip in 2009, my cousin and I had steered into a Starbucks. And yup, I had some. I quickly realized that it had been so many years since coffee was a daily craving that I could now just enjoy it for it's own sake, not as a daily expectation. (So, there is some evidence that I can leave cravings behind and come back around in a different way.)

On the second day of my 2009 Seattle trip we went on the Duck Tour. And, by the way, it was awesomely, hilariously cheesy and a riot. On the way, the driver pointed out a Starbucks, paused and said "cha-ching!" and then went on his story of how Starbucks began in this area and then swept the country, how many Starbucks are here, and all things Starbucks. Then for the next four days, as my cousin and I traipsed all over the city, whatever we were discussing - kids, politics, books, family - if we passed a Starbucks we would insert into the middle of the sentence "cha-ching" and then continue on. As in, "Well, the thing about Obama is "cha-ching" that when he was elected . . . "

So, as I exited the plane and thought, "B2 . . . B4 . . . cha-ching . . . B6 . . . B8 . . . cha-ching . . . B10 B12 B14 B16 cha-ching!!" I knew for sure I had entered the land of sea-level city wonders.