One thing you should know about the family I was staying with is that they love their coffee. Naturally, the next morning started with a coffee-run.

Everyone wrote their order on an orange sticky-note. Austen and I took the orders and were off for the 30-45 minute round trip to the nearest Dutch Brothers.

Go to Dutch. Order your five drinks. Get them home. Enjoy your coffee.

Sounds like a pretty easy list of tasks to complete, right?

As anticipated, the line was long with at least six cars and a few people standing outside at the window. This was something we were both used to, so we sat back and waited patiently for our turn to order. We finally pulled up to the window and we handed in our order of drinks.

So far, so good.

The girl at the window handed us a drink carrier with three drinks. We waited for the last two drinks, redistributed them (Austen wanted her coffee so we placed it in her cup holder), and when we were handed the last drinks we placed them in the carrier. We paid for our drinks, said thank you, and pulled out. We soon arrived home and everyone got their drinks and lived happily every after…wait. Rewind. That is not at all how the story ends.

Of course that’s how it was supposed to go, but why then the title coffee stains for such a stain-free story? Put the car in reverse and let’s go back to that moment when we got the very last drink.

The last drink given to us was a large iced coffee drink. It wascarefullyplaced in to the cup holder. It seemed happy and content in that temporary home, but we quickly found out how false that was.

Austen pulled out of Dutch, boom ba-doom-doom (you can hear it too, can’t you?), and soon the drink went flying! Coffee went flying, ice went flying, and we soon had an empty cup on our hands. We pulled into the parking lot across the street from Dutch to find that most of the coffee and ice had conveniently landed in the cup holder, yes the same cup holder containing Austen’s coffee! Her hot kicker was swimming in iced coffee, and her first move? Save her coffee! ..of course! We drove back over to Dutch, and it couldn’t have been more than 90 seconds since we had pulled out. The employees there new just what had happened and quickly armed us with towels and a new coffee,thanks Dutch!

It took two towels and several hand scoops of ice to empty out that cup holder. Practically the entire coffee was in there! Thankfully, not a whole lot of coffee got on the floor and seats. Slightly less frazzled, now that the mess was clean, we went for our second attempt to complete our mission. This second attempt was far more successful than the first. When we got back, we told the story to her family and handed out their coffees. We concluded this adventure with the acknowledgment that Austen’s car has “mocha” colored seats, which hide coffee stains so well.