Pop versus Soda

One of the road rules posted earlier is that we won't be drinking anything with corn syrup on the trip. That is not because of some woo-woo belief that it is inherently worse for you than cane sugar, it is just because we think it tastes like garbage. Back in the day POP tasted pretty good, with corn syrup now it just tastes industrial. It is hard to get away from, it is in all the iced tea, even juice now.

I do refer to soft drinks as Pop and that is actually my main focus of the post. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people in this country who speak English, yet don't call soft drinks by their proper nickname, "Pop." We currently live in a backwards state when it comes to using English, you might be shocked to hear the preferred term in California is "Soda." Well it's certainly not the only thing this state has gotten wrong recently.

As you can see from the map, by the end of the first day of our trip when we plan to be in New Mexico, we will already be in a Coke state! Who knew this, that a whole hunk of the country, which coincidentally (or not) is red in this map, would call a Pepsi a Coke? So they would call a Sprite a Coke? A root beer a Coke? It truly sounds insane I know.

So we might have to suspend the 'no corn syrup rule' for the sake of science once or twice just to see how this works. I currently can't even fathom this. So I'm trying to imagine the conversation with the waitress in the Texas diner.

Me, "I'll Have a Coke."
Waitress, "What kind of Coke would you like hon?"
Me, "I'll take a Hire's Root Beer."

Actually I have no intention of adapting to their odd ways and I will refuse to call soft drinks anything but Pop when I'm on this trip. If these foreigners don't know what I'm talking about then I'm afraid they will just lose a sale. More on the topic at popvssoda.com.