Arapaho is Mountain Dew country. You go to any convenience store and you see more real estate given the Mountain Dew than you see to Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Unfortunately, Arapaho is also partial to homogeneity. They like things plain. Nearly every restaurant in Callie is a burger place. Even the Mexican restaurants here eschew spicy. I could go on and on, but this has repercussions when it comes to Mountain Dew. Namely, they have rows of the stuff but they only have one flavor. Sometimes they don’t even have diet available, much less Code Red, Voltage or (dare to even hope) Livewire. Oh, well they do have the Throwback stuff, so maybe that’s taking up the slots they’d otherwise be giving Diet or Code Red.

I am a big fan of Mountain Dew Livewire. Unfortunately, during my tenure in Deseret it was nowhere to be found. Coworkers at Falstaff would let each other know when we were crossing state lines to get some. Whomever is in charge of Deseret distribution apparently really doesn’t like the stuff. Arapaho seems to be in the same orbit, except that because of the above it’s also missing Code Red and Voltage.

Mountain Dew has recently begun its second Dewmocracy, where they introduce three flavors and allow people to vote on which one to keep. The last time they did this gave us Voltage, though I liked all three options. Unfortunately, Arapaho is undewmocratic because the three flavors are nowhere in sight at convenient stores. Absent some sort of sale, the prices at Safeway are extremely high and the sale they were running was only if you stock up on the same product (no “mix and match” between Pepsi products). So I had an itch to try some of these new Mountain Dew flavors but no means with which to do so.

While driving my route for the Bureau, I stopped at a convenience store in Bass. Much to my shock and amazement, they had Mountain Dew Game Fuel. I never cared all that much for Game Fuel, but it was still at least something different. So I got it and it was my prized possession. I held on to it a couple days for an opportunity that I knew I would be able to completely enjoy it. And… it was flat. It had a sell-by date from last November.

Fortunately, last night I stopped by Safeway and they had a mix and match special going. So I bought all three. Here are my thoughts, for anyone interested:

• Whiteout – It’s billed as smooth citrus. The smooth (which is really just sweetness) kind of overwhelms the citrus, though. I think it’s too sweet, honestly. Kind of cool that it was actually white rather than clear as I had expected.
• Distortion – My ex-roommate Dennis called it. It’s like Mountain Dew Baja Blast that they sell exclusively at Taco Bell. I didn’t like Baja Blast when it first came out but it grew on me. Distortion, possibly by virtue of it following the too-sweet Whiteout, I liked coming right out of the can.
• Typhoon – Very fruity. My least favorite of the three. Whiteout grew on me after a little while but Typhoon really hasn’t. It honestly reminds me of the cheap sugarwater juice that Mom used to pack in my lunch when I was younger.

Right now the vote is tilting in favor of Whiteout. Typhoon follows closely behind. Distortion is toast. Oklahoma and Arkansas are apparently Distortion’s base. Whiteout is carrying few states, but they are dominating California and running up a serious total there. Of course. Now I’m thinking that I might start need to voting strategically. Since Distortion can’t win and Whiteout is the more preferable of the two, do I pick the lesser of evils? Or do I say “I don’t need another flavor of Mountain Dew” and vote my conscience?

Back in the early days of Hit Coffee, there was a vote at my former employer. Winning that vote probably ended up gaining me 10 or 15 pounds. Free soft drink fountains are bad for you. Especially when they have Mountain Dew.