I recently went on a week's vacation to visit my wife's family in New England. We hopped all over the northeast, making stops in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

Before we left to return home, I went, as I sometimes do, to the local Market Basket and purchased a case of Moxie. Why did I do this? I don't really like Moxie.

I wanted to torment my co-workers with it, of course.

Today I passed around samples and the reactions were typical. Then I and the guy who I carpool with had a little competition... to see who could down two cans of Moxie the quickest. The goal was to do it in under four minutes, which turned out to be easy. He gulped his down in one minute, forty seconds; I managed to drink my two cans in one minute seventeen seconds.

Kids, don't ever try this at home.

To be honest, in some ways speed-drinking Moxie is easier than sipping it slowly. One quickly gets past the taste and begins to focus exclusively on the pain. Our Moxies were chilled, so there were ice-cream headache symptoms to deal with, plus the iciness of the beverage seemed to enhance the fizziness of it to point where it burned going down. And of course, the rapid ingestion of the Moxie meant that the carbonation built up in the stomach until it felt like I'd eaten a full twelve-course meal. Also, for some reason, the extreme discomfort was prolonged, as I found myself strangely unable to burp for about five minutes after chuggage. But now it's all over, and I feel great!

Gri"can feel his chest hair growing"shny