Don't you know it's the water.

Finding myself once again at an elevation slightly over 7000', I have learned the importance of staying hydrated during my stay in Santa Fe. I am a captive audience in my booth at the show and the water fountain is about a football field away. I decided I better get a bottle of water for the long day ahead and pulled off at the mini mart near El Dorado.

The first thing I realized is that all of the choices were very expensive, the cheapest liter bottle costing about a buck ninety nine. Then it was up to me to make a choice. I couldn't go for the Nestle® Pure Life™ brand, knowing that it was merely tap water primed through some industrial filtration system. Evian™ was out, the fact that it's palindromic doppelganger spells naive queered me off. Dasani™ is Coke's® contribution to the market and so they were out. Aquafina™is Pepsi's® progeny and I was just not in the mood to go corporate. I wanted the stuff that comes bubbling out of some pristine mountain artesian well, like an old Hamm's commercial or the glorious liquid that poured out after Aaron banged on that old rock with his stick.

I walked to the register and handed my AspenPure™ bottle of Rocky Mountain Water to the sales girl. "I thought about getting the Smart Water™ but it felt pretentious, and besides, I'm too damn smart already," I offered and she laughed.

Seriously, I had one of those minor epiphanies yesterday on my trip to the fountain. We are in a sad state affairs when we have to pay two bucks for a plastic bottle of glorified tap water and it is probably only going to get worse.

Water is the most plentiful resource on the planet and we now must pay a premium for a halfway decent drop of the stuff.