File this under the heading of, "Things that seemed like a good idea at the time."
I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 25 years or so. When you grow to adulthood in a place, and you're a damn picky eater like myself, you grow attached to certain things. In my case, one of those things was Crystal Geyser Juice Squeezes. They're pretty simple: fizzy water with fruit juice. You probably have variations where you live; I've tasted plenty of variants myself. I just happen to be attached to Crystal Geyser.
Long story short: they're hard to come by in Austin, Texas.
My partner Sami is well aware of my, ah, idiosyncracies. As a way to overcome my Crystal Geyser jones, she bought a "soda maker" kit, which basically consists of two reinforced plastic bottles, assorted flavorings, two charged CO2 canisters, and the gadget that injects the CO2 into the water.
A little experimenting has shown that water carbonated this way, combined with juice (and believe it or not, but box juices work the best!), gives me a "not Crystal Geyser but damn close enough and a hell of a lot cheaper" result. So I'm good. Another win for Sami!
(Hang in there; I'm getting to the putative "good idea.")
Well, as we all know, the soda in store-bought 2 liter bottles always goes flat no matter how damn fast you try to drink it, right? So one day, spitting out some flat Pepsi and looking at the half-full bottle I had poured it out of, I got what I thought was a brilliant idea: re-carbonate the Pepsi with the soda machine gadget!
(You can see where this is going, can't you?)
I'm not completely stoopid--not to a Darwin Awards, attach-JATO-units-to-my-El Camino level, anyway. I knew the pressure from the gas would probably be too much for your ordinary 2 liter bottle, so I carefully decanted the Pepsi into one of the soda machine's reinforced jobs. I screwed the bottle in place on the machine. I pressed the button.
The soda machine in our kitchen stands on the counter directly to the right of the sink, against the exterior wall of the house. Across the kitchen from that counter are the fridge, microwave, and stove. To the left, about 7 feet away, is the peninsula counter that separates the kitchen from the breakfast nook. To the right and behind is another counter with a cutting board and a toaster. The ceiling is your ordinary, 8 foot ceiling.
Every surface I just described, including the floor as well as--it almost goes without saying--myself was subsequently sprayed with over-pressured Pepsi, squeezed out over the top of the bottle despite the screw-fitting. The dogs and cats fled. My shirt became a strange brown color. My son yelled from upstairs, "What's that noise, and why are you laughing?"
So let it be known: you can not use a soda machine of this vintage to recarbonate Pepsi that has gone flat. No, no, don't thank me; no trouble at all. Glad to find these things out for you, and thanks for tuning in.
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