Road trips are a summer rite of passage. As I stood in my driveway early this morning, watching my dad and younger sister pack up the car and drive off to go on college tours throughout the South, I began to think of the road trips I’d taken in summers past and the ones that still loom ahead before the calendar hits September, marking the unofficial end of summer. 

Earlier this summer, my family resurrected a tradition that we’d abandoned a few years earlier. For a week in July, all of the aunts, uncles and cousins on my dad’s side of the family filled their trunks with duffel bags and folding chairs, drove from their respective corners of the East Coast and met up to spend a week together in a sun-soaked house by the beach. 

Since my dad is my dad, he made sure that my sister and I were awake not long after the sun rose to warm the brisk morning air with the promises of hot sand underfoot and melting popsicles that were to come. Even if it meant we were sleepwalking as we wheeled our suitcases out to the car, we had to be on the road before the worst of the morning traffic hit. 

The last time we made this journey out to the beach, we hadn’t even left the driveway before my sister and I ー both overtired and used to sleeping in on summer vacation ー got into a comically unnecessary fight over luggage placement that ended with a container of vichyssoise soup being flung from the car out onto the gravel driveway. 

This year, in a bid to prevent anything reminiscent of the soup-flinging incident of 2014, I had to armor myself with coffee to start the morning off on the right foot. Just as every good road trip begins with a pit stop at the gas station to fill up your tank for the hours of driving to come, mine began with RISE Brewing Co’s Nitro Cold Brew Coffee.

Just as the sun burst fully into the sky, I began to feel calm yet energizing alertness that comes from drinking a RISE Original Black extend throughout my mind and body. As the animated voices of my dad and sister rose over the car radio, I realized why I truly relish fueling myself with RISE during a road trip. As relaxing as it can be to let yourself fall asleep to the lull of car tires on the highway, the truly special moments come from from the conversations and laughter that arise when you and your family are in tight quarters together for hours on end. 

Soon enough I’ll be flying to San Diego and embarking on my last road trip of the summer, this time heading up to a music festival in San Francisco with my college friends. The trip will no doubt become an epic memory, but it will also be a marathon, an endurance test to see just how long I can stay awake to enjoy it all. Number one on my packing list? A few cans of RISE Nitro Cold Brew (Original Black, and Oat Milk Lattes for my friends who like a touch of non-dairy sweetness in their coffee to keep me alert throughout the eight hour drive along the coast and all-day concert the following day. 

Whether you’re embarking on your first or hundredth road trip, remember: before you hit the gas, grab a pack of Nitro Cold Brew Coffee cans and let RISE fuel your next adventure.