Hello As far as drinking water, coffee or anything else as a C 4/5 quadriplegic paralyzed from the neck down using a power wheelchair with sip-n-puff controls. For cold or hot water I use an insulated mug and cover along with 18 inch flexible straws, that I place on my wheelchair table inside a mug holder that is secured to the tabletop. I also use a Camel-bak (there are other brands). It is a small insulated backpack with a water reservoir inside with a tube that is fairly long. For me I mount the tube of the Camel-bak on to the tube for my sip and puff control with zip ties and the bite valve for the Camel-bak within reach of my mouth. My particular Camel-bak has 100 ounce reservoir but you can get smaller ones also. These are not necessarily cheap but other brands are better price.
I like my coffee and I like it hot and I like it hot for a long time. I use the same straws that I mentioned above but the problem is the coffee stays hot for too long. I think somebody should invent or maybe somebody knows of a straw, that is fairly long and you can sip on the coffee until it gets close to your mouth and then stopped sipping, and then the coffee would stay in the straw at the point where you stopped sipping because of a" check valve" installed in the straw towards the bottom of it. The coffee that is being held in the straw should cool off fairly quickly and after you sip about the cooled coffee, it starts cooling more hot coffee over again. Think of something like a "silly straw", a long straw with loops, turns and twists that would hold a fair amount coffee but still be fairly short and easy to use (maybe 12 to 15 inches or so). In this case a check valve would probably be a small piece of plastic with a BB inside it, that is inside the straw. When you suck on the straw the suction would cause the fluid to rise up while raising the BB up inside the valve and when you stop sucking the BB drops to the bottom of the valve closing it, and the coffee in the straw does not siphon back into the container where the coffee is. I would think there would be something like this out there, or maybe I need to invent it myself. Remember, you heard it here first :-) Randy
