No Coffee for You!!!

After some chest pain the other week I went and saw my cardiologist. My bike and I had trouble getting up a hill. The quack and I talked and he told me that the chances were that it was not my heart. However once you are in a doctor’s office you will not leave without a test. We did a stress test, well actually two one without isotopes and the other with. Afterwards he okayed me to travel and do all the normal stuff.

As has often been the case when I visit my cardiologist I was read the riot act regarding caffeine. “G Manitou” he said with impatience, “You have got to cut the caffeine out totally”. Urggh I thought. Caffeine is my life blood. I am not a coffee drinker mind you but I have since about 10 years old consumed copious amounts of ice tea. Urggh I thought. Ice tea equates to the happy days of my youth as much as Tastykakes and cheesesteaks did.

Right now I am at two weeks without caffeine. I am making do with drinking dirty brown water in the form of either decaf ice tea (it I make it at home) or decaf McDonald’s coffee (once a day). At least the smell awakens memories.

It is only when you fall outside the norm you see the existing paradigm. As the Manitou family travelled last week I discovered how hard it was to find decaffeinated beverages. Once you are below the mid-point in Indiana it is impossible. America is addicted to this common stimulant to the degree we don’t even converse about it anymore. Opting to not drink caffeinated products is like making a choice to ride a bicycle to work or to wear only union made/American made clothing. You pretty much stand out as a freak.

On the road you have 20 or more choices of caffeine based products. Coke, Pepsi, diet colas, energy drinks with beastly sounding name cram the walk in coolers. If you want something else you have two or three choices at maximum, Sprite (or its variant produced by Pepsi or the local bottler), highly sugared sweet soda pop like orange or plastic bottles filled with water. I don’t need the calories of Sprite, I don’t like fruity drinks and I don’t want to add to the land fills so I don’t buy bottled water. Most of the time I went without a beverage to quench my thirst on those long ride segments.

One good thing that has come of it is that I am sleeping better. Without question when my head hits the pillow I am ready to take my rest. Also I am hitting the sack earlier. When you hit that wall of tiredness at 10:30 I have no reserves and so I just hand the day on the nail and pack it in.

In the long run I will probably be better for this. But for right now I miss my caffeine.

On a Hot Morning a Search for the Good

Blazing hot stuffy air, barely moved by a little breeze…
Meadowlark sitting quietly on a fence post in the dawn sun, his gold vest bright in the light of the east, his black bib tidy is turning his head this way, that way. This is Zen quietness without comment.

Thomas Merton

On those mornings that I do not read something spiritual I find myself lost during the course of the day. It need not be a holy text but it must be focused on something beyond the day to day demands that our urgent world places upon us. Thoughts about meaning and value or simply directions to practice zazen that is silent meditation these prepare me for those challenges I will see in any given cycle at the office.

Prayer, meditation and ritual all faiths seem to involve one of these. Many a person without faith has ritual. A morning stroll for a paper and coffee or an evening beer on the back porch these can be as important as a vespers service. Maybe we are hard wired for this stuff. Maybe it is something we need intrinsically.