Living Car Free - Mornings haven't been the same...

I've started back on caffeine, after going Mr Coffee free for 6 months. Having no Mr Coffee to brew a pot I've taken to making espresso, and americanos. My mornings haven't been the same.
Of course this means I have to have beans and the last of my beans were brewed Sunday, so I've been surviving on remnants in bags left in the freezer. I was jonesing for a good java fix, and can't see paying for an americano, when I can make one at home for less.
I got addicted to the fresh roasted beans I found in my old Saint Paul neighborhood, J and S Coffee. They roast some pretty good blends, and have 100% Kona and 100% Jamacan Blue Mountain beans, if you've never tired the Blue Mountain, get the 100% if you can it's great, like Ritilan, just a real mellow high, no jitters, mmmm.
I'm sitting in J & S right now, the roaster is going, and I have an americano, to fuel the ten mile ride home with two pounds of espresso on my back. I couldn't coordinate the ride for beans with anything else, like shopping, as anything in St. Paul, I can get in Minneapolis. So today was a special car free, bike ride through some wonderful autumnal colors to sit in a coffee house inhaling the roaster's fumes, and get jazzed on an americano.
Ah fall.

Ever try green tea? It has between half and a quarter as much caffeine as most coffee and the L-Theanine present in green tea helps concentration and promotes relaxation.

That sounds like a great laid-back day.

And thanks for the tip, I will get (or try to get) some Blue Mountain beans on my next shopping trip.

Coffee and cold weather go together just like stout and cold weather. Just not at the same time, unless it's a mocha stout. Otherwise...erm...that would be really weird.

One thing I love is when I am coming downtown on Tuesday or Thursday, the downtown Folger plant is roasting their beans, and the whole downtown smells of coffee! Some people find it gagging and disgusting, but I find it rather charming. MUCH better than the day there was a gasoline spill into the Missouri River :eek:

There is a coffee roasting plant on the greenway, McGarvey. I find the smell obnoxious, and almost gagged about a month ago, as the aroma was going with me and the wind. It hung there for a really long time.
It's sort of fun to be able to smell two places on the greenway, and know which way the wind is coming from. There's the coffee factory, and a sports drink factory in north of that, that has the aroma of chocolate, like pudding, or something, but it can be just as obnoxious.

I quit drinking caffine for a couple weeks and my hands stopped shaking. Now i drink maybe one cup a day and my hands still dont shake. Seriously, i was way overboard something like 3-4 cups of coffee and 3-4 pops a day plus chocolate and tons of other junk foods.

Now i find that one cup of coffee is a nice pick me up at the key time.

man, you think 3-4 cups a day was overboard? i used to do 3-4 pots a day. nah, more like 2, but unless you've got big cups, that's still more...but yeah, when i stopped, even when i started again, it wasn't as bad. just a pick me up. i'm jittery and over-energized as it is...coffee just accentuates how i am anyway. that's part of why i ride a bike...too d..n much energy to sit in a car anytime i want to go somewhere.

I have to echo the reasons for quitting coffee, even if it was for a few months. I was drinking pots of the stuff, and in summer months I would fill Nalgene bottles with a strong brew and refridgerate it, then dump a bunch of sugar in it. Great icy cold go juice.
I can't drink coffee like that any more, and have come to enjoy a couple americanos in the morning and that's it. I drink a Mountain Dew later in the day. That's my caffine intake.

man, my reasons were just that i was typing one day, and making a lot of typos because i couldn't hold my hands still enough to type accurately. that's when i started noticing i was shaking all over every day. not good.

I ride through a nestle factorie complex. It is built on two sides of the road with an elevated, enclosed walkway connecting the two halves. I could never get tired of that smell. Sometimes on windy days I can smell the factory 2-3 kilometers away, I just get whiff's of chocolate, but I notice it every time.
As far as caffiene goes I'm a lightweight, usually I'll have a cup of it at home and then another cup when I get to school. I go to an alternative school and we have yummy organic fair trade coffee, I work in the cafe so I use the hot chocolate machine, I have a large insulated mug that I half fill with coffee and then top off with the hot chocolate. That wakes you up and gives you energy. I also grab a muffin and I'm good to go.

The weird thing is that, as with most drugs, the more caffeine you use, the greater your tolerance. In other words, the same amount of caffeine eventually gives you little or no buzz. If you really want to feel it again, you have to cut way back!

One of life's sweet little ironies. :)

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02sab/background/products/media/natprodcaffeine_220.jpg

My drug of choice - Caffeine.


Check out Bicycle Coffee Systems (http://www.bicyclecoffeesystems.com/). :D

Cool thread...

I stopped caffeine about a month back. Its hard to stop, I tapered and STILL had to sleep for like 3 days straight. Not that bad, but really I was hella tired.

Now, I drink something caffeineted once every week or two. And everytime I do, within about 10 minutes, I feel this light go on in my prefrontal cortex, which is the part that gets stimulated. Its definitely noticable, and I feel totally buzzed from it.

Its pretty cool to feel that buzz when you never drink coffee. Same with cigarettes and marijuana. Drugs are better when you hardly do them.

I read a funny quote. "That's the trouble with being an addict it takes all the fun out of drugs."
What I have been doing lately is couple shots of espresso, then meditate for 20 min. Cafeine induced meditation. Fun stuff.

Damn becoming addicted to anything is kinda sad. I feel bad that you need coffee to fuel you for a ride. Im addicted to slurpees, yes I know it sounds funny. I recently started drinking monster energy drinks before rides. ack I think im getting addicted to.

With all due respect to the Expresso
and Americano drinkers here, I have
been there and done that. I got tired
of all the work behind making a cup
of expresso and then for what? That
small little amount of coffee?

Buzz is buzz to me. I now put 2 heaping
Tablespoons of Folgers crystals into my
morning smoothie with 3 cups of skim milk
and 2 giant scoops of vanilla protein powder
and I am good to go.

That, and a few diet caffeine drinks get me
down the road and through the day.

Good for rides too, but I was a bit OVER
BUZZED when I went on my 25 miler today.
I could feel that my heart was working a bit
overtime. But life without caffeine? I don't
wanna try that again! :)

I'm all about the Jasmine tea, it's green tea with jasmine flower's. It has all the benefits of Green Tea and it tastes great. I get the stuff at my local asian supermarket. You can get a huge tin of the stuff for 6 bucks or so. Good stuff.

I quit cold turkey last year. Stayed off the bean for 8 months... was commuting to work, loving life, drinking tea, losing weight, not feeling stressed.

Back on the bean now, after moving to Vermont. Something about cool cool mornings and a ride into work... but now the stress has kicked in, the blood pressure is up, and I'm doing 4-5 large travel mugs a day.

Time to go cold turkey again... and live the good life.

coffee is wonderful, but not too much of it. i'm careful to only brew a half pot at a time.

that said, bicycles and coffee are a wonderul combination. drinking your morning coffee and then taking a ride gets the blood flowing--the caffeine, the blood flow and the wind in your face is a great way to wake up.

Some options for caffiene reduction:

Try really strong black teas, such as Sikkim, Darjeeling, or the higher quality blends sold as Irish Breakfast (irish breakfast does not include whiskey, and is nasty if you try to add it. it is, like most things irish, stronger than English Breakfast). These teas have a lot of tannins, so if you're like me, and have trouble motivating yourself to make breakfast, having a sour stomach once will convince you of the neccessity of at least a bagel.

If the coffee taste is what you like, try toasted Mate, an herbal tea from Argentina that usually has lots of little goodies in it that make it taste a lot like coffee.

all of these have between 25 and 50 % of the caffiene of a cup of coffee.

(lotsa wordiness up there. Sorry. I sold tea for about two years.)

Stay Low and Noble!