Day 42

It’s hard to avoid starting each post these days with, “Holy cow! I’ve done this for 35 days!” or “Holy cow! I’ve done this for 40 days!” or “Holy cow, I’ve done this for 42 days!” Each day is a new milestone and the bigger the numbers the more amazing it sounds.

Early on in my research I spent time with a woman who did a 92 day juice fast. With “juice,” one at least gets the benefit of variety: orange, apple, carrot, etc. But with my little adventure, it’s very mundane. And so I’ll happily meet my 46 day goal, but I don’t think I’d want to fool with it a whole lot longer.

To be honest, I’m just plugging away to the end right now. There have been no late revelations or hallucinations that I would consider notable. Has the spiritual element left me? That’s a good question. I’m just doing it to finish my goal at this point.

What I really am at this stage of the ball game is an expectant mother. I have been nesting. Nesting, I tell you. That’s the word for it.

I’ve been puttering about fixing problems in the basement, working in the yard and planning out meals. I’ve been cooking some for the boys, I ordered a pork belly and shoulder to smoke and have been fooling around with spice rubs that I won’t use for a week. “We’re out of paprika and brown sugar,” I tell Michelle, and she looks at me like I’m insane.

I can’t help it. I have a greater appreciation for my bounty, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to getting back to it.

(Somehow, I bumped up to 139 pounds today.)

Day 41

There are, you know, monks that live in the world.

The Dalai Lama comes to mind. I follow him on Twitter and am inspired by his (office’s) posts every time they scroll through my feed. He’s out there in the world, living it, speaking it, being it. And having a positive impact in so many ways.

There’s Bono. He’s selling the records and making the Benjamins, but at the heart, though he belts not only tunes but expletives from time, he’s a guy with his eyes on the prize:

“At the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that. . .  Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

We are all so many fool-headed jack-monkeys, laden with daily “stupid stuff” that only grace can cover.

And then there’s Johnny Cash. He was a bit of a rascal in his youth, but the man in black carved out a life of which he could be proud, well beyond any chart accomplishments that may woo us when we are young. “How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell,” said Cash. “There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.”

I, too, was an unmotivated knucklehead in my earlier years. And then came grace. I have three choices–ignore grace and God, cloister myself and become a monk or “simply” become a monk in the world, living at a higher level whether I am a beer drinker or not. In my visit to Conception Abbey, I learned that the pews were very hard and six services a day hurt my back, and since I’m unwilling to send my cinnamon girl packing, I must trudge forth, goblet aloft, in the world.

I have learned much and nothing during this project. Like my beloved Chicago Cubs, I must simply keep pressing forward. Cub fans are the most forgiving and committed on the planet, and they are nothing compared to God. There are rewards stored up in heaven, and like the Cubs, I, too, will win in the end with my feet firmly planted on the right side of the chasm.

(136.5 pounds today)

Day 40

Holy cow, it’s Day 40! Here’s a quick video check-in:

Day 39

Historically, I haven’t done a very good job caring about issues that are important. That’s changing, but I’m still small-minded at times. When we first got married, Michelle likely noticed that I didn’t sweat so much the politics du jour, but it annoyed me to no end if she cut the onions in the wrong way for a certain dish.

Once, we were making stir-fry. She chopped an onion for me, but I wanted it sliced. I was flipping livid. It was our last onion. A do-over would have taken a trip to the store. It still tasted fine, but it looked wrong and I had a hard time being cordial.

I’ve improved. I pay more attention to political issues now and sweat less about silly things like onions.

But, I’m not cured. If I could accomplish one last task in my final week, one giant leap in the world of grace, it would be to get over this vegetarian thing. Apart from an allergy or other serious physical malady, being a vegetarian is a choice. And I’ve never heard an argument that’s been convincing.

To me, it boils down to the kind of teeth you have. Herbivores have flat teeth, which are appropriate for grinding grasses and such. Carnivores have the sharp, pointy kind, good for tearing meat away from a carcass. Humans have both kinds of teeth. Like bears, we are known as omnivores. We enjoy both berries and flesh.

If that argument’s not enough, there’s always the wisdom of John Cleese: “If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did He make them out of meat?”

And so it is with this strong belief  that I must confront the fact that Michelle turned vegetarian about two months ago. While I  disagree with the idea of vegetarianism, I don’t really begrudge folks that lean in this direction unless they’re obnoxious about it. My uncle, for example, is a very accommodating vegetarian (for cholesterol reasons). But some people act all pious, and those are the ones I detest.

Michelle’s been decent about it, but it just hits too close to home. She says it need not impact me, but this is impossible. I’m happy to eat a vegetarian dish now and again. We do it often, in fact. I’m not opposed to eating tofu any more than I’m opposed to giving frog legs or dog legs a try. But there’s this wonderful world of meat that is being degraded for reasons I do not understand, and my boys and I are left to love meat in our tiny piece of the now empty-feeling world. We love Michelle, and we want to share our joy with her. And this is becoming a lost part of our family. Our life is forever altered.

Why? Why? Why? There is no answer good enough. I don’t like it, and I’m having a hard time accepting it, but I have no alternative. I don’t want to be impacted or bitter. I don’t want to be a jerk-hole for the next forty or fifty years. And so I must find grace on this topic. That will be my great suffering this week, stupid as it seems.

Being a Christian is itself a choice, so I guess I really must find a way to forgive the noble girl, though secretly, I’ll dream of her return to the dark side. That delicious, meaty dark side.

Day 38

What was a fleeting thought in the afternoon yesterday, became my strategy; that is, I decided to do all my drinking by 6 p.m., as this is an exceedingly busy week for me at work and I needed to be well-rested when I showed up today.

This was no small task. Since I refilled my CO2 tank a couple of weeks ago, I decided to stop hauling the heavy beast back and forth from home to work and back each day. I’ve been toting growlers instead. And the day before yesterday I thought I had more on hand at the house than I did, and left myself lacking my new 7 a.m. breakfast beer (since I’ve decided to bump up to five beers every day). I arrived at work and poured myself a glass of morning sunshine, but didn’t have time to finish it–I had back-to back appointments which ruined my life until nearly 11 a.m. I punched back the dregs of beer number one when I hit my desk and found myself woefully behind. To finish by 6 p.m. and stay solid for work took effort.

I am a champion, however, and this goal was defeated like Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series.

Weary, I snagged myself a two-hour nap, relaxed with my champion offspring while watching a movie, and then retired to my sleeping chamber with my champion wife. Parched, I took two sips of water between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Somehow, I had to use the facilities at 12:23 a.m. and again at 3:30 a.m., but those were welcome disruptions following my recent trend of four pees per night.

I awoke refreshed, pounded a tall glass of water and poured myself the breakfast of champions. Because that’s what I do now.

Day 37

Though I’ve gained a half pound each of the last two days (currently sitting at 140 pounds), I’ll admit that I’m flipping tired. On one hand this could be attributed to the fact that I’ve been going without food for 37 days, but on the other, far more realistic, hand, it’s because I consume so bloody much liquid each day that no matter how well I empty my tank before turning in for the night, I still wake up four times (midnight, 2 a.m., 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.) to pee.

I’m not getting enough rest.

I can fight my way through a productive day at work, but the fact is, I’m weary. It’s tempting to stop imbibing at about 6 p.m. tonight, just so I might ensure an opportunity to sleep the whole night through. I’m sure my kidneys will complain, but I’m thinking it’s worth a shot.

Day 36

It was the worst of times. It was the best of times.

Hindsight was 20/20 on both occasions, but this little monk experiment has shed an even more interesting nuance to the light. A couple of years ago, Michelle and I took a weekend trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota, so I could judge beers at the Upper-Mississippi Mashout. She came along for company, beer, fun and yoga classes.

At the time, I was working the kitchen of our snazzy little burrito joint, and we were busy as all get out the two days before our planned 2 p.m.-on-Friday departure. I had prepped ahead and been slammed and to catch up; I simply found myself unable to get around to eating lunch or dinner on both the Thursday and Friday of this week. We had a few small snacks in the car and headed north to check out Worth Brewing Company. We figured on having dinner there. As it turned out, this 10-gallon batch size brewery wasn’t a full-blown brewpub, as their menu was limited to a series of appetizers. I hadn’t eaten much and my dinner plan didn’t truly fill me up.

We found a motel and crashed. I noshed a couple of complimentary waffles the next morning before setting off off to judge, while Michelle sought out a day’s worth of back-to-back-to-back yoga classes. This was a really good competition, one of the biggest in the country, and I judged two of the best flights of my life. But the lunch was lackluster, and I needed something to soak up all the beer that I was consuming.

By the time Michelle picked me up at the conclusion of my day, I was feeling rough. I wasn’t drunk, just inappropriately saturated. We went to Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery for dinner and one more beer. I ordered a cask Scotch ale,  quit about halfway down, and ate very little of my food. I just couldn’t. I just felt rotten.

Not enough food on too much beer.

A year or so later, the girl of my dreams and I descended upon Madison, Wisconsin, for the Great Taste of the Midwest. I was better fueled on that trip. We hit the Great Dane for a pre-festival lunch, and I stumbled across what is now my favorite pre-drinking meal. It was the Great Dane’s Brat & Bacon Pretzel Burger: a one-third pound USDA choice ground beef patty and a one-quarter pound bratwurst patty grilled with caramelized onions and topped with Applewood smoked bacon, sharp cheddar cheese, lettuce, pickles and tomato, served on a pretzel roll with a side of their Peck’s Pilsner mustard.

Top that, Ronald McDonald.

This burger was the monster base layer that a semi-professional beer drinker needs to sustain himself through a day of heavy sampling. We went to the festival and I felt like a champion the whole time, including the next morning. That brat-topped love burger has become one of my heroes.

So when I set out on this fast journey, I was quite concerned that I would be, to quote Chris Cornell, “feeling Minnesota.” Not so. It’s been an illuminating experience in more ways than one, and this little story of doppelbock being the liquid bread that sustained these seventeenth century monks surely holds water.

Moderation is the key. Pace. But that doesn’t make it any less amazing.

And it doesn’t make me any less interested in a brat and bacon burger, let my honest, sinning, human self tell you.

Day 35

So I’ve taken a couple of days to decide for sure what it is that I’ve been feeling. I must be at another stage of the game here, because I can now admit to experiencing mild hunger, something that has gone unnoticed, basically, since Day 3. Yesterday, I wasn’t sure if that was what it was or not, but today I decided to confirm my suspicion.

There’s something else I’ve been noticing over the last couple of days. It used to be that if I went four or five hours without a beer, that I could feel a little weakness, shakiness and if pressed without action, a little sweat. It was my blood sugar, rectified in about 10 minutes by a few pulls of my trusty Illuminator.

What’s happening is that the time span seems to be narrowing. I “need” a beer a little sooner. Moreover, I had previously not noticed this at all first thing in the morning, having lain quite still overnight–doing nothing except sleep and take four trips to the bathroom. Today, I could feel that shakiness straight away. I think my body’s ready for meat.

With less than two weeks to go, I’ve found myself at a crossroads. At the beginning, I had acquired four sixth-barrel kegs (5.23 gallons each) of Illuminator with one on deck in case I needed it. Since I killed Number 2 a day or two before the halfway point, I knew that Number 5 might be necessary, though I considered scaling back to four beers on the weekends to end at a fairly even point. Not a good idea, I decided. I definitely need that sustenance, so starting today, I’m going to dent Number 5, so it knows what it got into, by drinking five beers per day from this point forward. I’m too short on nourishment to do anything but add to it–especially when I have just the right remedy at my fingertips!

I’ll finish a few pints above 21 gallons for the duration of the project, and then toss a few back with my brother-in-law Kyle when we smoke a little pork on April 30. I’ll be ready for a doppelbock (especially with pulled pork as an accompaniment) after a seven-day break, for sure.

Finally, I keep forgetting to mention my weight. 140 yesterday and 139 today.

Cheers, all!

Day 34

“Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s rebellion.”

-Alice Cooper

Isn’t that the truth? All one must do to be a crazy beer drinker is fall in with a group of crazy beer drinkers. If his personality sucks, he just finds a different, more like-minded group of beer drinkers.

But to be a Christian, that takes serious cajones. Because some Christians have earned Christians a bad name. Me, I struggle with the narrow-minded, pharasitic, types. And the teetotalers. They rough up a good thing and drive people away. Too bad. There’s so much good stuff on offer.

It takes discipline to be one.

Much like being gay takes a thick skin, being a Christian in a rascally world is no small task. Gotta be tough. Monks employ a discipline that few could muster. Gotta give ’em credit. But to be a monk in the world–that’s even tougher, or at least a different brand of tougher. Not everyone could be a monk, but those who call themselves Christians simply should strive to be a monk in the world.

It’s a higher level of responsibility, difficult, and it’s not for everyone.

Alice is right. It’s rebellion.

Day 33

Greetings from Day 33! Here’s a short video update.