2/14/2006 - My cup of tea

One of the challenges I face in my quest to cross the country is that I lead a pretty sedentary worklife. On weekends I get my footage up by taking unnecessary trips across the apartment to break up whatever else I'm doing (washing dishes, cleaning up, playing with the boys). At work, my computer is my productivity pod. The less time I spend in front of it, the less I get done. Oh, sure, sometimes I find myself in meetings, but these aren't higher footage events…

So I have enlisted a new ally in the fight for steps at work: Tea. As background, I drink a lot at work. Until recently, the beverage of choice had been seltzer. On a typical day, I drink 48-64 ounces of seltzer over the course of the day. This makes me feel healthy, but it hardly helps my steps, because I keep unopened bottles of seltzer under my desk and open them as I drink them. Not much walking.

Tea, however, is a totally different matter. I am not, by nature, much of a hot beverage drinker, but I recently had a bout with bronchitis. It wasn't very serious but gave me a sore throat. The wife recommended tea with honey as a way to soothe my throat, but I soon found that the honey was superfluous. At work, I found myself drinking 6-9 cups of tea a day. Now hot water is something not easily kept under my desk, so with every cup, I have to walk 50 steps to the water cooler and 50 steps back. That leads to 600-900 steps a day! That may not sound like much, but given that I typically walk 200-400 steps per hour at work, an additional 100 per hour really counts!

19,100 sloshy steps today. Cheers,