I can’t suicide by coffee

Sometimes weird things come through my Google searches based on suggestions. I had been doing some safety searches for a friend when “LD 50 Caffeine” came up in the suggestion box, so I clicked on the suggestion. 

Death from caffeine ingestion appears to be rare, and most commonly caused by an intentional overdose of medications.^[123] In 2016, 3702 caffeine-related exposures were reported to Poison Control Centers in the United States, of which 846 required treatment at a medical facility, and 16 had a major outcome; and several caffeine-related deaths are reported in case studies.^[123] The LD₅₀ of caffeine in humans is dependent on individual sensitivity, but is estimated to be 150–200 milligrams per kilogram (2.2 lb) of body mass (75–100 cups of coffee for a 70 kg (150 lb) adult).^{[124][failed verification]} There are cases where doses as low as 57 milligrams per kilogram have been fatal.^[125] A number of fatalities have been caused by overdoses of readily available powdered caffeine supplements, for which the estimated lethal amount is less than a tablespoon.^[126] The lethal dose is lower in individuals whose ability to metabolize caffeine is impaired due to genetics or chronic liver disease.^[127] A death was reported in a man with liver cirrhosis who overdosed on caffeinated mints.

That means by the time I get close to even a harmful dose of Vitamin C2 my kidneys are already flushing it out of my 190 pound (86 Kg) body. I might damage my kidneys, but I wouldn’t be in mortal peril from drinking as much coffee as I could chug. My liver has been tested several times during drug evaluations, and as the family joke goes when I die they are going to have to beat my liver to death with a stick. I have several now-deceased relatives who were legendary drinkers with high alcohol tolerance, but who never-the-less not alcoholics as they could go months without drinking to no obvious ill effects, between drinking sessions that would have killed others from alcohol poisoning, also with no obvious ill effects. I have never seen any need to emulate their feats, so my own tolerance is still in question. Mind you these were all relatives on my father’s side, mostly related via my grandfather.

But this is secondary to my coffee consumption, which is currently running about a liter per day. At that rate I will live forever as far as dangerous amounts of caffeine are concerned.

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Twelve years gone

I moved this blog over from MySpace November 23 2008. That makes twelve years since I did the move. I had been looking for a new place to home the blog since MySpace started censoring the blog for having too many links, back when I was reporting on bike wrecks by linking to articles on other sites that had first or second-hand reports about people getting hit on bicycles. I’m not going to say I was in any way responsible, but this was shortly before MySpace went down the proverbial tubes.

Twelve years, at least eight of which I spent mired in virtual gore and broken lives, trying futilely to keep what happened to me from happening to other people. It might not have been futile, I might have saved one or two people from getting hit because of my protocols for not getting hit. But that was only a drop in the bucket, comparatively. Thousands of people still got hit every year and had their lives permanently altered, and almost never for the better. Hundreds more had their lives ended every year. And that was just in the US. It felt like I was swimming upstream in a Mississippi of blood, and I had to stop for my own mental health.

Which brings us to the current phase of the blog. I almost never mention bicycles, because I’m still not quite over when I got hit on mine. As you might have noticed I’m letting another old obsession run wild, my obsession with hot rods. I used to be a sports car racer way back when, and there has been some cross-pollination between the two cultures with my favorite competition, autocross, becoming the “new thing” for hot rodders as shown with the Optima Ultimate Street Car Battle, and Goodguys Rod and Custom shows, and minor or major gatherings of hot rodders all over the country having autocrosses as part of the show. I used to be pretty good at autocross, winning class and placing high overall, so this time I’m planning on building the type of car I’ve wanted since 1968 to run the type of racing I was good at since the early 1980s, with a few touches of my own. The biggest “touch” is an exo-skeleton frame inspired by sprint cars, mostly because the rectangular tube ladder frame of most T-buckets had the torsional stiffness of cooked pasta and was very heavy for what you got in structure, and the suspensions that you got from most kits was rudimentary at best, with high roll centers and a habit of jacking the inside rear tire during hard cornering causing a sudden transition from plowing understeer to oversteer in the blink of an eye. Not the vehicle for making FTOD runs on an autocross course. And putting a roll cage on for safety made putting the body on an exercise in full scale building ships in bottles.

So, there you have it. A nutshell look at where we came from, where we are, and maybe where we are going.