I'm back again in the land of the walking upright people, in hospital I see most of my room mates lying down or at best sitting. I've been feeling a bit better this time around for some reason. Maybe it's all the meds and the physio working in sync or maybe I'm just feeling good, who knows, I asked the doctors and they don't.

Because I was feeling a bit better I decided that it was a good time to test my endurance, this is never a good idea when I'm on my own but I'm not one for doing things by halves. Across the road from the hospital is a shopping center and in the middle of it is a coffee shop, not a great coffee shop but it would do for now. My mission was to walk from the front door of the hospital to the coffee shop with just my cane without stopping for a rest. To make life a bit more difficult I had to carry my shoulder bag, full of a weeks worth of washing, and my laptop, total weight 14 pounds.

It all started off okay, the ground outside the hospital is fairly level, and every step coaxed another one and I developed an early rhythm. The footpath then sloped away from me so I had to adjust my gait to compensate, this caused fatigue in one of the muscles and it all seemed a bit too much all of a sudden. I of course kept going, I could have turned around and waited for my lift at the hospital but I didn't. I gathered my strength and ploughed on down to the main road and hoped for a red light at the pedestrian crossing, that way I'd be able to rest. This of course didn't happen and my way was cleared by several little green men. I've waited 41 years for this to happen, a green light all the way, and when it does happen I'm begging for a red light in my head, is that irony? I kept my back straight and put one foot in front of the other and ploughed on slowly.

The entrance to the shopping center was about a hundred yards from the road, downhill on a footpath through the car park. This ment total concentration and the possibility of being hit by a car, Cork shoppers are not good drivers. This was going to be a tough leg of the journey, made tougher by people handing me advertising pamphlets and money off vouchers, I took the deals and ploughed on one step at a time keeping my focus on the door.

When I got to the door I could smell coffee, I can get a whiff of good arabica a mile off. There was a lot of people on the mall. At this stage I'm really in a lot of pain and my legs are nearly gone to sleep. I have to avoid being knocked sideways of I'd fall, the slightest touch would do it. The thing about my epic walk was that it had to be a walk and not a limp or a hitch or a leg drag and so far I was walking so again I ploughed on down the mall and turned into the new section and saw my target, the not so good coffee shop. One careful step at a time I got closer and closer until finally my legs refused to take another step and I had to stop, that was it my muscles were spent and not one more step could I take until they recovered. I flopped onto a bench and felt gutted. I counted the 12 inch floor tiles between my bench and the nearest chair in the not so good coffee shop and there were 14 of them, that's fourteen feet between me and a not so good cup of coffee, the distance between happiness and blind despair...for anyone who wanted to know is just fourteen feet.

I sat there and thought had I done too much, and how long it would be untill my legs recovered enough to carry on. I realised how luckey I was that the shoping center had benches scattered around or I would be on the floor and unable to get up. All the time I kept counting the floor tiles and watched the whole world take sub standard coffee while I sat and stewed.

It was an hour before I could walk again and I headed for the shopping trollies and took one to act as a walking frame and to carry my bags. I still felt bad, like I had failed miserably, even though I knew there was nothing I could do to change anything I still felt awfull. I turned back to the not so good coffee shop and out of the corner of my eye I spotted another coffee shop that I never knew existed, that's where the wonderfull aroma of arabica was comming from. It was a good coffee shop and miles better that the not so good one. Was this some kind of fate working on my behalf, did some celistial being decide that I deserved a good cup of coffee for my efforts. I'm not a religious type or even very spiritual but I reckon the great god of java was looking out for me that day and knew I deserved a decent cup of coffee.

So what did I learn from this little journey. Well first I found out that I can walk farther than I used to and second, a good cup of coffee is worth waiting for.