The end of the Gatorade...

I've been off the bike for the last few days but not for the usual reasons: not for the heat (which reached 103 a couple days ago), no mechanical problems, and certainly not for rain (we've had none). I have had the mother of all toothaches starting last Saturday night and finally starting to abate a bit over the last couple of days. The short version of this little saga is that I had some work done on three side-by-side molars last week - all had decay under crowns, something that apparently is never supposed to happen. My dentist blames it exclusively on the Gatorade that I drink so much of while biking. By last Monday the pain was so bad that I was using some left-over percocet (same stuff they gave me in the hospital last year) and I put in an emergency call to the dentist on the holiday. With prescriptions for both antibiotics and pain killers I could finally say today that I felt like a normal human being again with just a dull ache in my lower jaw. And today I saw the endonist who informed me that I will probably have at least one root canal before any other work is done - oh joy. And so the last bottle of Gatorade has gone in the trash and from now on it will be water and Endurolytes - the refreshing taste of Orange G-ade is a thing of the past. And today I was back out for forty or so miles and found out I can actually survive quite nicely without all the sugars and acids. Thank God a good beer is still a good thing.