You are both right, made a error when I posted. HERE is what I entered:
the purpose of the whole program is to give me a visual indication of how long it takes to the chip to execute a loop and count down. I need this info for setting timing on portions of my programs. Hope this makes sense. P.S. my setup may not be correct but I'm an old geezer.

' Timer countdown test
trisa = 0
porta = 0
Start:
I var byte
for I = 1 to 2000
next I
porta.0 = 1
pause 5000
end