Hey old people, tell us what you can't do!

I'm only 72, but just yesterday I told my wife I'm not going to be able to go up on the roof to blow off leaves and clean around the solar panels much longer. I get a little shaky when I get close to the edge of the rather steep roof.

I'm like @Zeldman in that I walk 5 miles every morning starting at 5am, but I can't run 10 steps without my knees and ankles letting me know how old I am.

I can't sleep for more than about 3 hours without getting up to pee, and that is on a good night.

But we just had a hurricane here in Florida and I spent two days with a chain saw and a rake cleaning up about 1 acre of fallen trees (one large oak and three fair sized palm trees) and tons of debri, including oak branches that were the size of a tree. I felt better when I finished than when I started.

And like others have said, I really don't give a fornication for what others think of me wearing socks and sandals. But at least I don't wear socks with flip flops.
 
JOhnH said:
I really don't give a fornication for what others think of me wearing socks and sandals. But at least I don't wear socks with flip flops.
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Truly, your heresy knows but one boundary.
 
GaryM said:
Guess what you are getting when you turn 58:
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Oh, and the number of doctors and specialists you see is usually the same as the first digit in your age.

Eg 5 doctors when your 58, 6 when 68, etc.
 
Dave Theisen said:
The pill would blend into the background. :)
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You be referring to the Naproxen Sodium?

Don't have to get up to pee. But by 4 or 5 AM things hurt enough that there is no point in lying in bed so I head for the bathroom to "reset". Before that I can get by with rolling around to find the exact pose that lets me get back to sleep.
 
Fight it til the end. None of this giving-in stuff. No whining or quitting.
I was on the roof yesterday cleaning the woodstove.
Planning on skiing this winter.
Take your Tylenol and get with it.
 
I turned 50 this year, and my body wants to make sure I remember that, and my brain wants to be sure I remember nothing else.

And my kids are 1 and 7, so I have parent brain too.

Let's see. In the last year, I've started having chronic back pain, gone from zero to bifocals, etc... It's already been a while since I could get on and off the ground comfortably or silently or without support. We got family pictures taken yesterday and I had to shoot down the idea of a completely seated picture, and use my wife to stand up.

I can make it through the night without waking up if I don't drink anything right before bed, so I'll count my blessings there. But, I sure can find lots of dumb reasons to not be able to calm down enough to get to sleep in the first place.

You know what else I can do now? Understand old people. Even though I'm still gifted with a full head of thick hair, I've got a little gray on the temples and a LOT of gray in my beard, and the wrinkles get a little longer and deeper every year, in many ways I still feel like I did when I was 30. (Too many dumb things done in my 20s to go any farther back than that.) I've done lots of cool things in my life, and I'd like to do a lot more, but many of them hurt a lot more than they used to, and at this point I have decided that I really don't need to ride motorcycles or jump out of airplanes after all.

My wife, boys and I were chucking water balloons at each other in the spring when they all decided to gang up on me and I happened to run myself backwards into the septic tank lid and catch both feet on it, so I went down hard on my back - No hands or feet to try to slow the fall - And had a brief thought on the way down "uh oh, is this it? Am I going to die tragically during this fun activity and scar my children for life when my skull gets crushed on the patio?" Luckily, I recovered from that one, but I'm definitely becoming more risk-averse because I know there's a higher chance every year that I'm going to have an injury that I'll never be able to fully recover from.

So that's fun.

Happy birthday Bryan! :D
 
JOhnH said:
I'm only 72, but just yesterday I told my wife I'm not going to be able to go up on the roof to blow off leaves and clean around the solar panels much longer, so she'll have to do it from now on. I get a little shaky when I get close to the edge of the rather steep roof.
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FIFY.
;)
 
I can't bend my right wrist back past 60degrees. It doesn't hurt, but ever since I broke it I just can't do it. I can't sit indian style. Not cuz my knees hurt. But when I broke my left foot the bone was displaced. So now the outside of my left foot takes all that weight in one spot and it's uncomfortable.

IMG_20230320_105021015~2.jpg
 
Charlie Golf said:
When I run into guys I went to high school with, I can't believe how old they look...I don't know what happened to them.
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I went to a small gathering of high school friends/acquaintances on Saturday. Some of those folks looked rough, rough I tell you... I, on the other hand, just looked 15 pounds overweight and grey headed..
 
59, I had 20/20 viz as a young man, but need glasses now but corrected I am 20/15. Ears ring and don’t hear high freq anymore. But can still hear a teenager trying to sneak into or out of the home through a closed door. Stronger than I was as an 18 y/o and I was pretty athletic then. My 59 y/o self could prob kick my 39 y/o butt. Definitely a Better pilot now than I was in my 30’s having seen pretty much everything at least once ;-). Better skiier. Can drink more without a hangover. Maybe the shrinking brain is protective;-). Really not much of anything that I can’t do now, but some things like running, hiking, biking do slower. Really important to take care of yourself as you age. Diet, working out, supplements, but in some respects age is what you make of it. I had kids later into life, so have fought very hard to not be that old dad, or that old grandfather.
 
I'll be 67 next month, and there are two things I won't do any more, hang gliding and skydiving. Hang gliding can require a level of stamina I don't have, especially if conditions pick up. Skydiving is off the table for two reasons, my flexibility isn't what it was and it would be difficult to clear a malfunction over my head. The other issue is in case of a hard opening, older people can suffer an aortic dissection, which isn't usually survivable.

Other than that, I can do pretty much all the same things I've always done. I went track driving last week, I'm still running 5 and 10 km races, I'm just slower. I've been fixing the tape joints on our garage ceiling, and my daughter and I are starting a paver project in our back yard.
 
...I can't stay awake after 10pm even on weekends.

And to think that only 21 years ago my schedule was:
7am-3pm work #1 (factory)
4pm-9pm college
10pm-2am work #2 (valet parking)
And I was fine on 4 hours of sleep.
 
My body still only wants me sleep for 6 hours. No matter what time I go to bed I'm waking up 6 hours later alarm or no alarm. I know that magic is going to stop someday.
 
I'm a couple of weeks away from 45 y/o. Over the past couple of years I have noticed that my shoulder stings for days instead of hours after a full session of throwing BP in the batting cage to my 13 y/o's team. I've noticed that the mild soreness in my knees has increased and is spreading to my back after a practice coaching basketball. I can no longer dunk a basketball, though I used to be able to start flat-footed under the goal and go straight up. My goal is to get one more dunk in before this season is over as a last hoorah. I went from having better than 20/20 uncorrected vision to now REALLY fighting biting the bullet and pick up some readers. My family (who have been using glasses, contacts, etc. for years) is "loving" the idea that I'm finally coming back down to reality with them. I'm down to running no guard on the clippers when I cut my "hair" (if you can still call it 'hair' considering how thin it is up there). My beard is now more salt than pepper.

Oh.. And WTH is up with being sore after SLEEPING?! What is THAT all about? Go to sleep, fine. Sleep all night, great. Wake up with a crick in my neck/back/shoulder that burns for days! WTH man!?
 
CJones said:
REALLY fighting biting the bullet and pick up some readers.
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Just get them FFS.

My wife didn't want to get cataract surgery. Just no. Not gonna do it.
I kept telling her that it was no big deal and she would be glad that she did.
Nuh uh. Nope. Not happening.

You will never guess the ending.
After the surgery, she said "you were right".
 
I finally caved and got some prescription bifocals and I hate to say it but I love them.
I tried progressives but head movement warped everything and irritated me.


I can't wait until I get cataracts. If you need cataract surgery, you can get lens replacement and insurance will cover it because um.....
My 75 year old parents have 20/20 vision and don't need glasses anymore. Its wild to see them w/o glasses as they were always a part of their face to me.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Just get them FFS.

My wife didn't want to get cataract surgery. Just no. Not gonna do it.
I kept telling her that it was no big deal and she would be glad that she did.
Nuh uh. Nope. Not happening.

You will never guess the ending.
After the surgery, she said "you were right".
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Shouldn't that be in the joke thread?
 
70 here, can still do the important things (have a 5 year old daughter:cool:). Can't push my Cessna into the hangar without mechanical assistance, can't saddle a horse without help. Had cataract surgery so excellent vision, but was told last week I need a shoulder replacement. Altogether, no complaints, life is good.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Just get them FFS.

My wife didn't want to get cataract surgery. Just no. Not gonna do it.
I kept telling her that it was no big deal and she would be glad that she did.
Nuh uh. Nope. Not happening.

You will never guess the ending.
After the surgery, she said "you were right".
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I hope you recorded that, since it will never happen again.
 
There really aren't any things I can't do as a consequence of age; perhaps some, because I have allowed my physical conditioning to diminish a bit, but I think I can recover that with reasonable effort.

There are some things I am not *allowed* to do any more. But that's a whole 'nother conversation!
 
SCCutler said:
There really aren't any things I can't do as a consequence of age; perhaps some, because I have allowed my physical conditioning to diminish a bit, but I think I can recover that with reasonable effort.

There are some things I am not *allowed* to do any more. But that's a whole 'nother conversation!
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Lol.... yeah I'm having some of those discussions to. That pretty lady on my side isn't excited about motorcycles and airplanes, though she is happy to strap me in a racecar and send me down a runway that way at 217mph (okay, 217.3913, but who's counting?)

Here's the fastest run I've got a video of, it's pretty close to that at 215mph.


And she didn't seem super closed off to the airplane, just a bit apprehensive after a bad boating accident I had a few years ago. I guess I can't blame her for that. Airpark living looks pretty awesome though!!!!
 
FoundSoul said:
....though she is happy to strap me in a racecar and send me down a runway that way at 217mph (okay, 217.3913, but who's counting?)
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Why would she worry, with such a wide piece of flat pavement, nothing to hit, and no other cars anywhere in the vicinity? It'd be more exciting with 30 or so cars all jockeying for position.
;)

This is me leading the pack out of the Sebring hairpin:
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FoundSoul said:
That pretty lady on my side isn't excited about motorcycles and airplanes
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Sounds like she needs her own bike and airplane so she'll catch the bug! :)
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flyingcheesehead said:
Even though I'm still gifted with a full head of thick hair, I've got a little gray on the temples and a LOT of gray in my beard,
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Same here and my beard is snow white. Well, it would be except for Miss Clairol's little secret...

I tell folks I am 75 and they say, ''wow.!! you look great.!!''

Then I tell them I am really 65 and they go, ''oh, well, you still look good''..
 
Half Fast said:
Why would she worry, with such a wide piece of flat pavement, nothing to hit, and no other cars anywhere in the vicinity? It'd be more exciting with 30 or so cars all jockeying for position.
;)

This is me leading the pack out of the Sebring hairpin:
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Sounds like she needs her own bike and airplane so she'll catch the bug! :)
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Love it! I have a beater road race car myself but nothing fast, an old Chumpcar, a 91 Escort GT - mighty mouse themed, yellow body, red cape, no kidding ;)

Anything can be fun when you're driving it at 10/10ths!

Any chance you are familiar with MegaSquirt EFI?
 
Zeldman said:
Same here and my beard is snow white. Well, it would be except for Miss Clairol's little secret...

I tell folks I am 75 and they say, ''wow.!! you look great.!!''

Then I tell them I am really 65 and they go, ''oh, well, you still look good''..
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Or you tell them you're 65 and they say, "you don't look 65 ... but you used to!" :biggrin:
 
I can't run any more, I can't manage a balance beam, I can't hear very well any more, I can't read print smaller than a font size of about 2 without bright light. I can't stay awake past about 10 o'clock at the latest. I have real problems with hot weather. My mind is still tarp as a shack, though. :D
 
I'm pretty sure I can still do this... but it might hurt on the landing.....

STOL right? Look mom, I'm learning airplane acronyms!!!

jerry_wakeboard_jump_grab.jpg
 
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