I do see more elderly out and about. The pickleball courts are always busy, and I see many who walk (as I do). I do feel not as much in the midst of it all, though. However, that was a problem in my youth, too. I can’t always tell if the responses I receive are due to my age or my personality. I do notice I am offered more help than formerly. Young people are very nice to me. I fell a couple of years ago, and two young folks nearby dropped what they were doing and helped me up. I was unhurt, but grateful for the strong young ones who assisted.
Of course, one of the things that goes with being 74 is producing such phrases as “only 82.”
Yes, and it will be only “only 95” when we are 82. Lol.
However, the stark reality is that the 80s is where the rubber seems to meet the road. I think of how people fret over a politician, then I think, “They are…or will be…in their 80s”, and even the healthiest begin to waver. I really think people should retire by 75. Or slow down at the least. Professional people can do consulting, non professional can do same, teach a young person their skills. I have a friend who does that, in fact (tool and die maker, retired).
knavette57)
June 21
I do hope you have many many motorcycle rides into the future! We can’t stop time, but we can keep it running to catch up to us!
Why thanks. 
I must admit I’m having trouble considering myself “elderly”…I just got around to caving into old.
I see on your info: “77 Year old Canadian motorcycle rider …60 years riding this year…decamped to Tropical Australia.”
Tell us about this–a very big change to make late in life.
My “retirement plan” is to become a college professor (hopefully law school). I had a prof who was in his 90s. He moved slow, but he was fully responsive.
I’d love to spend my last years shuffling about amongst books, muttering some lecture to the young people who occasionally gather about.
PastTense
Family generations on both sides since 1770 all clustered around the Niagara region in Canada…cousins by the dozen and mostly fundies.
Escaped via uni at least the cloying presence and ignorance.
Travelled a lot over the years both biz and pleasure.
Met some interesting people local to Toronto dating between wives on local dating sites and on a science/technology/medical professionals site that was very international with some astonishing CVs. 
On a whim when I was spending winters in Western Cape SA recovering from cancer, I decided to cast the net a bit more broadly and came across a post from a medical pro in Cairns Australia that resonated big time…and she had a huge travel history, an Emerald Qantas flyer.
We exchanged email chats for month and I was reluctantly conned into a phone call ( running a tech biz the last thing I wanted at the time was to chat on the phone - turned into 3 hours !!!)
Turns out her grown dottors best friend lived in Buffalo and there was a trip coming up to visit.
Growing online relationship and phone calls resulted in a visit for a few days from partner and “good fit” including physically. 
This in 2010/11.
I was booked for 3 months in Western Cape the next Canadian winter and I flew from there to Cairns in the Wet Tropics for a couple weeks there.
Even a greater contrast from dreary Toronto in winter …BUT Cairns in Feb is silly hot low 30s (90F+)( there is no heat in our house ) and sodden…it’s called The Wet..and perhaps the worst time to visit…very few tourists of the 3 million that come.
Still we got along fine tho 3 large dogs that liked bed sharing were a challenge…and it was far from Toronto.
So for the next 10 years we spent an average five months together in person between travel and me with a 3 month visa each year.
I could work from anywhere there was internet so that was no barrier…when it came to establishing our permanent relationship for the tough Australian emigration gatekeepers - we had lots of photos of travel together and 170 pages of Skype coversations on a daily basic to offer up.
Now you mentioned …“so late in life”…I had no sense of that …I was riding motorcycle all over eastern Canada and US with my son and did cross Canada solo for 3 weeks when I was 70 and still travelling 5 months average around the world and to Australia …old??? are you kidding me !!!
Both parents made 95 so I was just traversing out of middle age 
I had been hoping to sell my biz to out US partner and fortunately he came with an offer in 2019 that I quickly accepted as it got me out of debt tho no assets for the future.
Essentially I moved to Australia full time in a single suitcase in the midst of covid. The Aus gov had promised me my permanent visa if I could get there. I snuck through a deserted LAX and caught the last flight from New Zealand to Australia before they stopped flying.
Straight into 2 week quarantine which consisted of doing hard time isolation on the 17th floor of a luxury hotel on the Gold Coast with all my food supplied in little packages outside my door 3 times a day.
Hard life eh? 
Air NZ only allowed 1 suitcase…talk about wandering orphan but since I had been coming to Cairns for nearly a decade I had a motorcycle and clothes for a second household built up.
That was 5 years ago and no regrets at all.
2023 was anno horribilus for me …I lost my 32 year old son and riding buddy to brain cancer and in visiting him, as he was fading, managed to break my leg and collarbone - my first accident in 60 years of riding - and spend 90 days in recovery center. 
I have hundreds of photos of rides with him ( and thousands of travel photos) and they roll around every day on my extensive desk/media set up…it helps immensely.
Next up …finish my Australian citizen application which I qualify for. 
I volunteer at the library, and that requires a bit of muttering, since I often look at the books I am shelving and make comments to myself, “Wow, another book on Jane Austen!” Sometimes, I am questioned by a patron, and that is fun. I was a library clerk for many years, so I know how the Dewey Decimal system is organized.
I do enjoy a good nap, and for that reason: I can be totally out of the world for awhile. However, I have dreams, which can be nice…or frightening. Naps are too short for dreams, though, so I usually feel better, emotionally, if I can power nap at some point in the day.
I’m 82. There, I said it! But that is just a number.
Parts of me are younger (brain) and parts are older (too many to spell out), but it really does not matter - the clock will continue to tick tock, and the different parts of me will continue on my way to oblivion at some point.
What does matter is now. I am alive, and can look back at a life filled with purpose and fulfillment. Learning to live in the moment is attaining freedom from time. Seeking contentedness is rewarding, while reflections of what should or could have been is degrading to my well being.
I look for beauty, practice kindness, celebrate and help other folks…and do what I can to fight the good fight and find peace with the journey.
I rarely dwell on how old I am. Like a dog, I try to live in the moment.
I’m 10 years younger than you, and this statement is something that I need to remember. Dwelling on what-might-have-been does me (or anybody else) no good whatsoever.
This is true wisdom.
I’m 42. Not a young 42, but one that’s always battling something. I think about my mortality every day. I think about the fragility of my son’s life.
I found a mantra from the Plum Village Zen tradition that I really like.
I am of the nature to grow old.
I am of the nature to have ill health.
I am of the nature to die.
That’s it. That’s our nature. We treat disease and death like aberrations but they are a part of what it means to be human. We don’t have to treat these things like they are something wrong that must be fixed.
There is a flip side to all this worry, which is gratitude. Every breath my son takes I am grateful. Every beat of my husband’s heart. Every time I step out of a car and I’m still alive. And let’s not even pretend that you’re any closer to death than I am just because you are older. None of us know when the time is coming. You could live another twenty years, I could live another five seconds. My uncle died at thirty. My cousin at nineteen. I think often of dead children. Some get two years. Two months. Five minutes. That’s all they get.
And I’ve had forty-fuckin’ two.
I have always had some fear around death but even that is part of the natural order of things. When my son tells me, “I don’t want to die,” I say, “Yeah, neither do I. But that’s part of the deal. That’s the trade-off for getting to be alive.”
That’s the best way I’ve found to make peace with it.
Thank you for this post.
Like many (most?) post-menopausal women who’ve had children, I’ve had a long-standing issue with urinary incontinence. It’s annoying and embarrassing and has been getting slowly worse. The typically-advised Kegel exercises didn’t help at all.
I was checking out the footage from my security camera last week and was shocked to see myself walking like an old person. You know: the classic lower back pain posture, leaning forward about 30 deg from the waist, elbows bent back behind me. Hey! I’m ONLY 77!
I resolved to start paying more attention to my posture, walking and sitting with my back straight, chest & neck up and in alignment. It felt weird at first – as though I was going to fall over backward, and my lower back protested. But the big revelation was the almost immediate effect on my bladder: without everything inside pushing down on it, the urinary urgency is almost completely gone.
I’m terribly lazy and non-compliant when it comes to exercise routines, so I’ve resolved to just make them part of moving around. I’ve also started to make a conscious effort to squat down (bending my knees) when putting the cats’ dishes on the floor, rather than bending over at the waist. My knees were getting so weak it was hard to get up off the floor. All of this has helped my mental state too; I don’t feel so ancient and helpless.
I have a small uterine tumor, which presses on my bladder at times, so I hear you. I will probably have surgery at some point in time to correct it, and I am thinking that will be my project for this next winter, haha. Men get this issue, too, my husband had prostate cancer and he needed some re routing done with his bladder. I will take heed of your advice to avoid bending at the waist. I have very strong knees and thighs from doing long distance runnning, so I am able to easily bend but it feels faster to bend at waist. I also slump, always have, but I am trying to be more aware and not do this. It isn’t painful for me to stand up straighter, it is just a bad habit and you know what they say about old dogs…new tricks, sigh.
I’ve had a few very close brushes with death. I don’t fear it at all - it sounds like a relief if i’m honest. But it’s a long way off so i try to be useful and cheerful in the meantime. Chronic pain is like that.
As for age, it stopped feeling real after about 35. There was never any question that the equipment was getting older, but the wetware has always been time blind.
I’ve had stress incontinence ever since I had my kid at 37. You know what else I have? Cough-variant asthma. Nothing like pissing yourself when you can’t breathe. Before I got the right treatment for asthma I was in big trouble every time I caught a respiratory illness… Which was about once every ten days as the parent of a small child.
My whole life I’ve dealt with little stuff like this (little as opposed to say, cancer.) I don’t think any of my ailments (aside from PMDD and Endo, which are well controlled as long as I’m on the pill) really rise to the level of disability but there are so many I have to wonder if the aggregate does, at times, render me functionally disabled.