“I saw an interview with Harrison Ford, who learned to fly when he was 50. He said, ‘I hadn't learned anything in a long time.’” For Patrick Chovanec, novice pilot at age 50, that rang a bell.
72 next month. Serious health problems, but still working. Have started learning Spanish (I live in Denver) and I’m learning to juggle. It makes me smile!
Lovely, James. And struck a chord (sorry) for me: I retrained in my 40s, did a law degree and bar school (all part-time while working full-time in banking), and I'm now - at the age of 53 - in my sixth year as a barrister. (For non-Brits: that's a particular kind of independent, self-employed trial lawyer. The ones that sometimes wear the silly wigs.) Looking back, what a ludicrous risk that was to run; but it's also a career where you really do never stop learning. Every day, as they say, has been a school day so far, and I can't imagine it being otherwise. Thank goodness. (Although since this is my fourth career - I started out as a reporter! - I may be something of a poster child for taking the long way round...)
Obviously I'm biased, but I do think that starting out as a reporter is ideal preparation for ongoing, lifelong exploration of new themes. (And as I mention in a comment below, a pilot certificate has "lifelong validity." Once a pilot, always a pilot. The same is true of being a reporter, in my view.)
In the annals of strange tales, I actually "read law" for a year at Oxford, and spent lots of time watching the wigged barristers practice their skills at Oxford. That's when I thought I was going to be a lawyer. (After I thought I was going to be a doctor, and before I thought maybe I would be an economist—which I studied in my second year at Oxford, and before I ended up where I should have been all along.)
The world of strange coincidences. I went to Cambridge thinking I might switch to law... and then got sucked into music journalism at the end of my first year and didn’t look back till a decade and a half later, by which time I’d been at the BBC for half a decade.
In fact my time in Cambridge (the early 90s) was spent studying Japanese. And I well recall how stimulating it was at the time to read thoughtful reportage about that wonderful, frustrating, fascinating place from some bloke named James. Always been grateful for that.
Transitioning to the "glass cockpit" / FMC / automated approach & landing on the B737 at age 53 was an eye opener. I had to "unlearn" more than there was to learn. It was the most difficult 6 weeks of my aviation career. All the instructors said, (variations of) "forget yesterday, think about tomorrow." Boy were they right about that!
Ah very interesting. From my amateur perspective: my training through instrument rating had been on vintage-1950s 172s or 182s, where all the navigation was via VORs and NDBs. When we got our first Cirrus in 2000, it was a revolution—but again for me, as an amateur, it was mainly a step forward in convenience. A moving map in the cockpit! Whoa! Versus these tiny dials.
I can only imagine the much more dramatic step-up in complexity in an actual airliner.
Same category of changes for you, except that there was, for us, a major difference; the mult-person crew concept requires (and demands) standardization, coordination and lots of SOP (standard operating procedure). The SOP is the easy part; its the abnormal and emergency stuff that we drill on the most. And as captains, flight management skills which had been undergoing major changes beginning in the mid '80's evolved rapidly throughout the transition to the new generation aircraft across the fleets. Add to this the natural resistance to major changes as we age, a long history of the "old ways" and the decline in brain function compared to the young hotshots who grew up with computers, and you can see why some of developed the "old guy stare".
Nice parallelism with the two stories. Next up is "play to your strengths." Every institution we've passed through since kindergarten has tried to discover what we're bad at and make us better. Why not focus on what we're good at and do it more often? Of course, it goes deeper than skill. Your strengths are the activities that make you feel strong, that make you feel glad to be doing them, that make you want to do more. Like that wonderful moment when work becomes fun, and they actually pay you, too!?!
Bill, thank you. Yes, in keeping with the endless principle of "everything that matters is contradictory," I agree on the "play to your strengths" point too.
I think that is an advantage of our mutual trade as writers. In principle, this is a realm in which we can keep getting better over time. We all know of examples of writers who burned out early, but we also know contrary examples. And, as mentioned below, a virtue of the writing/reporting life is that you're positioned, or forced, to continue to learn new things.
Best of both worlds! Except for the actual nightmare-of-writing part.
I'm 71, so I guess I'm sort of in the middle of this pack. I live near an airport, and I often look up in the air and remind myself of the dreams I had when I was young: dreams like piloting and even owning an airplane. Then my mind quickly clicks in: "Yeah, sure - at your age?"
After 3 years of retirement, I returned to the classroom in 2021 for one more year of teaching math to high school students. Obviously the first thought to cross my mind was, "Do I still have what it takes?" Based on subjective (grades) and objective (standardized tests) criteria, I think I managed to pull it off. I'm not eager to return to that rigor, but I believe I could if I chose to.
Reading this article encourages fanciful thoughts about learning more, like returning to college to earn another degree, or learning something else, entirely outside my comfort zone. There are, of course, myriad options. But then I realize I haven't yet had my morning nap, the driveway is in need of shoveling, it's almost time for lunch, and it's pure joy to look out over this wintry landscape.
I'm grateful that I learned one thing that many never do: that life is much too important to be taken seriously. Thanks for a great article!
On this same theme, there are various "new" things I am considering. I played the piano a fair amount as a kid and through high school, but have barely done it at all from the college years onward. That's a part of my life I'd like to get back, and it has been long enough that it would be "new." Also, since I have spent all the intervening years with essentially 20 hours a day typing on a keyboard, at least my fingers still work. And various other possibilities for later discussion.
Thanks Jim! This is really interesting! I took my niece for a couple of handfuls of flying lessons every now and then beginning when she was 7. I also got lessons when she did. Her first lesson, the instructor said she did so well with the take-off and landing that he gave her an extra take-off and landing.
A decade after those first lessons, during a semester abroad, she paraglided with an instructor high above Melbourne, Australia. Some years later, she thanked me for having gotten her those lessons, telling me that she new I did it to give her a source of extra self confidence.
Funny, I don't even remember my own take-off and landings, except that I remember that it was uneventful.
I have a much more detailed memory of advanced driving school at Skip Barber in Lime Rock, CT, midway through my 50s. There, I had a wonderful sense of picking up new skills (funny, now, as I write this, some of the feel of the flying lessons is coming back to me). Here's that story (FYI: "hoon" is car-speak for someone who drives fast and hard. It can also be used as a verb.) https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2009/10/david-holzman-goes-to-the-skip-barber-shop/
At 50 learning to fly must be an exhilarating new experience. For me, who was dumped from AFROTC for flunking the depth perception test, it did not seem a viable alternative.
I was 50 in 1983. For me, the new learning experience was computers. Writing a book on floppy discs was a new and, on occasion, bewildering experience.
Later, for one who hugged his Encyclopedia Britannica, the prospect of Internet access to diverse sources was thrilling. In 2000 the options were limited. I found that a guy at Yale, mostly in his spare time, posted a website with marvelous historical references.
At 90 I find that I can easily post commentaries on the NYT website and, when I post on Jim’s Substack blog, often I receive a scintillating response.
For me, 50 and 90 have been opportunities to learn new things. I’m delighted to share my experiences, but strongly advise that you don’t seek to fly with me.
Keith, thank you. I mention below that in his late 50s (and then with increasing enthusiasm after that), my own dad became more and more engaged in and adept at the world of computers and the internet.
He was born in 1925, so he was about ten years older than you when computers and internet use became practical and accessible. "Kids these days" have never known a world without portable devices and always-on communication and connections. But anyone from the Boomer era [me] onward learned to use computers after already learning a lot of other things.
I wrote about my own process of discovery back in 1982, in an article that was one of the first pieces in the non-specialist press about the excitement of personal computing.
Now, on eyesight and aviation: Yes, for people who can't see very well, this is not the right pursuit. (As I think we wrote in the 'Our Towns' book, Deb's distance vision is so bad that when flying into a small airport I'd say something like, "OK, do you see the runway?" And she'd say something like "Of course not" or "Where??")
I don't know whether the Air Force still insists that pilot-trainees have "perfect" vision *without* glasses. In all the rest of the flying world, people wear corrective-lenses glasses, or contact lenses, all the time. (I wear glasses for: driving at night; reading; and flying a plane.)
I'm going to remember this 20 years from now when I hit 90! By the way, Keith, I suspect you're going to live well beyond 100. You've got that special stuff that keeps centenarians going (my cousin once removed, Ruth Hornbein Kahn Stoveroff and yet a third husband whose last name I forgot, who lived to 104, was a major figure in Buffalo NY for over 70 years). Her brother, noted Denver architect Victor Hornbein, probably would have made it had he not been an avid smoker. (Ruth's marriages all ended due to death of spouse--no divorces. The first marriage lasted 49 years. The obit is wonderful but behind a paywall.)
I know that there are actual fact-based studies of what I'm about to say, but: My personal observation is of the loose-at-best connection between "how people live," and "how long they live."
For instance: Last month I wrote about the death of Charlie Peters, my original mentor in journalism. https://fallows.substack.com/p/thankful-for-charlie-peters Charlie was born within a few months of my own father, in the 1920s. If you'd had to be which would outlive the other, the odds would have been on my dad. A varsity multi-sport athlete in high school and college. An avid tennis player and cyclist through the rest of his life. Never overweight. Never smoked. Loved a martini but just one. And so on.
Charlie Peters was different on just about every count. But he outlasted my dad by more than 15 years. Similarly: Jimmy Carter's mother, Lillian, lived until age 85. But Carter's father, and both of his siblings, died of pancreatic cancer in their 50s. Jimmy Carter is obviously near the end, but he is in his 100th year.
We all do what we can, just 'Fate is the Hunter' and so on.
You can only control the stuff that you can control. You can't control the presence of cancer genes. When I began last winter reading his book on his pioneering climb of Everest, the first via the West Ridge (with Willi Unsoeld), I assumed that my 92 year old cousin, Tom Hornbein, wasn't going to die any time soon. After all, my brother, reasonably fit, and 20 years younger than Tom, had had trouble keeping up with him, hiking probably in Estes Park. And there was Ruth Hornbein Kahn etc's (not a sister, but probably a double cousin) having made it to 104.
I was determined to learn enough about mountaineering--whcih I'd never been interested in--to talk intelligently with Tom about his accomplishment, so I read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and parts of a couple of other books. I reread Everest: The West Ridge, and Into Thin Air. (There is a Hornbein Couloir close to Everest's summit.) In early May, I finally sensed myself getting to a point where I was ready to talk to Tom. I compulsively googled--just Hornbein, as he's always the first that comes up--and got an obit. He'd died a couple of days earlier, of leukemia.
I do think that had she not had MS, my mother might have been a centenarian. Despite the MS, she looked youthful, and acted as youthful as someone so crippled could. And although she had to be helped onto the tricycle, she rode it until the end, having put 5500 miles on it in 17 years. And her sister, my aunt Rose, made it to 90--despite being a couch potato and having a horrible but fun diet. I also imagine that she would otherwise have made it to 100.
There is something special about Jimmy C in the way he approaches the world, and himself. It seems to me like after his presidency he became a giver to the world, kind of the opposite of being self absorbed, and thinking about that, I find myself not surprised that he reached his hundred. (On the other hand I don't know how in hell Henry Kissinger got there, and the mother of his children is 98 or 99, so they will probably have genetics going for them.)
I think what you're missing is that there are a number of influences on the age a person reaches--some of which we can control to varying extents, and others over which we have no control.
David I don’t smoke, one beer at dinner, an hour of PT nightly while watching DVDs (and VHSs), and keeping my blood boiling with commentaries on Heather’s LFAA, the NYT, and elsewhere.
Keith, I would have totally assumed you don't smoke had I thought about it. I'm not surprised about the PT nightly, and I kind of figured your reading and mine would be somewhat similar.
In my late 50s, I learned to build kitchen cabinets. First in a new kitchen in an addition to our house. Then, ten years later, in our new house. Finally, two years ago, I made cabinets for our daughter's old, but new to her, house. Learning a new skill is fun and satisfying. In my case, it saved a lot of money.
Very nice, thank you. My area of least overall competence is in carpentry. (I *do* know how to do electric work, though, and in a pinch some plumbing. And in 25 years as a small-plane owner, I've learned a lot about trouble-shooting its engine.) So I am all the more impressed by this kind of learning.
I've never thought of learning to fly, and I'm now 71 years old, but I read this story, and think, why not? I'm ordering Chovanec's book to see if it might be of interest. Of course, when he mentions Harrison Ford, I remember the time Ford crashed on a golf course (and safely walked away). Gives me pause!
Patrick's book will give you a very good idea of the practical specifics, and the inner intellectual and emotional developments, that go into learning to fly. I think you'll find it entertaining and instructive.
On flying-and-age: It's complicated, and I think aviation has handled this reality better than most other institutions. The main points:
* A pilot certificate in theory has "lifetime validity." Once a pilot, always a pilot!
* But in order to "exercise the privileges" of the certificate — to fly, legally, and (crucially) to get insurance — you have to keep passing a whole slew of exams and standards. Medical exams, a range of "currency" and "proficiency" checks, etc. I think this system is a model for lots of other realms because, on the one hand, there's no arbitrary cut-off time — but, on the other hand, it's all "performance based." You could keep flying at 100, and there are stories of some people who have done so. But — if they want insurance — they have to keep passing the tests.
* Insurance really is where the rubber-meets-the-road here. It gets harder and harder, and more expensive, to insure a plane *that you own* past age 70. DAMHIK. This is regardless of whether you've ever had any claims, any "incidents," what your ratings and currency-checks are, etc.
* SILVER LINING: The world of "light sport aircraft" is much less expensive, overall much easier to learn (for instance, you generally land at a much lower speed, which is just easier to learn and manage), generally safer (because these aircraft just don't fly in bad weather), and seems to be fun. If you look up some info about it you'll see.
Oh my god! Fate is the Hunter! My dad had a copy of that book that I must have read five times as a young teenager (mid seventies). That aborted flight to Hawaii! And so much more
Yes, it is amazing how much is in that book. (Taj Mahal too.) What impresses me is that it is "adventure" and "suspense" at one level, but so much more.
It was impressive watching and listening to Deb's mom play. People who reach their hundred know how to live. Her coming years are likely to be good, regardless of how many more she has.
72 next month. Serious health problems, but still working. Have started learning Spanish (I live in Denver) and I’m learning to juggle. It makes me smile!
Angie is amazing in that clip. Wish I could play that well.
Thanks a lot!
Lovely, James. And struck a chord (sorry) for me: I retrained in my 40s, did a law degree and bar school (all part-time while working full-time in banking), and I'm now - at the age of 53 - in my sixth year as a barrister. (For non-Brits: that's a particular kind of independent, self-employed trial lawyer. The ones that sometimes wear the silly wigs.) Looking back, what a ludicrous risk that was to run; but it's also a career where you really do never stop learning. Every day, as they say, has been a school day so far, and I can't imagine it being otherwise. Thank goodness. (Although since this is my fourth career - I started out as a reporter! - I may be something of a poster child for taking the long way round...)
Thanks!
Obviously I'm biased, but I do think that starting out as a reporter is ideal preparation for ongoing, lifelong exploration of new themes. (And as I mention in a comment below, a pilot certificate has "lifelong validity." Once a pilot, always a pilot. The same is true of being a reporter, in my view.)
In the annals of strange tales, I actually "read law" for a year at Oxford, and spent lots of time watching the wigged barristers practice their skills at Oxford. That's when I thought I was going to be a lawyer. (After I thought I was going to be a doctor, and before I thought maybe I would be an economist—which I studied in my second year at Oxford, and before I ended up where I should have been all along.)
Glad to hear about your journey.
The world of strange coincidences. I went to Cambridge thinking I might switch to law... and then got sucked into music journalism at the end of my first year and didn’t look back till a decade and a half later, by which time I’d been at the BBC for half a decade.
In fact my time in Cambridge (the early 90s) was spent studying Japanese. And I well recall how stimulating it was at the time to read thoughtful reportage about that wonderful, frustrating, fascinating place from some bloke named James. Always been grateful for that.
Transitioning to the "glass cockpit" / FMC / automated approach & landing on the B737 at age 53 was an eye opener. I had to "unlearn" more than there was to learn. It was the most difficult 6 weeks of my aviation career. All the instructors said, (variations of) "forget yesterday, think about tomorrow." Boy were they right about that!
Ah very interesting. From my amateur perspective: my training through instrument rating had been on vintage-1950s 172s or 182s, where all the navigation was via VORs and NDBs. When we got our first Cirrus in 2000, it was a revolution—but again for me, as an amateur, it was mainly a step forward in convenience. A moving map in the cockpit! Whoa! Versus these tiny dials.
I can only imagine the much more dramatic step-up in complexity in an actual airliner.
Same category of changes for you, except that there was, for us, a major difference; the mult-person crew concept requires (and demands) standardization, coordination and lots of SOP (standard operating procedure). The SOP is the easy part; its the abnormal and emergency stuff that we drill on the most. And as captains, flight management skills which had been undergoing major changes beginning in the mid '80's evolved rapidly throughout the transition to the new generation aircraft across the fleets. Add to this the natural resistance to major changes as we age, a long history of the "old ways" and the decline in brain function compared to the young hotshots who grew up with computers, and you can see why some of developed the "old guy stare".
Nice parallelism with the two stories. Next up is "play to your strengths." Every institution we've passed through since kindergarten has tried to discover what we're bad at and make us better. Why not focus on what we're good at and do it more often? Of course, it goes deeper than skill. Your strengths are the activities that make you feel strong, that make you feel glad to be doing them, that make you want to do more. Like that wonderful moment when work becomes fun, and they actually pay you, too!?!
Bill, thank you. Yes, in keeping with the endless principle of "everything that matters is contradictory," I agree on the "play to your strengths" point too.
I think that is an advantage of our mutual trade as writers. In principle, this is a realm in which we can keep getting better over time. We all know of examples of writers who burned out early, but we also know contrary examples. And, as mentioned below, a virtue of the writing/reporting life is that you're positioned, or forced, to continue to learn new things.
Best of both worlds! Except for the actual nightmare-of-writing part.
Love it. What a sweet story. Play on, Angie! You are an inspiration to all of us!
Thank you. She is indeed. (And how many people can say that about their mother-in-law! )
Brava, Angie. Wonderfully inspiring.
I have my 18th birthday at the end of next month (which is to say, I turn 72). Thinking of taking up uilleann pipes. How hard can it be?
I love the 18th birthday calculation! Will pass these wishes to Angie.
I'm 71, so I guess I'm sort of in the middle of this pack. I live near an airport, and I often look up in the air and remind myself of the dreams I had when I was young: dreams like piloting and even owning an airplane. Then my mind quickly clicks in: "Yeah, sure - at your age?"
After 3 years of retirement, I returned to the classroom in 2021 for one more year of teaching math to high school students. Obviously the first thought to cross my mind was, "Do I still have what it takes?" Based on subjective (grades) and objective (standardized tests) criteria, I think I managed to pull it off. I'm not eager to return to that rigor, but I believe I could if I chose to.
Reading this article encourages fanciful thoughts about learning more, like returning to college to earn another degree, or learning something else, entirely outside my comfort zone. There are, of course, myriad options. But then I realize I haven't yet had my morning nap, the driveway is in need of shoveling, it's almost time for lunch, and it's pure joy to look out over this wintry landscape.
I'm grateful that I learned one thing that many never do: that life is much too important to be taken seriously. Thanks for a great article!
Thomas, thank you very much.
On this same theme, there are various "new" things I am considering. I played the piano a fair amount as a kid and through high school, but have barely done it at all from the college years onward. That's a part of my life I'd like to get back, and it has been long enough that it would be "new." Also, since I have spent all the intervening years with essentially 20 hours a day typing on a keyboard, at least my fingers still work. And various other possibilities for later discussion.
Again, appreciate it.
Thanks Jim! This is really interesting! I took my niece for a couple of handfuls of flying lessons every now and then beginning when she was 7. I also got lessons when she did. Her first lesson, the instructor said she did so well with the take-off and landing that he gave her an extra take-off and landing.
A decade after those first lessons, during a semester abroad, she paraglided with an instructor high above Melbourne, Australia. Some years later, she thanked me for having gotten her those lessons, telling me that she new I did it to give her a source of extra self confidence.
Funny, I don't even remember my own take-off and landings, except that I remember that it was uneventful.
I have a much more detailed memory of advanced driving school at Skip Barber in Lime Rock, CT, midway through my 50s. There, I had a wonderful sense of picking up new skills (funny, now, as I write this, some of the feel of the flying lessons is coming back to me). Here's that story (FYI: "hoon" is car-speak for someone who drives fast and hard. It can also be used as a verb.) https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2009/10/david-holzman-goes-to-the-skip-barber-shop/
David, thank you, and thanks for the link to this delightful car piece.
(On something I learned this morning: had never heard the term 'hoon.')
You're most welcome for all! I got such intellectual pleasure from this latest Breaking the News!
At 50 learning to fly must be an exhilarating new experience. For me, who was dumped from AFROTC for flunking the depth perception test, it did not seem a viable alternative.
I was 50 in 1983. For me, the new learning experience was computers. Writing a book on floppy discs was a new and, on occasion, bewildering experience.
Later, for one who hugged his Encyclopedia Britannica, the prospect of Internet access to diverse sources was thrilling. In 2000 the options were limited. I found that a guy at Yale, mostly in his spare time, posted a website with marvelous historical references.
At 90 I find that I can easily post commentaries on the NYT website and, when I post on Jim’s Substack blog, often I receive a scintillating response.
For me, 50 and 90 have been opportunities to learn new things. I’m delighted to share my experiences, but strongly advise that you don’t seek to fly with me.
Keith, thank you. I mention below that in his late 50s (and then with increasing enthusiasm after that), my own dad became more and more engaged in and adept at the world of computers and the internet.
He was born in 1925, so he was about ten years older than you when computers and internet use became practical and accessible. "Kids these days" have never known a world without portable devices and always-on communication and connections. But anyone from the Boomer era [me] onward learned to use computers after already learning a lot of other things.
I wrote about my own process of discovery back in 1982, in an article that was one of the first pieces in the non-specialist press about the excitement of personal computing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/07/living-with-a-computer/306063/
Now, on eyesight and aviation: Yes, for people who can't see very well, this is not the right pursuit. (As I think we wrote in the 'Our Towns' book, Deb's distance vision is so bad that when flying into a small airport I'd say something like, "OK, do you see the runway?" And she'd say something like "Of course not" or "Where??")
I don't know whether the Air Force still insists that pilot-trainees have "perfect" vision *without* glasses. In all the rest of the flying world, people wear corrective-lenses glasses, or contact lenses, all the time. (I wear glasses for: driving at night; reading; and flying a plane.)
I'm going to remember this 20 years from now when I hit 90! By the way, Keith, I suspect you're going to live well beyond 100. You've got that special stuff that keeps centenarians going (my cousin once removed, Ruth Hornbein Kahn Stoveroff and yet a third husband whose last name I forgot, who lived to 104, was a major figure in Buffalo NY for over 70 years). Her brother, noted Denver architect Victor Hornbein, probably would have made it had he not been an avid smoker. (Ruth's marriages all ended due to death of spouse--no divorces. The first marriage lasted 49 years. The obit is wonderful but behind a paywall.)
I will try to keep all this in mind too!
I know that there are actual fact-based studies of what I'm about to say, but: My personal observation is of the loose-at-best connection between "how people live," and "how long they live."
For instance: Last month I wrote about the death of Charlie Peters, my original mentor in journalism. https://fallows.substack.com/p/thankful-for-charlie-peters Charlie was born within a few months of my own father, in the 1920s. If you'd had to be which would outlive the other, the odds would have been on my dad. A varsity multi-sport athlete in high school and college. An avid tennis player and cyclist through the rest of his life. Never overweight. Never smoked. Loved a martini but just one. And so on.
Charlie Peters was different on just about every count. But he outlasted my dad by more than 15 years. Similarly: Jimmy Carter's mother, Lillian, lived until age 85. But Carter's father, and both of his siblings, died of pancreatic cancer in their 50s. Jimmy Carter is obviously near the end, but he is in his 100th year.
We all do what we can, just 'Fate is the Hunter' and so on.
You can only control the stuff that you can control. You can't control the presence of cancer genes. When I began last winter reading his book on his pioneering climb of Everest, the first via the West Ridge (with Willi Unsoeld), I assumed that my 92 year old cousin, Tom Hornbein, wasn't going to die any time soon. After all, my brother, reasonably fit, and 20 years younger than Tom, had had trouble keeping up with him, hiking probably in Estes Park. And there was Ruth Hornbein Kahn etc's (not a sister, but probably a double cousin) having made it to 104.
I was determined to learn enough about mountaineering--whcih I'd never been interested in--to talk intelligently with Tom about his accomplishment, so I read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and parts of a couple of other books. I reread Everest: The West Ridge, and Into Thin Air. (There is a Hornbein Couloir close to Everest's summit.) In early May, I finally sensed myself getting to a point where I was ready to talk to Tom. I compulsively googled--just Hornbein, as he's always the first that comes up--and got an obit. He'd died a couple of days earlier, of leukemia.
I do think that had she not had MS, my mother might have been a centenarian. Despite the MS, she looked youthful, and acted as youthful as someone so crippled could. And although she had to be helped onto the tricycle, she rode it until the end, having put 5500 miles on it in 17 years. And her sister, my aunt Rose, made it to 90--despite being a couch potato and having a horrible but fun diet. I also imagine that she would otherwise have made it to 100.
There is something special about Jimmy C in the way he approaches the world, and himself. It seems to me like after his presidency he became a giver to the world, kind of the opposite of being self absorbed, and thinking about that, I find myself not surprised that he reached his hundred. (On the other hand I don't know how in hell Henry Kissinger got there, and the mother of his children is 98 or 99, so they will probably have genetics going for them.)
I think what you're missing is that there are a number of influences on the age a person reaches--some of which we can control to varying extents, and others over which we have no control.
I do think that my mother had a special personality that she might have ridden to 100, along with good genetics absent the MS. Here's a very brief portrait of her from a toddler's eye view, from the days before the MS. https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2020/0805/Heeding-her-invitation-six-decades-later
David I don’t smoke, one beer at dinner, an hour of PT nightly while watching DVDs (and VHSs), and keeping my blood boiling with commentaries on Heather’s LFAA, the NYT, and elsewhere.
Family friends, and feisty—FFF!
Keith, I would have totally assumed you don't smoke had I thought about it. I'm not surprised about the PT nightly, and I kind of figured your reading and mine would be somewhat similar.
In my late 50s, I learned to build kitchen cabinets. First in a new kitchen in an addition to our house. Then, ten years later, in our new house. Finally, two years ago, I made cabinets for our daughter's old, but new to her, house. Learning a new skill is fun and satisfying. In my case, it saved a lot of money.
Very nice, thank you. My area of least overall competence is in carpentry. (I *do* know how to do electric work, though, and in a pinch some plumbing. And in 25 years as a small-plane owner, I've learned a lot about trouble-shooting its engine.) So I am all the more impressed by this kind of learning.
I've never thought of learning to fly, and I'm now 71 years old, but I read this story, and think, why not? I'm ordering Chovanec's book to see if it might be of interest. Of course, when he mentions Harrison Ford, I remember the time Ford crashed on a golf course (and safely walked away). Gives me pause!
Patrick's book will give you a very good idea of the practical specifics, and the inner intellectual and emotional developments, that go into learning to fly. I think you'll find it entertaining and instructive.
On flying-and-age: It's complicated, and I think aviation has handled this reality better than most other institutions. The main points:
* A pilot certificate in theory has "lifetime validity." Once a pilot, always a pilot!
* But in order to "exercise the privileges" of the certificate — to fly, legally, and (crucially) to get insurance — you have to keep passing a whole slew of exams and standards. Medical exams, a range of "currency" and "proficiency" checks, etc. I think this system is a model for lots of other realms because, on the one hand, there's no arbitrary cut-off time — but, on the other hand, it's all "performance based." You could keep flying at 100, and there are stories of some people who have done so. But — if they want insurance — they have to keep passing the tests.
* Insurance really is where the rubber-meets-the-road here. It gets harder and harder, and more expensive, to insure a plane *that you own* past age 70. DAMHIK. This is regardless of whether you've ever had any claims, any "incidents," what your ratings and currency-checks are, etc.
* SILVER LINING: The world of "light sport aircraft" is much less expensive, overall much easier to learn (for instance, you generally land at a much lower speed, which is just easier to learn and manage), generally safer (because these aircraft just don't fly in bad weather), and seems to be fun. If you look up some info about it you'll see.
I have not tried this year, but who knows.
If I, at 70, can keep running every day with my dog, you can learn to fly. Enjoy!
Oh my god! Fate is the Hunter! My dad had a copy of that book that I must have read five times as a young teenager (mid seventies). That aborted flight to Hawaii! And so much more
Yes, it is amazing how much is in that book. (Taj Mahal too.) What impresses me is that it is "adventure" and "suspense" at one level, but so much more.
Wasn't there a near miss with the Taj Mahal too?
As I continue to get older (thank God !) I have developed what I think is a good (although likely not original) axiom for approaching aging:
"Keep moving forward."
Thank you — that, and one of my dad's favorites, "consider the alternative" !
Thanks, Jim. Wonderful, inspiring stories. All the best to Deb’s mom.
Phil, thank youl Deb has told her abou your note, and she was honored and touched.
It was impressive watching and listening to Deb's mom play. People who reach their hundred know how to live. Her coming years are likely to be good, regardless of how many more she has.
David, thank you. Very graciously put.