You and I are Too Old to Melt Into the Recliners: It's Time to Kick Out the Excuses and Kickstart Our Lives

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Inside Weather on Unsplash

Life is just SOOOO hard. Let’s settle in for more reruns of Andy of Mayberry, ‘kay?

Dear Reader: As you and I ease into the new year, I have a challenge for you. Are you going to get out and get active? I met some very cool people at an outfitter’s conference in December, and have been learning about what many are doing Stateside to make the wilderness much more available to us as we age. My suggestions are just that, suggestions. Up to you to do the research to see what interests you.

More reruns?

Nope.

Not on your life.

I see so much about how stressed out folks are that they just can’t. They need couch time.

Well, the way I see it, live it and love it, the more I head out, the more I push myself into places of deep discomfort, the less I need a couch.

Well, okay, barring the fact that right now I’m sleeping on mine because my house is under construction, and my bed is in pieces against my office wall.

There’s that. However…

I love relaxation as much as anyone, but I prefer it after I’ve exerted myself, not as a way to avoid exerting myself.

While these past eighteen months have involved a great deal of unwanted couch time because of seven major surgeries (and no other furniture in the house, long story), as I’ve gotten slowly back on my feet, I am getting seriously re-energized to get back out and active.

Both feet had reconstructive surgery, so I had an excuse. That said, what’s everyone else’s?

You really learn to appreciate body agency and mobility if you’ve lost it. After twelve years of serious adventure travel all over the world, not only do I miss it, I really miss that wonderful feeling of being so damned tired I can’t even get all the way inside my tent.

The author, 65, after summitting Mt. Kenya, 2018

Such luxuries are earned. That kind of gorgeous exhaustion comes of effort, not sidestepping exertion and adventure.

Now. Am I saying you should throw yourself wholesale into adventure travel like my buddy

Randy Roig

and his wife? Nope.

I am saying that life doesn’t happen on the couch, in the recliner, sitting for hours on end passively being entertained.

BTW, Randy is heading to Central Asia this summer for weeks on end. Sound good to you? Does to me.

Just saying, Randy and his wife, in their seventies, share a slew of replaced joints between them and plenty of injuries. Doesn’t slow them down. If anything, the heightened awareness of an aging body pushes them out the door just as it does me.

Time’s a wastin.’

Life doesn’t happen while we’re watching other people living theirs on screen, whether real or imaginary.

Life doesn’t happen for us if all we do is armchair travel. It just passes us by.

That’s just one reason why I finally canned my deep and abiding love of football, because it just eats up too much butt time during the best months of the year.

There are times, like the recent four days an ice storm locked the lot of us in the Pacific Northwest inside for sheer safety. There was nowhere to walk without threat of a serious fall, and nobody to help you if you skidded downhill.

But that’s a blip in the arc of a long life.

There are those of us whose life conditions, say a partner with a debilitating disease, or we are severely ill or disabled, or some situation prevents us from wandering. Even locally. This isn’t that article. I acknowledge this reality among some of my long-term readers and those new to my work.

This IS an article for those who have the full use of their bodies, who are facing decades ahead. Instead of planning some kind of lively adventure, they are spending endless days like warm candle wax, their butts turning into wobbly pillows on their easy chairs.

That will indeed severely disable us eventually. We will lose our strength, find ourselves unable to stand, walk or move without terrible fear of falling. Is that really how we want to live our last years?

I don’t wish for you to reach the end of your natural life and realize, as far too many do, that you coulda, shoulda, woulda while you still had the strength, energy and wherewithal to get out and explore our world.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Some people use certain issues as their excuse to not adventure. Here are a few. I mention these because I have them myself:

Dentures. Yup. I have scared the crap out of plenty of nocturnal animals (including my guides) who stuck their noses under my tent flap before I got my chompers back in. I’ve been known to take two backup sets, given my propensity to break mine on the trail.

Reynaud’s Syndrome. Yup. My hands and feet start to freeze at about sixty degrees. I invested in both down and battery-operated gloves and socks, and never travel without those herbal heating packets. (Please pack them out). No excuse, not even on super-long trips.

I’ve done Kilimanjaro, Everest Base Camp, Macchu Picchu and much more even with this circulatory disorder.

Food allergies. Yup. I can’t stand hot stuff either. Where I travel, chilis are part of life. So I learn the local phrase to ask for food without the chilis. Everyone laughs at me for being a wuss, laughs at my lousy accent, respects me for learning some of their language. Then I get to eat without heat.

If all there is to eat is rice, you learn to eat rice. The rest of the world copes, so please….let’s get over ourselves.

Injuries. Yup. I’ve broken my back, pelvis, elbow, had 22 concussions (so THAT’s what’s wrong with me), bad knees, broken hip, severe arthritis, oh my could I go on. I have a drawer so full of braces and slings that I can barely close it, and I have enough scooters and walkers to open a lending library for my entire neighborhood.

I have thumb braces, wrist braces, back braces, knee braces, arm braces, ankle braces, orthotics, canes, the ugliest orthotic shoes on the planet (I donated those) therapy putty, finger stretchers. I purchase Rocktape in bulk.

Adventure supplies….for the active aging athlete

The supersize version

I just load up on braces and keep going. Besides, when you show up at your airline gate, you get to load up first no matter your boarding order. Think: overhead compartment room over my seat!

Disabilities. Yup. I have a few, including severe migraines. I have to take certain medications along just in case (migraine sufferers, can relate). Pack the meds and go anyway. In fact I find that that more I travel, the more joy I have, the fewer migraines. Funny how that works.

For others, there are people who travel all over while in a wheelchair or with other limitations. And yes, there are some things people with certain disabilities can’t do.

However, there are outfits like Will Colon’s Colorado Jeep Tours down in Cañon City. They’ve created tours where deaf folks can enjoy exactly the same jeep adventure as the hearing via the use of a specialized tablet.

There, my fellow veterans can get out into the wild and on the water with disabilities, and not watch from the shore.

The outdoor world is changing. Arguing that you can’t because X is becoming a specious argument, with folks committed to getting you and me out to play.

I leak/pee often. Yup. I take those diaper panties if I need to, okay? Are we so silly that we would avoid a full life because we’re afraid of a bubble butt? I hiked adult diapers to a remote Greenland adventure so that I could kayak all day.

The author in Greenland at 64. YES I am wearing Depends. Get over it, all right?

That resulted in one of the funniest trips of my life- AND one of the best adventures. Fer crying out loud, people. Get a grip, and stop worrying about how we look. Tours for older people know damned well where every toilet, bush and tree is for us leaky-loos. Their guides are fully aware that we have needs and they plan accordingly. Let’s make this a source of hilarity.

In other words, make fun of it and go have fun in spite of it or even better, because of it.

If I have to pee at night on a camping trip, I use a pee bottle. Fair warning: MARK IT. Another fair warning: make it a screw-top container. You only make those mistakes once. Note to self: do NOT place pee bottle next to water bottle. Just saying.

I’m out of shape. Yup. I wasn’t in shape to do Kilimanjaro when I committed to it, either. Then I spent seven months getting in shape. Most of us don’t start with a huge mountain. Besides, while you don’t have to be a super athlete to do most easy adventures, it does help to be mobile.

Besides, this isn’t “do what I do.” It’s do what you dream of doing. Doesn’t matter what that is. It only matters that you give yourself permission to have options.

Put the damned remote DOWN and start walking your building, doing steps, starting with just one flight a day. Or walk your neighborhood, starting with just your block. Find people who will get out there with you and keep you motivated.

It is remarkable how fast you stop using excuses to sit and start finding excuses to git.

I can’t keep up with younger people. Yup. Neither can I, some of them. Others I leave behind. Either way it’s not a race.

Book with a group like Road Scholar, where you can head out up my way with folks like Oregon River Experience and many other fine adventures. Up here, O.R.E.’s on seven different rivers across multiple states and has lots of other activities that can easily be scaled to a slower pace.

Surrounded by oldsters like ourselves, you don’t feel like you have to prove yourself against folks a third your age.

The point is to get out, get going, get active and get excited about life as you age.

Oh, and my fave love-to-hate excuse?

I’m Too Old to Do This.

NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.

Photo by Seth Doyle on Unsplash

I’ve never said it (except in jest), but I hear it all the time.

This is the worst weak-ass, mewling excuse there is. Worse because I hear people in their thirties, forties and fifties say it.

Unless you have succeeded in debilitating yourself beyond redemption, and some have, there is no reason why you can’t make a simple decision and act on it.

What, you’re going to spend the next forty+ years watching a screen and turning into those humans in the Pixar movie Wall-E? We’re already getting there here in the US. We don’t have to be. YOU don’t have to be.

All rights Walt Disney World

My buddy Penny Nelson never set foot in a gym before 74. Now she’s studying to be a fitness trainer years later. You start where you are and you build slowly.

The research backs me up here: start at 90, doesn’t matter. The body responds and gives you options.

Even better, there are so many things to do right near you, whether it’s a park walk or a short hike, which may well become a habit. That habit may lead to a whole new life. Doors begin to open that you never imagined.

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Like

Jan M. Flynn

and me, return to horse riding. Return to other dreams you may have left behind. Learn to ride a Harley. Pick up kayaking. Doesn’t matter.

What does matter is to fill your life and the time left to you with adventures that YOU live, not adventures lived by real or fictional characters who chew up the last of your life while you melt into the couch.

How do you even begin?

Small. Little steps lead to very big things. For example:

THIS YEAR, 2024, I commit to walking every day, as far as I can until I hit (name your goal).

THIS YEAR, 2024, I commit to making small, meaningful changes in my diet to improve my health.

THIS Year, 2024, I commit to finding friends who support my health journey. People who do what I hope to do.

Or all three. Or others. Doesn’t matter. The point is that if you crave the wide world, it craves you back. There is no reason to recline your way through the last three decades of your life watching other people do interesting things.

Let’s have you be that gramma/grampy about whom the kids and grandkids say,

Where the hell is s/he THIS time?

Let’s play.

The author, 63, collecting a camel kiss in Hurgadah, Egypt

Thank you for spending a few minutes with me today. I hope that you’re moved to get out and play this year, in whatever way serves you. Be it pickleball or football or bowling, I don’t care. I only wish you an active, energetic life on your terms, one which doesn’t leave you with regrets for what could have been. If this piece was valuable, please consider

If you know people who are sinking into the quicksand of their furniture and who might be moved with this article, please also consider

Either way, I hope your 2024 is full of new and wonderful things which leave you happily exhausted.