How we age!

[Kirbstone]

Yes, I have been organizing these denim and cord skirts to look good as I stride around. Used to thrash out my Levis between the legs all the time, and I refuse to wear funny shorts. I am a lot fitter than my much younger doctor! I met up with him walking back from the supermarket one day and had slow down to about half speed as we talked. I guess doctoring is ironically a pretty unhealthy sedentary occupation!

Computer illiteracy again. I only meant to quote the Doctoring being a sedentary occupation bit.

My father, who was a Medic before me remarked about that in his words: 'Cessation of sport and continuance of the eating that supported it results in rapid flabbinem',.....He was quite a raconteur and after-dinner speaker, so he had a way with words.

His meaning is quite clear. Those whose occupations are sedentary, (and that means most professionals) must continue to purposely exercise regularly in order to avoid progressive weight gain, premature loss of mobility and other nasties associated with that.
He had a blind spot, though....smoking. He was rarely photographed without a cigarette on his person, and the pockets of his jackets were all burnt by pipe embers where he tucked them away. Although he remained a very fine golfer to the end, he was struck down by lung cancer and teed off on the Heavenly Golf Course at age 70, just.

[rick401r]

Wow, that's a really TERRIFIC switch. Victoria's Secret started in business carrying ultimate intimates and very fancy women's clothes. To see them now carrying CARGO Skirts is a terrific thing to see. They see the burgeoning Men's skirt market and are hopping in with uni-sex skirts. That's really great to see.

Well, the cargo skirt arrived yesterday in the mail. It didn't work out. It was so short I risked exposure just standing upright. I had to send it back. The good news is I ordered a stretch denim pencil skirt in it's place.

[Since1982]

Good choice Rick, I have about 7 stretch denim pencil skirts. Lovem!

[Jack Williams]

Strangely, I also ordered a cargo skirt, and had to send it back because it was too short!

[Since1982]

He looked at me closely ... and then that ugly, old, bald, wrinkled, fat ass, gray-haired decrepit son-of-a-***** asked, "What did you teach?"

Did you laugh?

Only for a little while... Thinking of his graduating in 1965 and remembering I graduated HS in 1960 and my first College degree in 1965 after a layoff from 1961 to 62..Did some skin diving in the Bahamas and Grand Cayman before getting my nose back to the grindstone...

[Jack Williams]

Gosh! You guys are much more educated than me! I'm only a lowly electronics tech!
But I did do a lot of traveling in the '60s and '70s. Being a versatile tech is a really good portable occupation, so I was able to earn good money wherever I went. And even today I am in demand although I am supposed to be "retired".
I have actually earned an enviable reputation with my own designed valve amps etc. "The World' best sounding amps" says "The Art of Sound" site. So I must be doing something right.

[Jack Williams]

Actually it was just the solid state that I retired. Only do the tube gear these days. All the guys tend to specialize anyway now. My friend Chitra along the road used to fix anything, even TVs, which I never ever did. Now he just does computers. We know who to take a car radio to, and it's the Rock Shop for your solid state amp, and of course all the muso gear.I do in fact have a photo of the Rock Shop.
In London I did just reel-to-reels for a year. "Tape Recorder Engineer to the Stars"! Mick Jagger and all those guys brought them in to me. They're all my age of course, and still truck'n like me. Saw them on stage here in Auckland quite recently in fact. Just as good as ever.
One can also work oneself out of a job a bit. At one time I had a heap of tube Jukebox amps to do. Seeburg. Wurlitzer' Rock-Ola, Ami. There's a bit of nostalgia for you! Once you get modern capacitors into those kinds of things they tend to go forever. And there are only a given number of those, so once they were all done, that was it. Just see the occasional one now.

[rick401r]

Good choice Rick, I have about 7 stretch denim pencil skirts. Lovem!

I got my denim pencil skirt yesterday from Victoria's Secret. Fits nice in the waist, length is good (just above the knee), but it's loose in the hips. Still a nice skirt.

[Jack Williams]

It is of course not possible to actually WALK in a pencil skirt, but in a wheelchair that is academic. Which is why there are no photos of walking.

[Since1982]

Jack said: It is of course not possible to actually WALK in a pencil skirt, but in a wheelchair that is academic.

I'm confused, why would it be impossible to walk in a STRETCH denim pencil skirt??? It STRETCHES. With ME, walking is what I do whenever I'm NOT IN my house. My wheelchair is only used in my house mostly at the computer to the kitchen or to bed at night. Strange the way some people come up with ideas about how others live.

Does anyone else have a problem walking in a pencil skirt? I think Jack may be confusing a Pencil skirt with a Hobble Skirt, which IS nearly impossible to walk in and popular from what I see, with the bondage and punishment gang. I don't believe we have any of those here.

[Kirbstone]

I can describe quite another form of 'bondage & punishment' which I endured today, together with eight other like-minded old friends.

We motored and towed our boat up N.W. 120 miles to the totally delightful little town of Carrick-on-Shannon to row in a timed 'Head of the River' there.
The morning was cloudless bright spring sunshine and 11-12 Celsius/50-odd Fahrenheit. We all got boated by 10.30 am and rowed down to the start, some 5Km. downstream to an assembly area. Our event was timed to start at 11.30. Letting crews off at approx. 10 second intervals gets nearly 200 crews underway in little over half an hour normally. This makes for exciting rowing with lots of overtaking going on and coxing skills taxed to the limit.
11.30 came and went with no sign of crews being started. A further hour went by, during which the freshening headwind brought the first of several squally icy rain & hail showers with a marked temperature drop and wind chill added. The starters managed to get a few crews going with far too long an interval between them, and as we were no. 49, we decided that nine wet and cold 60+ year-olds were getting hypothermic, sitting in the boat for almost two hours already, so we extricated ourselves from the glut of waiting crews and powered past the starters on our own bat.

As we passed the timing launch they grumbled that we should have waited our turn 'like everyone else', to which our cox bellowed that they could stuff their organisation up their jumpers and we were going home.
We had a cracking 5Km row as it happened mostly into the teeth of an icy blast, chop and current, arriving back at the slips wet & cold but delighted with the exhilarating row....with our footwells swimming in splash water. Fortunately modern shells are 60 foot long boyancy chambers punctuated only by eight footwells for the rowers and one sitting place for the cox.(who got a wet bum !)
Later on, to my surprise I learned that they DID take our time and we won the Masters' Eights Pennant.

Tom K

[Jack Williams]

Gosh, if I were your age I'd have a good go at that.

[Kirbstone]

You would indeed, Jack. One Belfast crew had three 76 year-olds in it. They also broke ranks and followed us home ahead of their 'official' start time, but we had left them a long way behind and didn't see them.
Our only bit of fun was with a young University eight which had a totally inexperienced girl coxing them. They went wildly off course twice, and only succeeded in overtaking us old lags in the final meters of the course. We were fired up at that stage, though tired, and we made it as difficult as possible for them. Had they been well coxed they would have left us wallowing in their wake early on.
Our cox (who also coxed me to my first rowing successes as a 19 year-old) made no mistake!!

[Since1982]

But Kirb, that was all self-punishment wasn't it? No one tied you to the boats or whipped you into a frenzy of paddling, rowing or towing. You gotta watch them 76 year olders. They might start falling overboard and leaving bits and pieces in the wake.

[Kirbstone]

Fact is, it's great sport normally. But participants place themselves at the mercy of inept event organisers in cold wintery conditions like we had yesterday.
There were some one thousand competitors of all ages on the water in 196 crews of all sizes, all hoping to be started in rapid succession following the warm-up row down to the start. Instead everyone got freezing cold and impatient to get going. It was us oldies who had the experience to tell the organisers to stuff it.
The said 76 year olds have been competing regularly for as long as I can remember....They're at it longer than me!, so they're all pretty reliable and most unlikely to throw a wobbly and fall out of their boat.
The social gatherings after the events are quite wonderful, too.
In one Month we are off up to Belfast to row in their similar event on the Lagan....4.5 Kms from the old Titanic Dock upstream to just below the first wier. Needless to say, after the event their hospitality is not to be missed, and I will doss with an old rowing friend there that night so I don't have to drive the 130 miles home