Sunday Quote: October 30, 2011
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is...
Ouch: Another story about scaling back without stopping
Earlier this week we noted a story about the often painful transition to a less aggressive, less violent, less taxing and (alas) usually less adrenaline-pumping activity. It’s not something we like to dwell on, but it’s worth paying attention to because most of us will have to make that shift,...
Bamboozling booze guidance for old Brits
Health advice used to be like cheap ball caps: one size fit all. Over the years, it has become more discriminating, with guidance that differentiates between ages, genders, ethnicity and more. And in the decades ahead, we’ll be making even finer cuts. Your doctor will run a DNA scan...
Denial, bargaining, resignation: making the transition to (somewhat) tamer pursuits
At some point, each of us decides to set aside the things of a child and pick up the things of a being with weak knees and occasional shooting neck pains. Often there’s a watershed moment. (“Mark the date and time. That was my last roller-coaster.”) More often, the...
Sunday Quote: October 23, 2011
“If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.” –Warren Miller, the godfather of sports action films
The New Apple iPod Nano (vs. Motorola’s MotoACTV)
Recreati wouldn’t normally review consumer electronics, but we’re making an exception for the new Apple iPod Nano. (Close readers will note that we’re capitalizing Nano even though Apple doesn’t. In English, the proper name of a thing is capitalized. We’ll bend on the intra-capitalization of iPod, but we have...
Car-bike battle continues, this time in print ads. Advantage: bikes.
Cars and bikes need to share the road. It’s the law, and it matters for our health and well-being. And we need both. Sorry, until we figure out something better (sun-powered hover-cars!), we need four wheels and a chassis to plow through the drifts on those frigid dark...
Your National Park Service announces fee-free days for 2012
If you are 62 (or older) and sane, this won’t apply to you, because you already have your $10 lifetime pass for the most astonishing collection of natural wonders on the planet.* For everyone else, the National Park Service has announced a deal that is not quite as unbeatable but...
Put down the ginger curry and applaud Fauja Singh, 100-year-old marathoner
At age 100, British runner Fauja Singh completed Sunday’s Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 8:25:16, placing 3,850 out of 3,855. Which means first that he is a phenomenal athlete and second that five people had to slink home after the race and admit they were beat by someone who was born the...
What Brits call “holiday brain,” Yanks call “the weekend”
That headline might be unnecessarily provocative, but there is a needless breathlessness about the heedlessness of Brits over age 50 in this story in the Daily Mail, which is shocked…shocked…to discover that 13 percent of these blokes and lasses will engage in extreme sports while on vacation…and of...
Sunday Quote: October 16, 2011
“The good of going into the mountains is that life is reconsidered. “ ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (We snatched this quote from the blog of Tom Ryan, a middle-aged Massachusetts journalist who hiked all 48 of the 4,000-foot peaks in the White Mountains....
Exercise and weight loss: Do these running shorts make me look “skinny fat”?
Over the past month or so, the web has blessed us with a handful of articles on the limited effect that exercise—especially running—can have on weight loss. Some of the arguments are simplistic (albeit accurate enough): people who work out a lot tend to eat...
