Originally Posted by B. Carfree

It's beyond sad how unfit our youth are. We are seeing their sedentary lifestyles show up in morbidity/mortality reports. The youngest of the baby boomers probably represent the end of the ever-increasing life expectancy that we have come to take for granted. We are starting to see those numbers begin to flatten and soon they will go down. In fact, for uneducated whites, life expectancy is already falling. For uneducated blacks and latinos, it is flattened. Next up (well, down, actually): educated minorities, followed by everyone.

We (chronologically) old folks have lived through the second bike boom ('60s/'70s), the running boom, Jane Fonda's aerobics thing, two periods of increased interest in swimming (Spitz era and the current one) and are leading the third bike boom. Most of us have participated in at least a couple of these prolonged fads in getting exercise. Meanwhile, the generation that followed the boomers has been spending its time sitting still. They and their children have no way to understand from experience why we exercise. My wife and I call them the Lost Generation.