hi staep, good point on the hiking thing, we have friends who are serious hikers and they have become more and more minimalist with age, their small pack weights are impressively low. You know, I very much see your point in terms of as we get older, there is probably more chances that we want to go lighter simply from the "its less work" angle, so we can still do the distances we did when we were younger for less effort, and I certainly see myself going in that direction.

I still think some folks are more resilient, for want of a better word, and I still think that as we get older, we probably on the whole dont put up with stuff that we never thought of when younger, but its also realistic to say that we probably get smarter, so we can choose less stuff etc that will still give us X comfort properly, so maybe better choices with , hopefully, a bit more wiseness.

I guess all I can say is that the folks like you who are older than I am yet are still very active, have always been something that I admire, dont know if admire is the right word, but Ive always thought it was cool to see "old folks" out doing stuff, better than me often, when I was in my 20s or 30s or whatever--so bottom line, its neat and I guess a good example, to see folks older than oneself doing self supported activities, and something Ive always thought, "well, I want to that active at X age" in my future.

dont know if that comes across wrong (hope it doesnt) but this is one aspect of bicycling that I love, that if one stays active doing it, its certainly a sport or activity that one can do well into geezerdom (as you put it, which made me chuckle). Especially in Europe, I love seeing folks much older than you are tooling around on their bikes in daily use, or on bike trips or whatever.

well , off to work, its a bit above freezing today again, nice break from the -10c stuff we've been getting lately, cheers