New user at age 79

[SuperSport]

1 hour ago, Rehab1 said:

Me as well....I hope!

I own a Harley Trike so it is both safe and allows me to take trips with my wheel stored in the luggage compartment.

That's Awesome!    I hope I don't NEED to do that anytime soon, but it's definitely an option for future (I'm guessing it was a Choice for you).  There is nothing quite like the wind in your hair & face while riding down the highway.  I would imagine you will be able to ride this as long as you are able to drive.

[Rehab1]

36 minutes ago, SuperSport said:

That's Awesome!    I hope I don't NEED to do that anytime soon, but it's definitely an option for future (I'm guessing it was a Choice for you).  There is nothing quite like the wind in your hair & face while riding down the highway.  I would imagine you will be able to ride this as long as you are able to drive.

Oh I still ride my Suzuki 200 on trails but in order to get my wife to participate I went with the trike.

[modifry]

Notaguru - Go for it, but be careful  I'm 63 and like you I rode a regular unicycle when I was a teenager.  And like you I wondered if that experience, even though it was long ago, would make learning to ride my Ninebot One E easier, and I have to say I think it has. 

I was very cautious in the beginning and rode back and forth in a hallway for 5-10 minutes a day for maybe 2 weeks, but after the first couple days I didn't seem to be getting any better.  I read somewhere that people recommended learning on grass (to minimize the damage when you fall).  I took it out in the back yard and immediately rode the length of the yard with no problem.  Wow!  I was surprised.  After just a couple round trips in the yard I went out on the street (dead end, no traffic) and rode a good half mile on my first "road trip".  So in total I probably spent an hour or hour and a half learning to balance before my first street ride and looking back I think I could have done it sooner.

I've now put about 250 miles on my Ninebot and have fallen off twice but no injuries, because I don't usually ride fast and both times I "stepped off" and let the wheel crash by itself.  Once was on grass after a rain and the wheel fell into a soft spot.  Another time my shoulder hit one of the posts holding up an awning at the elementary school across the street (I was using the row of 9 or 10 posts for slalom practice!).  I now try to ride 5 or 6 miles at a time through my neighborhood when the weather is nice, which right now is almost every day.

Like some others have mentioned, I had trouble learning to get on the darned thing, and that's also the only time I've received any injuries.  I always put my right foot on first and jump up with the left, and sometimes my left toe would catch the pedal on the way up and tip the wheel over, and my ankle would scrap against the edge of the pedal.  Ouch!  I have found that wearing high-top tennis shoes has helped prevent those kinds of injuries and I also like the ankle support they provide.

[SuperSport]

Great advice @modifry  

[Paddylaz]

On 27/04/2017 at 2:04 PM, Rehab1 said:

Me as well....I hope!

I own a Harley Trike so it is both safe and allows me to take trips with my wheel stored in the luggage compartment.

Awesome. I've always wanted one of those trike things ever since I saw Billy Connolly with his on his tv shows

[Rehab1]

1 hour ago, Paddylaz said:

Awesome. I've always wanted one of those trike things ever since I saw Billy Connolly with his on his tv shows

I just looked him up. His trike is definitely more radical than mine but I have an added bonus!

 

 

[Gimlet]

I'm even more cautious!

I got rid of my Husquvarna 460cc moto x bike and Kawasaki road bike a few years ago and now have Polaris and Arctic Cat quad bikes, both utility but great fun go anywhere vehicles.

Four wheels have got to be safer than three, surely??

[SuperSport]

My Nieces and Nephews have Polaris 850cc 4x4 quads too.  They are so much fun to ride as there are basically no limits where they will go.  I have a 2 wheel drive buggy that I enjoy riding.  It has a roll cage, so it's slightly safer too.

16 hours ago, Rehab1 said:

I just looked him up. His trike is definitely more radical than mine but I have an added bonus!

If that's your wife, I need to shake your hand!

[Rehab1]

1 hour ago, SuperSport said:

My Nieces and Nephews have Polaris 850cc 4x4 quads too.  They are so much fun to ride as there are basically no limits where they will go.  I have a 2 wheel drive buggy that I enjoy riding.  It has a roll cage, so it's slightly safer too.

If that's your wife, I need to shake your hand!

There are some things in my life that must remain a secret!  

[Dingfelder]

Such an interesting thread I hardly know how to comment on it.

I live with and deal with elderly people every day as a caretaker and guardian/conservator.  You are so lucky to have such a strong presence of mind at your age.  And I do love your courage.

I hope you don't go too far overboard regarding risk, though.  For elders, when things fall apart, they fall apart fast.  Injury can accelerate that process drastically and dramatically undermine morale.  And sooner or later, morale becomes almost everything pushing people to enjoy their lives or even continue them.  Injury can encourage depression and lead to debilitating chronic pain and disability.  It's the mental as much as the physical that can cause the decline I see day to day.

It's great that you have lots of spunk left.  You may continue it for a long time to come.  But I would err on the side of caution when it come to anything requiring balance.

One of the first serious debilities in age is judgment.  People tend to become very stubborn, and reach out to assert that they still have superior knowledge and capability(even if they never did). So they wind up doing more and more foolish things, more and more vehemently and defensively, with less and less understanding or appreciation of the consequences.  

At this point, you may learn to drive an EUC perfectly.  

How long will you be able to do so?  No one can tell.  I would  like to say Not even you, but the crueler truth is the real truth: Especially not you.  The impaired judgment is the one least able to judge its impairment.  At some point you may face a small decline, or accumulate a series of small declines that may add up to a change in how you think and how you evaluate risk.  As well as how you simply perceive it, and judge the input of your senses.  This is quite common, according to doctors I spoke to.  My own father accumulated a series of small strokes in a process common to the elderly. It whittled away his ability to understand the world and navigate it successfully in such small degrees that our family could hardly tell until a critical event made clearer to us how much ability he had actually lost. Every night I take care of a man losing himself by the same small degrees, angrily insistent there is nothing wrong and that everyone should stop bothering him.  A couple of days ago he insisted someone was trying to murder us.  Not long ago, he talked to me about the person I had shot.  I've never shot anyone.  I've never even hurt anyone. Nobody is trying to murder us.  In his mind, he is in perfect control.

He has a drawer full of guns in his study, where I take him every morning.  I asked his wife last night to remove them, or at least remove all the ammunition.  Not because i believe there is truly any malice in him.

Will what you learn now be helpful to who you might be then?

You are in no position to say.

By all means indulge in a little risk if it brings you a bit more joy.  But I would hope you have a trusted support system around you the way my father had one.  At a certain point, he gave up driving because we convinced him that if he continued to drive, he could lose not just his own life but destroy the lives of others.  If you do take up dangerous things requiring quick and excellent judgment at an advanced age, I hope you have a support system around you to encourage you to dial down your risk as you get older ... if not for yourself, then for others you might hurt once you simply don't have the ability to manage those risks responsibly.

[dmethvin]

On 5/6/2017 at 11:57 AM, Dingfelder said:

But I would hope you have a trusted support system around you the way my father had one.

I would definitely look into getting a support system like the one @Rehab1 has for his trike. Don't get two though, at your age it could kill you and they wouldn't be able to get the smile off your face.

[SuperSport]

1 minute ago, dmethvin said:

I would definitely look into getting a support system like the one @Rehab1 has for his trike. Don't get two though, at your age it could kill you.

I'd get two, they're kinda small. Besides, I can't think of a better way to die. ?

[steve454]

On 5/6/2017 at 8:39 AM, SuperSport said:

My Nieces and Nephews have Polaris 850cc 4x4 quads too.  They are so much fun to ride as there are basically no limits where they will go.  I have a 2 wheel drive buggy that I enjoy riding.  It has a roll cage, so it's slightly safer too.

If that's your wife, I need to shake your hand!

If that's your bike, I need to shake your hand!  But seriously, what a great idea if he wanted to sell the bike!  Guaranteed a second look!

[litewave]

On 5/6/2017 at 11:57 AM, Dingfelder said:

Such an interesting thread I hardly know how to comment on it.

I live with and deal with elderly people every day as a caretaker and guardian/conservator.  You are so lucky to have such a strong presence of mind at your age.  And I do love your courage.

I hope you don't go too far overboard regarding risk, though.  For elders, when things fall apart, they fall apart fast.  Injury can accelerate that process drastically and dramatically undermine morale.  And sooner or later, morale becomes almost everything pushing people to enjoy their lives or even continue them.  Injury can encourage depression and lead to debilitating chronic pain and disability.  It's the mental as much as the physical that can cause the decline I see day to day.

It's great that you have lots of spunk left.  You may continue it for a long time to come.  But I would err on the side of caution when it come to anything requiring balance.

One of the first serious debilities in age is judgment.  People tend to become very stubborn, and reach out to assert that they still have superior knowledge and capability(even if they never did). So they wind up doing more and more foolish things, more and more vehemently and defensively, with less and less understanding or appreciation of the consequences.  

At this point, you may learn to drive an EUC perfectly.  

How long will you be able to do so?  No one can tell.  I would  like to say Not even you, but the crueler truth is the real truth: Especially not you.  The impaired judgment is the one least able to judge its impairment.  At some point you may face a small decline, or accumulate a series of small declines that may add up to a change in how you think and how you evaluate risk.  As well as how you simply perceive it, and judge the input of your senses.  This is quite common, according to doctors I spoke to.  My own father accumulated a series of small strokes in a process common to the elderly. It whittled away his ability to understand the world and navigate it successfully in such small degrees that our family could hardly tell until a critical event made clearer to us how much ability he had actually lost. Every night I take care of a man losing himself by the same small degrees, angrily insistent there is nothing wrong and that everyone should stop bothering him.  A couple of days ago he insisted someone was trying to murder us.  Not long ago, he talked to me about the person I had shot.  I've never shot anyone.  I've never even hurt anyone. Nobody is trying to murder us.  In his mind, he is in perfect control.

He has a drawer full of guns in his study, where I take him every morning.  I asked his wife last night to remove them, or at least remove all the ammunition.  Not because i believe there is truly any malice in him.

Will what you learn now be helpful to who you might be then?

You are in no position to say.

By all means indulge in a little risk if it brings you a bit more joy.  But I would hope you have a trusted support system around you the way my father had one.  At a certain point, he gave up driving because we convinced him that if he continued to drive, he could lose not just his own life but destroy the lives of others.  If you do take up dangerous things requiring quick and excellent judgment at an advanced age, I hope you have a support system around you to encourage you to dial down your risk as you get older ... if not for yourself, then for others you might hurt once you simply don't have the ability to manage those risks responsibly.

 

Well said, but ....

As someone who has been immersed in personal elder care issues for a while, I have noticed that medical practitioners, caregivers, and family members tend to overgeneralise and marginalise seniors and the elderly based on age and their impressions of what the facts are. Many of these opinions are based on generalised group-think, pseudo-facts, or tainted or diluted knowledge, and many of the recommendations and decisions I have encountered are, at their core, not medical but business decisions based on cost containment, profit motive and convenience. 

Not all people decline in the same way or at the same rate, and injuries and illnesses are not necessarily permanent. I have personally watched one family member fully recover from many setbacks that doctors insisted would never happen and were terminal (e.g., kidney failure). It wasn't miraculous medical interventions that saved the day, but the body's own natural ability to heal on its own.

In my opinion, we should be encouraging people to live longer and healthier lives. Cognitive and physical decline can be mitigated and managed. I plan to ride my EUC past 100, and when it isn't fun anymore, switch to paragliding or a goblin jetpack. 

[Dingfelder]

11 hours ago, litewave said:

In my opinion, we should be encouraging people to live longer and healthier lives. Cognitive and physical decline can be mitigated and managed. I plan to ride my EUC past 100, and when it isn't fun anymore, switch to paragliding or a goblin jetpack. 

I hope you don't hurt anybody in the process.  Unfortunately, the likelihood of your doing dangerous things, like driving, without hurting not just yourself but others may go hand in hand with an inability to judge how likely you are to do it.  

I wish cognitive and physical decline could be managed in a way that brought everything back to the way we would want it to be.  But we cannot manage capability or judgment back into existence when it has been truly lost; we can merely manage the loss itself.  And at a certain point, most of us who live long enough will experience a true, not just temporary, decline in judgment and ability.

The stubborn people who won't admit their loss with grace and adapt accordingly seem to have it worse than anyone.  They can become very depressed and even furious, lashing out at their caretakers and family, which can't make anything better for themselves or anyone else, and is highly likely to make the lives and relationships of those around them more difficult, even emotionally exhausting.

Unless death comes suddenly, we nearly all experience irretrievable cognitive and physical diminishment eventually.  Heck, people begin experiencing memory decline at around age 30.

If I could wish one thing upon an elder, it would be the grace to deal with change and loss with acceptance and a positive attitude.  Not a delusional outlook, based in anger or denial, or a reliance on abilities one no longer manifests.  The latter can be a dead end that leads to continual frustration and despair, as a person in denial descends into an ever more isolated world of their own, with less and less overlap with the people who love and care about them.

I'm glad my father had the courage and moral integrity to give up his drivers license when he did.  I hope that you too, and I, have the courage and moral integrity to do the same when our lives enter that stage.