If you’re a baby boomer, you’re never too old

If the theme underlying almost everything we publish on BoomerCafé is baby boomers with youthful lifestyles, then co-founder and executive editor Greg Dobbs’s wintery bike ride at the end of May, fits.

Even when you’re a leading-edge baby boomer who has turned 70— even if you have bad hearing and worse vision, a bad back and a heart condition— don’t let anyone tell you that you still can’t climb to above 10,600 feet on Vail Pass in the Colorado Rockies on your bike!

That’s why I ride. Not to defy someone else’s definition of a 70-year-old’s lifestyle, but just to define for myself what a 70-year-old can do. This one, anyway.

Selfie of Greg taking a break from riding the mountains of Colorado.

All you have to remember is, your muscles and your organs and your joints have been working non-stop for a long time and they’re getting kind of worn, so you won’t be performing as if you’re in your physical prime. But still, you’ll be performing, and that’s one of the many ways to try to stay young.

Will it help you to retrieve those words that are so hard nowadays to come up with? Probably not. Will it keep the wrinkles off your face? Not a chance.

But whether biking or hiking, running or walking or swimming or going to the gym or anything else active, it’s worth doing, because while there are some factors you just can’t control to stay healthy while you’re getting older (like genetics, for example), there are some you can, like diet and cigarettes. Some kind of exercise is one of the best.

One small caveat: Depending on where you live, maybe wait til the weather warms up just a bit more. On this ride up Vail Pass, as you can see, it was just a tad cold. 35-degrees when I began the climb. That’s not so good for lungs or legs (the muscles don’t like it either).

But it was good for me. I felt young.

So who says you can’t be active and even push yourself? Sure, sometimes the answer is your body, because of factors completely beyond your control. But otherwise, the answer really is, just you.