Some of us men don't seek danger. My big adventure was a bicycle trip Seattle to Boston after I graduated from college. Just before the trip, I'd purchased Bell hard-shelled helmet serial #7022--I was a very early adopter. I'd probably bicycled at least 10,000 miles by the time I embarked, so I was very comfortable on a bicycle, I knew o…
Some of us men don't seek danger. My big adventure was a bicycle trip Seattle to Boston after I graduated from college. Just before the trip, I'd purchased Bell hard-shelled helmet serial #7022--I was a very early adopter. I'd probably bicycled at least 10,000 miles by the time I embarked, so I was very comfortable on a bicycle, I knew others who had done it, and it seemed a safe thing to do (I would not have made the same trip on a motorcycle, and in fact, except for having ridden about a mile once on the back of a motorcycle, I've never been on one). And now, as an official senior citizen, who has ridden probably close to 70,000 bicycle miles (in the last 25 years never without one of those lime green jerseys that's visible from the International Space Station), I'm looking forward, later this year, or next, to driving across the country and back, as it's now nearly 50 years since I made that last x-country trip by surface.
I do have a second cousin, Tom Hornbein, who is one of just two people ever to have ascended Everest via the West Ridge. I'm rereading his book about that expedition, and I've read Into Thin Air, in which around 15 people climbing Everest, during the same season, die. The mountain climbing is interesting, and I'm proud of my cousin, but I'm not in the least interested in doing anything like that for myself. (Hornbein's partner on Everest, Willi Unsoeld, later died in an avalanche on Mt. Rainier.) My only brother has also never sought out danger.
I did take my niece for flying lessons when she was 7. But I knew that was an incredibly safe thing to do, and a lot safer than teaching someone to drive, which I had done. There's nothing to bump into in the air, and an instructor had his own set of controls. Although I don't think he had to use them at all. She did so well he gave her an extra take off and landing.
Some of us men don't seek danger. My big adventure was a bicycle trip Seattle to Boston after I graduated from college. Just before the trip, I'd purchased Bell hard-shelled helmet serial #7022--I was a very early adopter. I'd probably bicycled at least 10,000 miles by the time I embarked, so I was very comfortable on a bicycle, I knew others who had done it, and it seemed a safe thing to do (I would not have made the same trip on a motorcycle, and in fact, except for having ridden about a mile once on the back of a motorcycle, I've never been on one). And now, as an official senior citizen, who has ridden probably close to 70,000 bicycle miles (in the last 25 years never without one of those lime green jerseys that's visible from the International Space Station), I'm looking forward, later this year, or next, to driving across the country and back, as it's now nearly 50 years since I made that last x-country trip by surface.
I do have a second cousin, Tom Hornbein, who is one of just two people ever to have ascended Everest via the West Ridge. I'm rereading his book about that expedition, and I've read Into Thin Air, in which around 15 people climbing Everest, during the same season, die. The mountain climbing is interesting, and I'm proud of my cousin, but I'm not in the least interested in doing anything like that for myself. (Hornbein's partner on Everest, Willi Unsoeld, later died in an avalanche on Mt. Rainier.) My only brother has also never sought out danger.
I did take my niece for flying lessons when she was 7. But I knew that was an incredibly safe thing to do, and a lot safer than teaching someone to drive, which I had done. There's nothing to bump into in the air, and an instructor had his own set of controls. Although I don't think he had to use them at all. She did so well he gave her an extra take off and landing.