104-year-old sets paragliding record
It’s been a good few weeks for achievements by people who are so old that—typically—each new breath would be considered something of a triumph . Fauja Singh finished the London Marathon in late April; he is 101. A week or so earlier, Peggy McAlpine reclaimed the record for the oldest person to take part in a...
Toward a new definition of extreme sports
Two stories this week raise the issue of what we are talking about when we talk about extreme sports. Typically, the term is used to describe anything really dangerous and really unusual: physical activities pursued by a few people at the far end of the bell curve of crazy. (Base...
Denial, bargaining, resignation: making the transition to (somewhat) tamer pursuits
At some point, each of us decides to set aside the things of a child and pick up the things of a being with weak knees and occasional shooting neck pains. Often there’s a watershed moment. (“Mark the date and time. That was my last roller-coaster.”) More often, the...
What Brits call “holiday brain,” Yanks call “the weekend”
That headline might be unnecessarily provocative, but there is a needless breathlessness about the heedlessness of Brits over age 50 in this story in the Daily Mail, which is shocked…shocked…to discover that 13 percent of these blokes and lasses will engage in extreme sports while on vacation…and of...
