•  Why are we irritated with the Huffington Post’s “Post-50” section? No good reason. Still, we are, except we like the coverage of Kirk and Cindy Sinclair, who have trekked all 6,800 miles of “the little-known American Discovery Trail.” (See, right there. The Discovery Trail is pretty much undiscovered. That’s funny…but HP P-50 is irritatingly oblivious.) We like this because the Sinclairs sound like nice people (Kirk writes a “Kindness Blog” for his web site, the Hiking Humanitarian), the challenge of a cross-country slog is appealing, and the ADT is a discovery for us, too (though we question the assertion that it offers “thousands of historically, culturally and/or naturally important sites.” Thousands? So, roughly every three miles there’s something important?).

• If you’re not able to walk the country, try visiting some of the best places via webcam. A 24/7 HD camera trained on North America’s highest waterfall, the 2,425-foot Yosemite Falls, just came online. It’s updated every 30 seconds, so it’s not as satisfying as true video, but it’s still pretty nice. The camera was set up by the nonprofit Yosemite Conservancy. Check it out, then visit some of the other webcams set up throughout the National Park Service. (An incomplete list can be found here.) And try the interactive trail-views created by Nature Valley.

• On the assumption that old people like old things, we note that the “oldest known water vessel in Atlantic Canada, built about 60 years after Columbus landed in North America” has been installed at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, NB. The restored “450-year-old aboriginal canoe” was discovered six-years ago by a couple walking on the beach. They were advised to keep it wet, which they did by dunking it in a stream until they convinced conservationists to “infuse the wood’s cells with a plastic polymer to keep the vessel from drying out and preserve its structural integrity.” Hat’s off to all involved.

• You can choose to believe that the earth is not warming. The U.S. Forest Service cannot, because the changing climate is affecting their business, which is overseeing the nation’s forests, which in some states are being attacked by a beetle infestation that is tied to warmer weather. The Washington Post reports that “some regions of the Northern Rockies have experienced an 80 percent die-off of whitebark pines, and the Natural Resource Defense Council projects that between 80 and 100 percent of remaining trees in some areas will be killed by mountain pine beetles, whitepine blister rust or a combination of the two.” The Forest Service is scrambling to find a fix, but one University of Colorado scientist adds this chilling assessment: “There is certainly nothing that’s going to work to protect millions of acres of these high-elevation trees.”

They don’t use their teeth; they know the price of dentistry.

They don’t crack the cap against the sharp edge of a rock or a length of angle-iron because it is too easy to misjudge, and break the neck of the bottle, in which case you face a difficult choice between going dry and the potential consumption of glass shards.

And they don’t hook the bottle under an eye socket, squint hard, and lever against the bone. For obvious reasons. (No one believes this is possible, but I have seen it. No, I have seen a guy break the seal of a beer bottle doing this, and he was prepared to finished the job but we took him at his word and settled the bet in his favor.)

No. They use what they have. A steely eye. A craftsman’s exquisite touch. And a chainsaw.

Aich no longer lifts weights, since he had a minor stroke last year. (Which, yes, suggests he was lifting at age 99.) But he still goes to the gym to help others, so we feel comfortable putting him in the same group as these other ageless athletes. And why do we care about these very, very old people? Because they inspire us. But mostly because we think they might hold a secret to how we, young and fearful boomers, might prolong our vitality.

Perhaps you were hoping for a dietary secret? If so, sorry. A piece in the Hindustan Times compares the diets of Aich and Singh and finds not much similarity. Singh swears by alsi di pinni, which is flax seed (we think). Aich is a proponent of panta bhateer (“rice cooked the day earlier and left to ferment by adding water”). Singh avoids rice and prefers “chapatti or a slice of brown bread dipped in curd or milk, the latter being easier to eat, given his brittle teeth.” (Earlier reports also cited his love of ginger curry.) Aich drinks coffee; Fauja drinks tea; Fauja treats himself to milk shakes; Aich prefers juice.

They did share one not very exotic comestible: lentils.

We suspect that diet might be less important than attitude. “I never allow any sort of tension to grip me,” Aich explained. (This from a guy who started weight-lifting in prison.) “I had to struggle to earn money since my young days, but whatever the situation, I remained happy.”

In other centenarian athlete news: Fauja Singh has been nominated as one of the torch bearers for the 2012 Olympic torch relay, which will be carried across the U.K. between May 19 and July 27.

Photo of Manohar Aich (1952) via Wikimedia Commons.

Let’s not repeat the statistics here. Let’s also not run the same picture of some overweight person’s bulging gut or super-sized rear. Let’s assume we already know we are, as a nation, obese. We know it because we saw the zillion earlier studies and documentaries and, mostly, because we went to the mall last week. Let’s say we’ve been hearing this tune for about a decade, hummed constantly in the back of the national consciousness. Let’s also agree that we are aware of the health and financial costs of our ponderousness.

So, then: why do we need this new conference/study/HBO series/companion book? One of the conference leaders put it this way: “Many people will probably say ‘what’s new’ and what’s new is the clear statement that we must begin to attack this problem collectively on all fronts.”

Seriously? We are saying this very clearly now: we’re deathly fat and we should address this issue with some sort of broad-based strategy. If that’s all you’ve got, you’re not even trying.

Let us say this very clearly now: Our consciousness has been raised. If it gets raised any more, we will enter the realm in which useful fact mutates into truism and then into tired cliché that we accept as an unavoidable condition of life.

So why do we keep publishing reports and running documentaries about obesity? Because it is the least demanding thing we can do. We are sitting on life’s couch, gorging our minds on studies about our fatness because they offer effortless self-stimulation. They are salty, cheese-flavored corn-puffs for your head. They are the empty calories of public debate.

We need to stop buying these nuggets. We need to put down the obesity studies and do something that makes us push ourselves a bit. Walking around the block would be a start. Or regulating food. Or adjusting health insurance premiums based on weight in the same way that they are now based on age and gender. Or reorganizing our streets so people can bike safely. Or do nothing. We don’t care. Just stop talking about the terrible consequences of something you don’t intend to do anything about.

Photo of delicious cheese puffs by annulla, via Wikimedia Commons.

By separating these odd lots into discrete posts spread over several days, we might appear more professional. But alas, we are what we seem to be:

• The National Park Service is reminding folks that 33 national parks will offer premier seating for the solar eclipse on May 20, and six parks “are at the center of the eclipse path.” For your pre- and post-eclipse pleasure, rangers and astronomers will be offering “hands-on eclipse activities,” which sounds vaguely dangerous to us.

• The winter’s dry warm weather (punctuated by a few notable snow storms) took a toll on ski resorts throughout the west. In Colorado, the season was the worst in decades, with a snowpack that was about half what it normally is. Skier visits were down about 7 percent overall. At Vail, visits were down almost 13 percent and the snowpack was half of last year’s level (although last year was a blockbuster, snow-wise).

• Not every resort has suffered without snow, though. Whistler is closed but Blackcomb is open until May 28. Lift tickets are marked down 40 percent (to $168 for three days). The Globe and Mail reports that “condos and hotels are available for bargain-basement prices – our two-bedroom-plus loft at the Glacier Lodge, five minutes’ walk from the lifts, slept eight and went for $190 a night (that’s $23.75 each a night!) over a three-day weekend.”

• Here’s a chance to put your money and your environmental principles where your mouth is. The world’s only carbon-neutral chocolate will soon be available in the U.K. The “handpressed, single-estate, vanilla-free, vintage rootstock, grown-with-a-windward aspect” chocolate is still at sea (on a wind-powered sailboat, naturally), on its way from Grenada to Portsmouth. In the great scheme of necessary environmental improvements, chocolate is not a low-hanging fruit. There are many other, easier ways to get bigger impact. This makes more sense if you think of it as a demonstration project by the ship’s Dutch owner, Fairtransport. It’s also a warm-up for that company’s next project, a 3,000-ton, sail-powered cargo ship.

Beautiful Elakala Waterfalls in the Blackwater Falls State park, West Virginia, USA, by ForestWander Nature Photography, via Wikimedia Commons.

We are sad to mark the passing of B. Hive. We didn’t know he was even feeling bad…indeed we didn’t even know he was, at all.  So imagine our surprise when his epitaph rolled by at 60 m.p.h.

It was accompanied by a burst of color and images surpassing the mundane suburban gallery it rolled through.  Of course there was the benign graffiti debasing private property, but beyond that were startling images and script transforming the rusted hulks into a rolling installation.

We know Banksie and his transformational art, but the movement of these efforts past our sight at high speed creates a dynamic we were unprepared for, a kaleidoscopic treat for those stranded at railway crossings, who wait and watch.

McAlpine captured the record a few years back, lost it to a 101-year-old American, then snatched it back with a leap from a 2,400-foot peak in northern Cyprus’ Kyrenia mountain range. And she issued a warning to any other centenarians who might be eyeing her slot in the Guinness book: if need be, she’ll jump again to hold on to her title. (Fauja Singh, we’ll note, has announced his retirement from marathon racing. So the door is wide open for any 102-year-old distance runners.)

There’s a charming story in the Express on McAlpine, who had her first flight in a bi-plane, in 1920, when people talked about aeroplanes and pilots had no compunction about buzzing a young passenger’s house just to scare her father. She was fearless then; she was fearless at age 80, when cruel grandchildren introduced her to extreme sports by talking her into bungee jumping; and she fearless now.

For the record, she claimed that her second paraglide flight was more enjoyable than the first.

• You are exhausted with special events—Tax Day, National Parks Week, Derby Day—so you may have failed to notice that May is Older Americans Month. You should go to the web site, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Aging, which encourages you to play. Medicare runs out in 2024, but it is worth whatever this costs to remind old people to play. (And stay “involved in their own lives.” I am not making this up.) By the way, your money has been flowing down this rat-hole (Older Americans Month) since 1963.

• While we’re contemplating ways that older Americans are or are not adequately celebrated and entitled in this culture, the Boston Globe’s web site has a thoughtful piece by an older American on the practice of throwing senior discounts at anyone over 62. Clearly, many older Americans are having a difficult time making ends meet in this economy. Clearly, if you lost your job in the Great Recession and you were over, say, 55 at the time, your odds of getting rehired are slim. There should be a way to help people in such circumstances, or make their lives more palatable, but it should be based on need, not age. If it is going to be based on age, the discounts should go to younger people because, as staff writer Barry Bluestone points out, “the gap in net worth between seniors and youngsters is growing exponentially.” Specifically, between 1967 and 2010, if the oldest person in a home is 35 or younger, income rose by 27 percent; it rose 48 percent for those age 35 to 44. “But for those 65 and older, income more than doubled (+109%).”

• The Social Security Administration has discontinued mailings of paper statements. Instead, the benefits estimates are available online. We will miss the periodic updates on how rapidly the program is hurtling toward insolvency. From a recent (February 2012) paper statement: “Without changes, in 2036 the Social Security Trust Fund will be able to pay only about 77 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits.” (Since then, it’s been revised to 2033, information that remains available on the web site but requires some poking around.)

• Back in November, we were pleased to report NASA’s estimate of a low likelihood that Yellowstone (and much of the western United States) would be vaporized this year, due to the eruption of the supervolcano beneath the park. Now even better news: researchers at Washington State University believe that “Yellowstone’s supervolcano has erupted more frequently but with less violence than previously estimated.” It appears that a massive eruption two million years ago was actually two, smaller eruptions six millennia apart. Before you uncork a celebratory bottle, consider that the smaller eruptions were still massive enough to kill you and everything you love: The “ output of the first eruption was 644 cubic miles…and then a second eruption of 85 cubic miles took place more than 6,000 years later. By comparison, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens produced 0.26 of a cubic mile of ash.”

Photo of Durdle Door, a natural limestone arch on the Jurassic Coast near Lulworth in Dorset, England. By W. Lloyd MacKenzie, via Wikimedia Commons.

A couple of other Trips Your Children Won’t Recommend have sailed over the transom this week:

• Cruising North Vietnam. This is why we read: we were ignorant of Halong Bay, even though it’s one of one of 183 natural sites on UNESCO‘s World Heritage list. Now, thanks to a story in the Chicago Tribune, we are confused about how we could have missed it. (We also ask ourselves how many other undiscovered wonders are out there.) You travel to Hanoi, then catch “a motorized craft dressed up to resemble a junk and providing sleeping quarters and meals.” Cost is variable, from super-cheap to luxurious, with an approximate mid-point being “$834 for three people (two cabins) for two nights, everything included except drinks.” Trips can include kayaking around the bay’s sheer rock islands.

• Backpacking in Albania. The Telegraph has a feature on Doug Pelling, an intrepid 83-year-old who’s got more stamps in his passport than you do. The story is interesting enough on its own, but we perked up when he recommended travel in Albania. The former communist hellhole has undergone a renaissance (if you believe Pelling, and we do). Yes, travel is still uncomfortable, but that’s the price you pay for a relatively tourist-free experience. “Everything is so cheap, particularly the food and wine, and a spotlessly clean bedroom can be found in a hotel from £12 to £15. Albanians are so friendly and welcoming to their few tourists, who will surely increase in numbers in the coming years.” If half of the reason we travel is to collect stories to deal out later, then the words “Albanian riviera” tell you all you need to know.

Photo of Greenland via Greenland.com.

Make no mistake, Raleigh is still a going concern. It sold 850,000 bikes last year; its current brands include Avenir and Diamondback.

Nevertheless, there’s a heavy whiff of nostalgia in the press coverage of the sale, and rightfully so. In its day, the company’s workhorse models—marketed as “All-Steel” bicycles during a time when steel was a magical material—were the Volkswagen Beetles of self-powered, two-wheeled transport. Simple, inelegant, bulletproof and ubiquitous. The company also produced the Chopper, which was the preferred playground bike of the 1970s.

For a small taste of the importance of Raleigh in the history of biking, spend some time clicking around the Online Bicycle Museum or look at this mash note to the 1910 Raleigh All-Steel No 9 Gent’s 28″ Roadster.