Very true, and I think that a happy (and intelligent and dignified!) old age requires accepting this not only abstractly but concretely — so that I really have to learn to back off the effort and gear down.
Amateur British cycling legend Beryl Burton — who held almost innumerable records from the 1950s through the 1980s — died of heart failure on her bike in 1996 at age 58 while out on an errand ride, largely, I think because she refused to accept that age requires slowing down. A sad end to a glorious career. (She was a Yorkshire agricultural worker — picked rhubarb —mother, and housewife, who notoriously passed the men’s favorite in the 1967 12-hour time trial (as she passed him — she beat his also-record-breaking distance by a bit less than a mile — she offered him a liquorice allsort for energy; he replied, “Ta, luv”). On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 3:14 PM Joe Bernard <[email protected]> wrote: > … We get older, things change, it may be time for me to accept the > changes. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgvXrZv4q62uGtwRb1fnkiCVKR%2BJs0SKJXh73T7qTXpXGA%40mail.gmail.com.
