pe2dave
Established Member
(Mostly) I can do the same jobs, just takes longer and I'm slower.
At least I've more patience!
At least I've more patience!
Feeling old
- Thread starter Kittyhawk
- Start date
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eribaMotters
Established Member
Has anybody else found out that 8x4 sheets of ply and mdf are heavier than they were 20 years ago.
Also I find lifting 2nd hand 3x2 2" thick granite chip paving slabs difficult now, I have to walk them.
Colin
Also I find lifting 2nd hand 3x2 2" thick granite chip paving slabs difficult now, I have to walk them.
Colin
J-G
Established Member
Last time I moved any of those was early in 1974 - I'd bought a DIY shop which included supply of Slabs etc. and the previous owner's legacy to me was his order for 12 of the beasts! I had to deliver them as a favour (no income!) as I 'walked' the third one along the customer's path I vowed (under my breath) that I'd never ever sell any.
I was in my 30's and my previous job was office bound!
Superduner
Established Member
My bike is 250kg and it's getting really hard to lift it up on the rare occasion that I drop it - usually when the side stand doesn't go down properly.
My hip is a bit painful for the first 5 minutes of riding, but after that it's ok.
My hip is a bit painful for the first 5 minutes of riding, but after that it's ok.
accipiter
Established Member
It's great to read of members in their late 70's and 80's getting out there and doing what needs doing. Approaching 72 myself in March...
For a number of years I've "felt" old although the brain acts like 18+... more fatigued and finding it difficult to motivate myself *during* winter months especially with the grey wet days and - especially - with the cold. Winters are usually hard/bad for me with the lack of heat and dry days. Late spring and Summer days - no issues. Sometimes thought maybe I suffer with SADS but trying the additional lights hasn't worked. As my Father died of a heart attack when he was 68 I feel I'm doing okay - aches and pains but mind still thinks I'm 18 ~ 21 still and I spend more time doing a job in mental planning/visualisation stages than I ever did at 18~21.
Really don't want to whinge about "ailments" but old age doesn't come by itself, not for many... and slowly bites you in the rear. "Acquired" over the years: Gilberts Syndrome, Hiatus Hernia, high blood pressure, PTSD and depression etc., (after my fathers death + made redundant one month later summer '92). Most held in check by pills.
Middle of last year, thanks to blood pressure checks I *finally* got to actually see my doctor. Further checks came up with me being Pre-diabetic, some sort of anaemia - possible Celiac disease... and, slightly, underactive thyroid. Oh! and an MRI scan for prostate issues - which, thankfully, proved negative BUT to have annual BP checks. Extra prescription pills for the thyroid and prostate. Trying to work on the pre-diabetic thing but will find out how that, and the thyroid, is progressing in a couple of weeks time - with another blood test!
Jobs... work... being retired since Jan 2017 I had "Plans". Things slowed down some for late 2022 as a new grandfather, many of the plans are on hold time wise to fit in with "child care" days two days of the week... Lovely as it is to spend time with a (now) 15 month old he's approaching the *terrible twos* and my patience is sometimes pressed quite thin - saving grace is he gets handed back to his parents. *Feeling Old* after and needing to rest...
Forthcoming "jobs" for this year - thanks to last years high temperatures and this winters frosts and rains (when will the rain stop?) I've a utility room roof to replace: 26ft x 5ft 9" - and a part of the workshop roof: 12ft x 8ft. Old felt and OSB sheets to remove, check what's under; replace timbers (?) and then re-sheet with ply (this time) and some other water proofing cover - maybe even something like Onduline etc. Not looking forward to it at all. I *could* try to find a (trustworthy) builder (?!) able/willing to fit me in to their busy workload but the £££'s aren't there. Ply sheeting looks to be around £350+ (if I buy) alone so with other materials and labour? *Feeling* old but I'm not wanting to give in to it. May try and give the C25K a go...
For a number of years I've "felt" old although the brain acts like 18+... more fatigued and finding it difficult to motivate myself *during* winter months especially with the grey wet days and - especially - with the cold. Winters are usually hard/bad for me with the lack of heat and dry days. Late spring and Summer days - no issues. Sometimes thought maybe I suffer with SADS but trying the additional lights hasn't worked. As my Father died of a heart attack when he was 68 I feel I'm doing okay - aches and pains but mind still thinks I'm 18 ~ 21 still and I spend more time doing a job in mental planning/visualisation stages than I ever did at 18~21.
Really don't want to whinge about "ailments" but old age doesn't come by itself, not for many... and slowly bites you in the rear. "Acquired" over the years: Gilberts Syndrome, Hiatus Hernia, high blood pressure, PTSD and depression etc., (after my fathers death + made redundant one month later summer '92). Most held in check by pills.
Middle of last year, thanks to blood pressure checks I *finally* got to actually see my doctor. Further checks came up with me being Pre-diabetic, some sort of anaemia - possible Celiac disease... and, slightly, underactive thyroid. Oh! and an MRI scan for prostate issues - which, thankfully, proved negative BUT to have annual BP checks. Extra prescription pills for the thyroid and prostate. Trying to work on the pre-diabetic thing but will find out how that, and the thyroid, is progressing in a couple of weeks time - with another blood test!
Jobs... work... being retired since Jan 2017 I had "Plans". Things slowed down some for late 2022 as a new grandfather, many of the plans are on hold time wise to fit in with "child care" days two days of the week... Lovely as it is to spend time with a (now) 15 month old he's approaching the *terrible twos* and my patience is sometimes pressed quite thin - saving grace is he gets handed back to his parents. *Feeling Old* after and needing to rest...
Forthcoming "jobs" for this year - thanks to last years high temperatures and this winters frosts and rains (when will the rain stop?) I've a utility room roof to replace: 26ft x 5ft 9" - and a part of the workshop roof: 12ft x 8ft. Old felt and OSB sheets to remove, check what's under; replace timbers (?) and then re-sheet with ply (this time) and some other water proofing cover - maybe even something like Onduline etc. Not looking forward to it at all. I *could* try to find a (trustworthy) builder (?!) able/willing to fit me in to their busy workload but the £££'s aren't there. Ply sheeting looks to be around £350+ (if I buy) alone so with other materials and labour? *Feeling* old but I'm not wanting to give in to it. May try and give the C25K a go...
accipiter
Established Member
Yes. Had 10 sheets of 12mm (11mm) OSB to move and cut plus some floppy uPVC cladding sheets last summer. Also had some (16) 2x2 2" slabs to move from the front through the house to my back garden last year. Walked to the front door, placed 4# on a wooden trolley at a time, pushed (bent low - achy back) through the house, walked off the trolley through the utility room, up 2 steps through patio doors to stack in the garden. 2 hours... thereabouts... Then had to lay next day. Looks like I'll have about 10 18mm ply to move through the house later this year when I do the utility room roof. LIDL apparently will be having some suction grab/gripper units sometime very soon - think I'll need a couple.
eribaMotters
Established Member
It looks like getting old is a fact, and feeling old is a state of mind. We all slow down but there are some things we continue to do that we really shouldn't do.
Two things spring to mind when I consider my Godfather and uncle. Tom is 84 this February. I remember last year his daughter phoning me with a request. Get dad off the roof, he should know better.
Tom duly got off the roof. A few days later he was taking fence panels, posts and gravel boards around to his girlfriends as she needed a bit of fencing doing.
He has bad knee's and wears a hearing aid. The latter proved useful when I was doing up our last bungalow. I had to rip out some wiring including the old alarm system. The previous owners said it was dead, but I knew they were telling porkies. So I got Tom around to cut the wires to it whilst I was in the loft.
Colin
Two things spring to mind when I consider my Godfather and uncle. Tom is 84 this February. I remember last year his daughter phoning me with a request. Get dad off the roof, he should know better.
Tom duly got off the roof. A few days later he was taking fence panels, posts and gravel boards around to his girlfriends as she needed a bit of fencing doing.
He has bad knee's and wears a hearing aid. The latter proved useful when I was doing up our last bungalow. I had to rip out some wiring including the old alarm system. The previous owners said it was dead, but I knew they were telling porkies. So I got Tom around to cut the wires to it whilst I was in the loft.
Colin
I detached my bicep in one arm shifting a full sheet of 25mm ply a while back - it tore the tendon from the radius and ulna, and went with a loud bang and an immense amount of pain - it felt like an electric shock for maybe 10mins, and I at first thought I'd dislocated my shoulder which I have done many times in the past, however this was far more painful. I drove my manual car the 9miles to A&E - I live on my own, and the triage nurse took one look at me and said 'I know what you've done!!' and I was duly X-rayed etc.
I phoned around friends in the medical trade and all advised against having it re-attached surgically and after seeing a body builder physician he was ambivalent as to operate or not - he said my age at the time 64 was against me and the op wasn't guaranteed to work, and that in any case he said your body will compensate in time...
He was correct, 2 months later when I saw a NHS physio she tested my strength by interlocking her forearms with mine and asking me to push upward, and she said, 'well if all my patients were as strong as you in your damaged arm I'd be a happy bunny..!'
So agree with you folks getting old ain't fun and for me I know I have arthritis in most of my joints and certainly my hands, but I just take it easy and it just takes me twice as long to achieve something.
Still have a shedload of stuff to do around the house and garden, I just have to take it easy and accept the frustration!!
I phoned around friends in the medical trade and all advised against having it re-attached surgically and after seeing a body builder physician he was ambivalent as to operate or not - he said my age at the time 64 was against me and the op wasn't guaranteed to work, and that in any case he said your body will compensate in time...
He was correct, 2 months later when I saw a NHS physio she tested my strength by interlocking her forearms with mine and asking me to push upward, and she said, 'well if all my patients were as strong as you in your damaged arm I'd be a happy bunny..!'
So agree with you folks getting old ain't fun and for me I know I have arthritis in most of my joints and certainly my hands, but I just take it easy and it just takes me twice as long to achieve something.
Still have a shedload of stuff to do around the house and garden, I just have to take it easy and accept the frustration!!
Kittyhawk
Established Member
Yes. I don't know why manufacturers have to do that. It's the same with some of the bush trails in our area. The Dept of Conservation does a good job of maintaining them but why do they have to keep making them longer and steeper?
I find the main trouble with advancing age is that I don't know what to do with it. Our whole lives wife and I have been have been sailors, selling our last yacht at my age 70 and replacing her with a canal boat in France which we used for 6 months of each year until covid came along forcing us to sell it.
Now at my age 78 we are looking at a seriously capable offshore 34' yacht, a go-anywhere type vessel for one great last adventure. One voice in my head is whispering 'go for it'.....and the other 'settle down you silly old fart - do you want to kill yourself?'.
It's a problem, but just now relegated to the back burner. We have to make sure our property is as secure as we can make it. Our area ( the Coromandel) is under a Civil Defence warning for a severe cyclone that's going to give us a walloping, due tonight.
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I think thoughts of a 34' yacht in a county that experiences cyclones would be enough to put me off. There are many reported incidents of older folk coming awry at sea so, if I were you, unless you succumb to your common sense conscience, I'd try hiring one first, outside of cyclone season!
Jameshow
Established Member
Go for it?
What model are you considering?
For me it would be a Halberg Rassy 34!!
Or a Nauticat 33 if feeling a little old!!
Kittyhawk
Established Member
We get the occasional cyclone over summer - it depends on the seawater temperature.
We have weathered two so far at sea without issues except fear, and how you do depends on the boat. Some like all sail off except for a storm trysail and heaving to, perhaps with a parachute anchor streamed from the bow, others are happier running under bare poles towing heavy warps to slow the boat down.
But this is the nub of the problem with advancing years. Do you become an armchair warrior reliving past glories or do you go out there and just do it.
Give in to what you both want to do, or give up?
I would say the liveliest ship you can ever be on in the worst imaginable weather is a little 690kt whaler in the southern ocean. Our captain was 84 years old and also the gunner - pretty good for an old guy.
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Kittyhawk
Established Member
From a local man, Bruce Askew. He has a reputation as a 'sensible' yacht designer. The boat - not a full keel, cutaway forefoot and skeg hung rudder, cutter rig, strip planked edge glued mahogany and glassed inside and out.
Jameshow
Established Member
At 75 it's taken me eight weeks to strip out the old shower and replace it with this, plus the associated works of replacing two loos and cisterns together with the soil pipe move, "I will have it done by the time you come back from visiting you cousin (two weeks) in the USA" I said, did not help that the first shower screen decided to go back to it's constituent parts, possibly a million bits, well it felt like it when I swept them up.
Kittyhawk
Established Member
The pilothouse may look a bit alarming on an offshore boat but its immensely built, 6mm safety glass and can be shuttered as well.
Jameshow
Established Member
Looks a nice boat.
Very much like a colvic victor or westerly konsort duo we have here.
Feeling old is not really that bad, but you know you are getting old when you have struggled to move something and cannot actually lift it but the guy fitting it just picks it up and carries it without any issues.
Another good example is when a courier delivers a box, they are swinging it around as if it is empty and pass it to you, you almost drop it as it is so heavy.
Two examples I have had in the last week.
Another good example is when a courier delivers a box, they are swinging it around as if it is empty and pass it to you, you almost drop it as it is so heavy.
Two examples I have had in the last week.
Maybe that’s why your domino doesn’t give the accuracy you want.. too heavy for you to hold it?
