Days away from 72. Again a couple of weeks of waking up and wondering how the hell did that happen?
I have distracting activities, paddle much less and less aggressively. Finally had to join a gym again because my exercise was not keeping up with the level of fitness I wanted. Not a terribly high level, but more than a slug so the back pain and the knee twitches stay at bay. That seems to take better habits now than before.
But I saved enough skills to still do what most appealed to me about it, the freedom of being on the water especially offshore.
Joining the crowd here. I’d been biking only for a year of so after I gave up on a Renault R10. Picked up a '71 Datsun Pickup in '76. A rust bucket but good times. It had Mud & Snows on the back & never got stuck as long as I had a shovel to load some snow in the bed for a little weight. I replaced it with a new Datsun 510 wagon (in blue). Enjoyed that one too although it had some carb issues.
I’m 26!
Have only recently got into it, but love it - much more into the exploration side of paddle rather than running rapids or doing cartwheels!
Picked up a second hand sea kayak with the view of shelling out for a nice one further down the line. They are expensive, possibly why younger paddlers aren’t committing to it.
I was about 26 when I joined this forum and held youngest forum regular for quite a while. Basically until I aged out of being young. Lol
I will propose a slightly different contributing factor to the geriatric nature of kayaking - low exposure to young people leads to atrophy / attrition of a sport over time.
Kids are exposed to pretty much every sport before paddling. Certainly sea kayaking. It requires a paddling obsessed parent or uncommon child to get basic exposure to paddling as a common past time.
In my case, we canoed at church camp and would occasionally canoe down a slow river throughout childhood. Both some of my favorite memories. Eventually I grew up and wanted to canoe again… then I fell down the paddling hole to become a level 10 nerd. But I am different than most.
At any rate, my childhood experiences were the spark that lit my fire for paddling in adulthood.
True, and to make things more difficult, paddling requires automotive transport for almost all people. A bicycle, OTOH, can be independently pedaled by a child, right from home. INDEPENDENCE!
