Motorcycles, Photography, Rants and Raves: Turning Fifty

If you live long enough it will happen to you.

I was born in 1958 and 50 is close, real close.

US GDP (1998 dollars): $467.3 billion

Federal spending: $82.41 billion

Federal debt: $279.7 billion

Consumer Price Index: 28.9

Unemployment: 4.3%

Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.03 ($0.04 as of 8/1/58)

New Pontiac Bonneville: $3,586

Gasoline: 15 cents a gallon

It seems like yesterday I was shooting marbles at Eleanor Marshall School with my third grade buddies. I started school when I was five, no kindergarten in those days, and it was 1963. Color TV was a novelty, President Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas and a British band composed of John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, take Britain by storm.

I got my first motorcycle in 1974. President Richard Nixon resigns, the recession deepens following the rise in oil prices in 1973 (remember the long gas lines?), the CAT scanner is introduced by EMI in England.

1958: Chester Carlson invents the photocopier or Xerox machine.

1960: The Flintstones first show airs.

1962: The Philips Company of the Netherlands invented and released the first compact audio cassette.

1963: Zip codes invented in the United States.

1965: Ford Motors offered 8-track players as an option in their complete line of 1966 model cars.

1971: The VCR was invented along with the dot-matrix printer, food processor and the liquid-crystal display

1983: Compact Disc Technology is introduced in the United States in the spring.

1994: American government releases control of internet and WWW is born.

I remember when Thirty was kind of old and anyone approaching fifty was grandpa material. Boy was I wrong!

Here I am at forty nine with fifty ready to present itself on October seventh. Am I going to be depressed? Nope. Is it going to cause me any concern? Nope. What will I do?

How about surrounding myself with my closest friends, turn it into a motorcycle ride and end up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina at Ocracoke?

It just so happens that Howard's Pub is a stumble away from the Beach House Bed and Breakfast.

So as I turn fifty what's the big deal? I'm not sure but it must be a big deal since searching for "turning 50" with Google returns some 7,000,000 hits.

I guess it's a milestone of sorts since I'm more than half as old as I'll ever be. Statistically speaking I will be almost two thirds of the way down my life experience. Using the HCFA Medicaid Life Expectancy Tables, at fifty I can expect 26.32 more years. The table also shows that at birth you can expect 71.8 years so my numbers are looking pretty good.

Of course I don't like this graph, with me being from North Carolina.

Does this bother me? Not a bit. I actually enjoy my age. I'm having more fun now than when I was much younger. The responsibilities are there but you learn how to deal with things easier as you age. My priorities have changed, and I have learned that I can not alter the world a great deal at the time. I have learned that I'm not bulletproof and there are people that are stronger, faster, smarter and better looking than I am. I have learned to be comfortable with what I have become.