At 91, He’s Hiking the Appalachian Trail. Again. In 2017, Dale “Grey Beard” Sanders became the oldest person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail at age 82. His friend M.J. “Nimblewill Nomad” Eberhart took the record in 2021 at 83 (Sanders was at the finish line with a custom-made walking stick for him). Now Sanders is 91 and months into a bid to take the title back, with Eberhart hiking stretches alongside him and helping with logistics along the trail. When the NYT caught up with Grey Beard in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, he was contemplating what he’s going to do when he enters old age, future tense — he doesn’t feel he’s there yet! The whole piece reminded me of what Morrie Schwartz says in Tuesdays With Morrie: “When you’re in bed, you’re dead.” Dale’s the kind of old guy I want to be. Active and vital to the end. Die red.
“Plans” by Brandon Flowers. Y’all know I’m a huge Killers and Brandon Flowers fan. So I was stoked to learn that Flowers has a new solo album, Thrasher, coming out in August (his first in 11 years), and that he’s gone country on it. He says he found his way back to his father’s music (“Country-Western,” as his dad called it). The first single, “Plans,” is really good. It sounds like a country ballad from the ’60s or ’70s. Fantastic harmonica play from Charlie McCoy and the backup singers are top-notch. Lyrically, the song talks about circling back to plans you hatched years ago, and then put off when other ambitions got in the way. A very midlife reflection. Go check it out on YouTube. Let ’em know AoM sent you in the comments.
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. I read this book a long, long time ago (I even wrote an article about it on AoM back in the day). It’s one of those books that fundamentally changed how I do things. Gawande, a surgeon, argues that most of our failures aren’t from ignorance but from ineptitude: we know what to do, we just fail to do it consistently. His fix is the humble checklist, an idea that gained prominence in 1935 when Boeing’s prototype for the B-17 crashed because the aircraft was simply too complex for even an expert pilot to fly from memory. Boeing’s answer wasn’t more training; it was a pilot’s checklist. I’ve got checklists in Todoist for going on vacation, going backpacking, planning a party, and various recurring work tasks. When an event comes around, I pull up the corresponding list, run through its entries, and nothing gets forgotten.
My go-to pre-workout snack: Rice Krispies Treats. I’ll eat a snack about 30 minutes before I train and lately it always consists of two Rice Krispies Treats. They digest quickly, so the carbs are available when my workout starts, and at 90 calories a bar, having a couple won’t blow my daily macro budget. And they taste good. Now, if you’re already getting adequate carbs throughout the day, do you “need” some fast-digesting carbs right before a workout? Probably not. I do this mostly because I like it. Nothing wrong with doing things just cuz you like it. Never underestimate the power of “I like.”
On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Trying Not to Try: The Art of Wu-Wei and Sunday Firesides: Excitement. Stability. Choose One.
Quote of the Week
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.
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