There isn't any age limit on riding a motorcycle, MrT, but
there is an age limit on paid hand-to-hand combat. The
average enlisted military person is 20 and out; police vary
by their retirement plans, but anybody in after 30 years has
been doing deskwork for a while; even golfers and racecar
drivers are over the hill at 40. Your physical prime is
behind you at 40. These biker combatants were all in their
50s and 60s.
I found my early 30s rather
depressing. Every birthday, I became ineligible for something
else: marines, city police, FBI, state police. Not that I
ever aspired to join, but still--the sound of all those doors
closing!
(I'll also note that kids had a whole
lot less money when today's 60-year-old was 18, that there's
more absentee parenting today, etc.)
Joy, who did see in the newspaper
today that a 50-something history associate professor in
Pittsburgh shot a cop in the chest at point-blank range but
the cop was wearing body armor, so maybe she oughta be more
circumspect in whom she considers dangerous
Mario Taboada <
matrxtech@yahoo.com> said:
> Joy:
>
> <<When I was a kid, young men in their
twenties wore
> leather
> jackets, ducktailed their hair, and rode
motorcycles. I
> assumed that, like police, gogo dancers, and
marines,
> 18-year-olds were forever signing
up>>
>
> Good motorcycles are expensive. Also, a lot of
parents fear
> that their kids will get killed.
>
>
> <<and 40-year-olds were retiring or doing
desk
> jobs--constant
> turnover.>>
>
> You want to retire guys in their prime? That happens
on
> television. Besides, bikers are loyal to their
calling
> (like deadheadism, it's more than a
hobby).
>
> <<Instead, it seems, at least around
Philadelphia, no one
> enlisted after 1970 or so, and all these guys in
the
> clutches of degenerative diseases>>
>
> OK. I'll introduce you to some bikers. Seriously,
why do
> you think there's a retirement age for riding a
motorcycle?
> There isn't for any other kind of
riding...
>
> <<are inventing wars and taking sides
like
> testosterone-crazed teenagers. Maybe I'm an
ageist.>>
>
> The de rigueur question is de rigueur not asked
(because
> noblesse oblige), cough, cough, tap
microphone.
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