Hanging out with other retired people

I haven't spent much of my time so far with other retired people.  This is mostly because I don't really know many of them -- not many of my peers, especially my local peers, are retired.  Mr. R-T and I bicycle with two couples most weekends, where the male partner of each is retired.  This past week one of them suggested that he and I do a bike ride together during the week.

Let me tell you, hanging out with the seriously retired is hard work!  My biking buddy has been retired for several years and regularly goes on 40+ mile bike rides with serious hills.  He took me on one of his regular routes at a "social pace", and I was exhausted when I got back home (but I did keep up, even on the hills).  I think my cyclometer may have clocked its fastest time ever for a route over 20 miles, and certainly the fastest time I have ever done hills of that steepness.  We are going to do it again, and maybe in another six months I will be good enough to be able to label myself a "retired cyclist".

Are there merit badges for retired people who learn new skills?  I want some sort of credit for this hard work.

Taking better care of myself.

Now that I realize that I might live into old age, I'm determined to start taking care of myself.  I wasn't a completely slug before, but as I am trying to create new health habits as part of my retirement, I realize that 1) I wasn't as virtuous/healthful as I thought and 2) this is harder than it looks.

I have a Fitbit - one of those electronic pedometers - and since I retired I have been recording on their site both my exercise beyond steps and what I eat.  (It's time consuming, even with their huge database of foods and their nutritional values.) I've also signed up for their "premium services", which let me track some additional things.  Things I have learned:

• Even though I go to the gym or get some other form of exercise almost daily, I have discovered that I am not especially active by the measures that count.  After reading articles like this one in the NY Times, I've been trying to increase the number of active minutes in my day (actually, the tracking program I use has "active calories", but they don't exactly explain what it means.  It's some form of intensity weighted minutes, but I don't know the formula)
• I've been trying to get my calories earlier in the day, based on reports like this one .  My Fitbit tells me that if I want to lose weight I should have at most 30% of my calories in the evening.  That's not easy.  
• This article suggests that as people get older, we need more protein (about 25% more a day).  I've discovered that I don't even get the amount needed by younger people, so I need to increase my protein intake a lot.
• Of course, we all need fiber, and I had always believed that my intake of mostly whole grains meant I was getting enough fiber.  Fitbit tells me that I'm typically about 25% low.
• Like almost everyone else, I get too many of my calories from fat.  I suspect that if I would give up butter, I would be OK, but that would be a big sacrifice for me.
• On the good news side, I do pretty well on sodium. I come out barely over the amount allotted a non-hypertensive person. I suspect that Fitbit overestimates my sodium intake, as I often substitute in the tally some prepared item that is similar in composition to a homemade item I made (it's a lot less work than entering all the ingredients one by one), and I think many of those are higher in sodium than the things I make.  
• I also do OK on added sugars, which surprised me a bit.  To the best of my ability to count this (it's harder to count than other things), I'm pretty close to the very low limits of 6 teaspoons/day. 

Now that I know reasonably well what my deficiencies are, I've been trying to move the needle in the right direction.  I'll talk more about exercise in another post.  The food changes are surprisingly difficult.  I'm not sure about how to make any of the changes I need (other than lowering the fat percentage, and maybe that would come as a side effect of making the other changes).  If I get more fiber and protein into my diet, the amount of fat should go down, no? But where does this fiber and protein come from?  I often have yogurt or eggs for breakfast, but that isn't enough (and neither of those has fiber). I have meat for at least one other meal and sometimes two.  Why isn't that enough protein?  Now that it's spring, I will easily eat some more fruit.  Will that be enough more fiber? Why is it that health articles are quick to explain what's wrong with our diets/lifestyles, but never seem to give practical advice about how to change them.  

No wonder so few people meet these "official" health goals.  It's not easy, at least given the diet we are starting from. 

Typical day in my retirement life, so far

Thought I would share what my schedule was like for two days this week -- the variety of what I do surprised me (at least relative to my working life).

Wednesday:

 6:00 spin class

 8:30 meet with gardener over her desire to increase my water bill by adding thirsty plants

10:00 mediation practice

11:00 help friend install "words with friends" game on his phone

11:30 have last minute lunch with friend

 1:00 interview for volunteer position I am considering

 2:30 go to PyCon and work on mailman3 coding sprint till 9pm, including dinner

Thursday:

 5:30 get up, but discover my trainer can't make our 6am session, so do email

 7:00 bake banana bread

 9:30 workout with personal trainer

10:45 discover flood in yard, get gardener to come ASAP and fix irrigation (after I turn off the water)

      research where to get dry ice (I have to ship some frozen food)

12:00 another lunch with a friend (this one planned)

 1:30 communicate with fitbit support about my semi-broken pedometer (involved uploading pictures)

 3:00 gardening, mostly planting plants I bought last week

 5:00 take a walk in the neighborhood

 6:00 dinner, a little TV and email

Two very different, but very enjoyable days.  And today will be different from both of them (though it does include another lunch with friends).

 

I'm not the only midday cyclist

Continuing my attempts to use my car only when I really need to, I decided to bike to the bank and the grocery store the other day.  This was a total trip of about eight miles on the flat.  It worked well, though there seemed to be a shortage of places to lock a bike up to.  But what surprised me most was seeing at least ten people who seemed to be doing errands by bike.  This was about 2pm on a weekday (so I didn't count people I saw on my way home, as that is when school kids get out, and they may have been parents going to pick up kids from school).  The people I saw weren't in spandex or wearing clipon bike shoes, so they didn't look like recreational cyclists to me.  Ten people in about 15 minutes is a lot.

Apparently our town is a hotbed of people who are home during the day (they didn't all look like people who might be retired) and who try to get around by bike at least part of the time.  I'm sure it's a combination of the affluence of the community (so not everyone is at work), reasonable streets for biking, and lovely weather (both that day and most days).  Still, it does portend well that there will be bike routes and a biking constituency in the future when I may need more support for this choice.

Baby Boomers and Senior Discounts

As we creep up in age, there is at least one good thing to look forward to -- some places give discounts to senior citizens.  For example, the play series we go to gives about a 15% discount to people over 62.  (Which seems somewhat backward in this case, as easily 3/4 of their audience looks to be over 60, so it might be in their better interest to give discounts to those under, say, 40. But don't tell them I said this.)

We've just come back from a ski trip to Alta, Utah, and I'm coming to the conclusion that the age for senior discount ski lift tickets is a moving target that is going to move upward faster than we baby boomers can become eligible.  It used to be that there were quite a few ski areas that offered free lift tickets, at least on week days, to those over 65 (I suspect on the assumption that the number of 65+ skiers was so small that this was great PR and of very little cost).  Well, now that 65 is the new 45 (or whatever it is this year), either the senior discount has shrunk to about 10-15% of the adult ticket cost, or the free or very low cost tickets have moved to age 70, or in one area I looked up, to age 82.  At this rate, I'm never going to get low enough rates to fulfill my dream of becoming a superannuated ski bum.

At Alta, while the discount on the day rate was about $10, you can get a senior season ticket for $40 if you are over 70.  And I must have ridden up on the lifts with about 5-6 people who retired to the Salt Lake area (Alta is less than an hour from downtown Salt Lake), and who ski Alta regularly.  It costs them little more than gas to head up to the area for 2-3 hours on a day with new snow (which is most winter days in that part of the world).  Not that I'm thinking of moving to Salt Lake, but what are the odds that this deal will be available when I am 70?  I am not holding my breath.

Bucking the American Car Culture

A couple of distinct threads have made me aware of how dependent on cars we are in the U.S.  I live in California, where good public transportation is all but non-existent, and while we aren't quite Southern California (I'm thinking of the scene in L.A. Story where Steve Martin gets in his car to drive to visit his next door neighbor), cars are the first things we think of when it comes to getting from point A to point B.  I am reminded of when one of my sons came home from a semester in Vienna.  He wanted to visit a friend who lived less than half a mile away, and no one was available to drive him when he wanted to go.  He ended up walking (in a bit of a huff, as I recall, about his cruel parents).  When he came back, he said "That was closer than from my apartment to my subway stop in Vienna.  Why did you ever drive me there?  What were you thinking?"  I have to admit, I had no good answer for him, other than "Wait till you have a teenager trying to wear you down."

The first episode that has me thinking about how dependent we are on our cars is that my trainer had an epileptic episode, and he isn't allowed to drive until everything is resolved.  He, of course, did not choose his apartment with public transportation in mind, and his hours don't mesh well with what little there is.  I believe his brother brings him to work, and he takes the train part way home and walks the last several miles.  Running errands in the middle of the day is now a major challenge.  He's hopeful this is just temporary, but if he does not get his driving privileges back, it's going to impact all of his life -- where he lives, where he works, etc.

The second is that, since I presumably have more time, I've been trying to walk and cycle places. (I will eventually try to become familiar with our local bus system, but I suspect it will be a minor part of my transportation planning).  The first two weeks, I only thought "Oh, I could have biked there" after the fact.  Today has been my first attempt.  It has threatened to rain all day, bringing out the weather wimp in me.  My initial task was to take my car in to get some recall remedies done; the dealer is about 3 miles away (on a very flat route).  I drove there and biked back.  I suspect that it cost me not more than 5 minutes of extra time. I'll bike back there when they call me to pick up the car (assuming the rain isn't too hard and it's not dark. I am also a darkness wimp.).  Then I needed to mail a package.  I could have used the overpriced UPS licensee a block from my house, but I remembered that there is a post office about a mile away.  I decided to walk, since the package was too big and bulky to fit in my bike bag or in a back pack (I may have to invest in panniers, if I do this often).  It was a nice walk; took a little less than an hour, which is probably 45 minutes more than just walking to the UPS store, but it was very enjoyable.  However, I would certainly never have done this if I were working; I would have considered my time too precious, both because I could do more interesting things with it, and because I made a lot more an hour than the $5 I probably saved.

While walking to the post office, I remembered that I need some oranges for a cake I plan to bake tomorrow for my book club.  I made a mental note to walk to the grocery store tomorrow morning (it's less than a quarter mile from my house).  Luckily, I realized on my walk that there is a grocery store next door to the post office.  I'm not used to thinking about what other stores are around and what other errands I need to do, so that I can maximize the value of my trips.

Using alternatives to the car takes more effort, both mental and physical, and more time.  On the other hand, it made me feel like I was living life at a different pace, which is certainly one of my goals for retirement. I think in the end, it's a definite net win.

The Marissa Mayer Kerfuffle

I feel as a woman in tech, I have to comment on the recent kerfuffle over Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, telling all Yahoo employees they can no longer telecommute.

As background, I know Marissa, having worked with her at Google, and I also know the Google culture, which certainly shaped her notions of what makes a company productive.

Google is a culture of hallway conversations, shouting over the cubicle barriers to people, etc.  So far as I can tell, the point of the free food (at least originally) was to ensure that people had lunch with their colleagues, chatted over coffee, etc. When I first came to Google eight years ago, face-to-face meetings were critical.  People traveled to other sites just to make sure their voices were heard in meetings (there were zero constraints on travel in those days).  Today Google, with 40+ engineering sites, lives and dies by the video conference, and management has been known to tell people that they should cut down on travel and use video more often.  But it's still not a culture that believes that telecommuting is a good thing, either for the employee or the company. They don't forbid it, but it's definitely not encouraged.  That's the culture Marissa came from.

As near as I can tell, and it's what I hear from others, this pronouncement is an act of something close to desperation on Marissa's part.  She is trying to make Yahoo more than a me-too, second level company.  She needs sharp people who can do creative things and do them fast.   I applaud her for believing that even if she can't attract many of the best and brightest, she can get results from the employees' collective intelligence, if they work together effectively.  I personally don't think it will work (and I have lots of anecdotes from my experience at other companies to support my view, but this blog post will be long enough without those), but if she's going to play it safe and only do things where the consensus is that she's on the right track, she's never going to succeed.

The thing I didn't understand is why this immediately became a women's issue.  In my experience, men take advantage of telecommuting more than women (of course, there are more men in tech than women, but I think that this probably holds even if you take base rates into account).  If you've ever tried to work with a crying baby in the house, then you'd know that most women with small children would rather go to the office while they are working.  They might want part-time work, but that's a different issue.  There is real value in being able to telecommute part of the day when you have school-age kids, but in my experience, men are as likely to sign up for those roles as women.  It's a sad state of affairs when the pundits immediately assume that only women will want the child-related benefits of telecommuting. And I know several men who telecommute part time who have no children or have grown children.  I suspect this is Marissa's experience too.  I'll bet that even though she expected flak for this approach,  it never occurred to her that she would be called anti-woman because of it.

I'd love to see some real research on whether telecommuting or distributed teams (telecommuting being an extreme form of distributed teaming) harm either individual or team productivity.  The one study that everyone is referring to had to do with call center workers, and there individual productivity is what matters (and what was measured).  Engineering teams work differently, and I wouldn't generalize across those boundaries.  It wouldn't be that hard to do this kind of research -- maybe Marissa's pronouncement will inspire someone to do so.

And, of course, if Marissa manages to turn Yahoo around, getting rid of telecommuting will get part/most of the credit, whether it deserves it or not.