Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Boomers have long been derided as technology-phobic. That's not really true anymore. Nowadays most Boomers (and even many of the Silent Generation) use modern technology such as mobile phones and the internet on a daily basis. I mean, these things have been around for 20+ years now. That's long enough for even reluctant learners to become familiar with them. The gap is they're often clueless when things don't "just work", as any Gen Xer or Millennial who routinely has to play tech support for their elder relatives well knows.

Where Boomers remain technology averse it's generally no longer because they're afraid of technology but because they don't see it as solving a problem. That's familiar to me, as I've long asked the question of new technology, "What problem does this actually solve?" The difference, though, is that I come at it from the perspective of a tech insider. But one net result is the same: We're frustrated when poor technology, technology that doesn't solve our problem— and perhaps creates new ones instead— is forced upon is.

Here are some Boomer technology opinions I agree with:

1. Give me a real menu, not a QR code

In the depths of the Coronavirus pandemic 6 years ago, driven by hygiene concerns, restaurants started swapping out printed menus for QR codes you scan to browse a menu on your smartphone. That never solved a problem for me as (a) I didn't dine out in restaurants for over a year until I could get vaccinated, and (b) I adopted— and continue to practice— the discipline of washing my hands after holding a menu. The problem it created is that it's a nuisance having to doomscroll though a tiny menu that can only list a few items per screen. Imagine if restaurants offered a printed menu that was the size of your hand and 53 pages long. Bring back nice, big menus where I can see lots of options at once.

Closely related to that....

2. Turn on the damn lights in the restaurant 

Turn up the lights in the restaurant so we can read the dang menus! I'm not that old, mid 50s, and my eyesight is still better than that of most people my age, but more and more I have to use my phone's flashlight to read the damn menu.

3. I don't want to create an account to buy something once 

Look, I get the importance of accounts to secure information. I have had computer accounts (name and password) since 1985. I have been buying things online since 1993. But if I'm just going to buy one thing, once, No, I don't want to have to make a new account. Just take my credit card number and let's complete the transaction.

4. I don't want to download an app

If I own something that's physically in front of me, I don't want to have to download and install an app to use it. If the controls are that complex that they can't be managed via a small number of buttons or switches on the device, you can damn well put a lightweight web server in it and let me manage it through any common browser— like the way routers have worked for more than two decades now.

For example, a few years ago I bought some LED light bulbs with selectable color temperature. They required an app! I returned them and bought another brand that features a simple, physical, 4-position switch on plastic housing at the base of the bulb.

5. Give me knobs and buttons in my car for commonly used controls

"This car has too many buttons and knobs on the center console" is a valid complaint... but worse than that is a car that has too few physical controls because everything has been disappeared behind a touchscreen with a menu tree that goes 5 levels deep. I'm fine with infrequently used controls, like audio balance L/R and F/R, being in menus. Give me simple, physical controls for things I need to adjust frequently like audio volume, radio station presets, air temperature, fan speed, etc.

This is a safety issue as well as a convenience nuisance. A driver can learn & use good tactile controls without taking their eyes off the road. Navigating menus is a dangerous distraction.

6. I like physical media

I have a library of 100s of music albums on CD. Partly that's because I started collecting it long before digital downloads and streaming existed as music-listening alternatives, but partly also it's because I prefer to own the copy of music I buy, not just rent it. With streaming and even downloads, your right to keep listening to the music is retained by the distributor. They can take it away. Or they can raise the price. So when I want a complete album of something new, I check the price for a physical album vs. a download. It's almost always the same. BTW, I rarely play the physical CDs I own. I've digitized most of them into my pocket-sized supercomputer. But the copies are mine and nobody can take them away or raise the price.

7. My TV, my refrigerator, my toaster do not need wifi

There are some useful use-cases for wifi connected appliances. The TV might be the strongest use case, as a wifi TV can connect directly to streaming services— which in the 2020s are what having cable TV was in the 1990s. But an inexpensive device like Roku TV can do this, too. And having wifi directly on major appliances is often not primarily for your benefit as the consumer; it's for the vendor's benefit, as they use the connection to spy on your habits, sell your profile data to advertisers, and cram ever-more advertising into your limited attention span. Wifi-enabled TVs already do this. Friends of mine who've bought TVs with wifi have chosen to disable it— to prevent intrusive advertising— and fall back to earlier gen solutions like plugging in a Roku, Amazon stick, etc., to an HDMI port.

The use case for the consumer is even weaker for wifi on other appliances. What's your fridge going to do? Text you, "Fam you outta OJ"? What's your oven going to do? Your toaster? And of course you'll need an app to set them up. The fact is that wifi on these devices is a Trojan horse. It's all about two things: 1) Advertising... and 2) Charging you more to use your damn device. Manufacturers build in features but turn them off when you don't pay your monthly subscription. Like a convection oven that will stop... convecting... without a $4.99/month fee. Screw that!

Spring Family Visit Travelog #10
Getting ready to leave · Sun 5 Apr 2026. 9am.

Today we fly home from visiting my inlaws in Pennsylvania. And this trip has been almost nothing like I planned. Not that I had strong plans; I left things flexible knowing we'd need to play it by ear. But still I came in with a range of expectations... and it's been unlike any of those.

First, and simplest, we didn't go anywhere other than Hawk's parents' place. We'd thought maybe we'd spend a day seeing my mom and youngest sister, or a day visiting our nieces, but none of that worked out. The three nieces I reached out to about meeting up with never responded. Sadly that's what happens most of the time.

Spending the whole week with Hawk's parents wasn't bad. It's just more... limited... than what I hoped for.

So then there's what we planned— or expected— with Hawk's parents. Those plans were largely dashed. I mean, we spent the week with them. In a way that was the most important element of the plan... but it was also merely the baseline.

There were no fancy meals. Hawk's mother is too weak to cook. She can barely even walk to the kitchen, with the help of a walker. I didn't expect her to cook up a storm... but after 30 years of visits where she's practically lived in the kitchen seeing that all her guests are well cared for, it's a different experience being in her house with meals being completely DIY.

Like I said, though, we knew she wouldn't be cooking for us. At least not more than a minimum. We figured we'd take her out to dinner a few times instead. Except even that was a bridge too far. She didn't have energy to leave the house. She gladly stayed home by herself while the rest of us joined family friends for holiday dinner.

Beyond issues of enjoying meals together— again, always a defining aspect of visits to my inlaws— Hawk and I expected that we'd help her parents with preparing to move. Yes, we're already past the first step on the line of "You really need to move out of this house." They've accepted that they need to move out. So we figured we could help them 1) look at retirement homes in the area and 2) clean out the house, especially the basement, in preparation for moving sometime in the near future.

Alas they didn't have energy even to participate in such tasks. Cleaning out the basement requires their active participation, at least to act as deciders. "Keep this, toss that, hold the other thing for now." Triage. But even that was a bridge too far. We tried doing a few cleanup tasks without their supervision, like throwing out expired food from the fridge... but even that resulted in hard feelings! Well, at least Hawk's brother did get her dad to look at one retirement home option. But it seems they did only a cursory look and left with lots of major questions still unanswered. All these will remain tasks for another time.

Speaking of "another time", we're already planning out next trip! MIL's birthday is in late May. We'll sit down with her today and try to map out her treatment schedule to determine which dates would be best for the next visit.

I caught up with my mom today about my retirement. Yes, it took days to talk to her about it. Though she might have heard it a few days ago from my sister.

My mom's not the most in-touch person anymore. She lives with my youngest sister, which is probably also the only reason, short of moving to a managed care home, she doesn't perish of self-neglect. She keeps odd hours and doesn't like to answer the phone.

Nobody else in the house answers the phone, either. The landline phone, that is. Everyone else has a mobile phone and views the landline as a laughable anachronism. The landline's there for my mom, who doesn't have a mobile phone and doesn't want one. And despite being the only person in the house who'll use it, she almost never answer it when it rings.

Getting in touch with my mom often involves several steps:

1. Call the landline phone. Nobody answers.
2. Often try step #1 again a few hours later, or earlier the next day, with the same result.
3. Text my sister to ask if they're at home and when mom's even up. Ask her to tell mom to answer the phone.
4. Sister texts me back a few days later to say mom has tried calling me but keeps getting a busy signal. NOTE: my phone is a cell phone with call-waiting and digital voicemail. Aside from when a system wide failure occurs, callers will not get a busy signal. Mom's dialing the wrong number.
5. Sister writes my number on a piece of paper for Mom and makes sure she can read it. It's the same number I've had since 2005. It is not one of the older numbers Mom might still have in her address book.
6. We finally get in touch.

So, we finally chatted today. She's happy for me but also feels old that her kids are now retiring. I get that. I suggested she look at the positive side of it: she's lived long enough to see the first of her kids retire. My dad didn't live that long. He was older than her, but she's now 2 years old than his age at death. I didn't remind her of that. But I did I remind her she's lived long enough to see her first great-grandchild. Of course, that great-grandchild's grandma is my sister. My younger sister.

Chicago Trip Log #n+1
Back Home for 18 hours

I'm worn out today. I got home from a business trip late last night and I've just been kind of coasting all day. I would've slept in if I could, but I had to start my workday with an 8am meeting. Fortunately today was meeting-light— light being a relative thing meaning only slightly less than half the day tied up in meetings 😨— so I could take it easy.

Mid-afternoon I went out to the pool with Hawk. She'd already been there for at least 45 minutes. I did slow walking laps in the pool for a bit, hoping the exercise would wake me up. It didn't. Though it did help a small bit with stretching sore/tired muscles. Then I sat for a soak in the hot tub. I could've vegged the rest of the afternoon on a lounge chair after that, but I did need to get back to my desk to finish up a few late-day responsibilities. Taking 90 minutes for a pool break wasn't a problem as I'm already at over 55 hours marked for the week.

Now it's Friday evening and... I'm glad I don't have any plans. Hawk and I discussed going out for dinner but then decided to stay in as we both felt we didn't have the energy to dine out. Then I decided to get a take-in pizza as I lost the energy even to cook dinner. For tonight I'll probably just fritter on my computer for a while then get to bed early. Getting older sucks.

My plan this weekend was #PoolLife. After a busy-busy week of work Friday would be a half-day, I'd enjoy the pool mid-afternoon in the heat, then having little else on my calendar this weekend, do more of the same Saturday and Sunday afternoons while the warm weather lasts. Alas by the time I finished work Friday sometime after 3pm I was too tired to bother going to the pool. I just wanted to lie down and take a nap. 😧

I'm-too-tired continued to be a challenge over the weekend. Saturday I ended up not using the pool at all. Sunday I went for an hour because I forced myself to, frustrated that I didn't want to let my grand plan for the weekend go completely unacted upon.



Yes, going out to the pool for a while was nice. It was also tiring. I wound up microwaving some Hot Pockets for dinner Sunday night because I was too tired to go out for dinner and also too tired to actually cook anything. Sunday night I went to bed right before 9pm, once again lying down to sleep while there was still light in the sky.

Now it's Monday morning and it's almost time for work. Where did my weekend go? I feel like I slept/sleep-walked through too much of it. 😞

Oregon Cascades Travelog #20
Bend, OR - Fri, 4 Jul 2025, 10:45pm

We spent a lot of the day taking it easy in Bend today. Really too much of the day. I get it that sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate with outdoors adventure plans, or that we need to take an easy day when we're traveling, or both. The take-an-easy-day thing is a reality we've faced more frequently as we get older. I accept that. But as I gazed at the bright blue sky out the window of our hotel room— a blue sky that the weather forecast continued to insist did not exist, had not existing at all today, and would not exist until tomorrow— I grew frustrated that what started as "Sure, let's take it easy" had turned into frittering. Inertia. Languor.

Hawk was still feeling out of sorts. She made it clear that she was willing to hike but not in a headspace to plan things or make decisions. She knows I know what she likes and is willing and able to do, so she trusted me to do the planning. I reviewed the lists of hikes we'd collected for this trip, checking them against maps for what there was still time in the day to do. As the hour wound toward 3pm we'd already frittered away more than half the day. But surely there was something to do. Indeed, I came up with not one but two possible hiking itineraries. One was desert-y and the other waterfall-y. Knowing Hawk, I figured the one with the waterfalls would be better. And I felt more like seeing waterfalls, too.

We drove northeast from Bend over the crest of the Cascade Mountains to Willamette National Forest. First we visited Gooch Falls, then drove south to another trailhead for the two-fer of Sahalie Falls and Koosah Falls. Actually the latter was more like a three-fer or even four-fer, as the McKenzie River flowing over these big falls also cascaded over a few smaller falls in between them.

As with the past few days, I'm holding up on detailed blogs with photos to keep more on top of the chronology of the trip. I'll add links here when I'm ready to post those blogs.

You may notice that the driving route for this trip bears a lot of resemblance to our trip of two days ago, when we hiked Downing Creek Falls and Proxy Falls. Indeed we drove right past the turnoff for Downing Creek Falls on our way to Gooch Falls today, and the drive from there to Sahalie and Koosah overlapped part of our drive to Proxy Falls.

"Why didn't we combine these trips together better?" you might wonder. I wondered that, too. And I was frustrated about it. The simple answer is that we didn't plan well enough. We didn't adequately research the location of all the hikes on our various lists. On the other hand, even if we did research them better, there are the issues of time and energy. There aren't enough of either to do all the proximally located hikes in one day. So we made another trip back over the summit and hiked them today.

And you know what? These hikes were awesome. All my frustrations about doing the same drive again two days later melted away, completely disappeared, as I saw the surprisingly big Gooch Falls. And Sahalie and Koosah and all the little falls in between them made today an excellent day— even though we didn't leave the hotel until just after 3pm.

Of course, the morning wasn't wasted. Soaking in the hot tub was nice. And late this evening I went back out to the hot tub for another soak. Oh, and during this soak, at 10pm, there were fireworks— because it's July 4th! I relaxed in the hot water with hotel neighbors I'd just met, watching the fireworks show for 30 minutes.

For a while now I've joking remarked about my "old man pills" and "old man pill sorter". I don't share that sly reference with everyone, though; just those I think are old enough to get it.

What's an "old man pill sorter"? It's one of these:



Okay, it's also an old woman pill sorter, or an old person pill sorter. I mean, it's not gendered. But it is generally age-aligned. You buy one of these (or, worse, multiples) when you have so many pills you can't keep them straight otherwise.

I knew what these were when I was younger. My grandma had one. I didn't expect to need one until I was, like, 70.

I sure didn't need these when I was younger. Through my20s and 30s I didn't gobble a bunch of pills daily. I took a multivitamin, maybe one or two other supplements if I was trying something, and an allergy pill during allergy season. Plus maybe a prescription pill for a week at a time if I was sick with something— which was rare. I could manage all that by just grabbing pills one at a time from their bottles.

But for the last few years now I've become an Older American— which is to say, a Well Medicated American. And it happened well before 70. Now in addition to a few supplements I've long taken, I'm taking a pill of this to keep that level down, then another pill to counteract side effect #1 of that pill, plus yet-another pill to minimize side effect #2, plus... well, you get the picture. ...And in case you don't get the picture, it looks exactly like the one above. 🤣

Last week the program Marketplace on NPR ran a series of stories entitled "The Age of Work". Tuesday night I tuned in during a long car trip and listened to the episode In Tennessee county, an aging population means business opportunity.

"We start today in the middle of a line dancing class," host Kai Ryssdal started, "Because, silly as it might seem, the people in this class are the driving force behind a changing economy."

"You're talking about Boomers," I said back to the radio. "Boomers are the driving force behind a changing economy. And that's not news because Boomers have been the driving force behind pretty much every change in society, politics, and the economy for the past 60 years!!"

Indeed that's the whole gist of not just this episode but the whole series. A social trend is stretching and shifting to accommodate the needs of the Baby Boomer generation. Gosh, where have I heard that before? How about "Everywhere" and "For my entire life."

In this episode the story is about clubs and businesses in small, remote Cumberland County, Tennessee, that are thriving as they serve the needs of a burgeoning retiree population. The program's host and writers picked Cumberland in conjunction with payroll company ADP because ADP's data show it has the highest average age workforce in the US. What's happening today in Cumberland is coming soon to your community, the hosts tell us, like never before in the world has anyone seen things shift to favor the needs of Boomers.

The first business the show spotlights is the one Ryssdal quips about in the opening: a dancing class. It's full of seniors. It's pretty much all seniors. And it's totally crazy how it's so busy... at 9:30am on a Tuesday. Who could possibly want to take a dance lesson at 9:30am on a weekday? the host says in so many words.

"Because they're retired," I said back to the radio. Retirees can take dance lessons at 9:30am on a Tuesday. Especially when they're cheap, like $5 for a full hour if not longer.

"And do you know why it's only retirees there?" I continued. Well, aside from the fact that younger people might be literally barred from attending. Age discrimination is illegal in the US... but only when it discriminates against older people. Telling the young to kick rocks is socially and legally acceptable.

So, aside from having the police called on them and possibly being arrested for disturbing the peace if they make a fuss about wanting to dance, too, why aren't more younger people at this just-$5, 9:30am-on-a-Tuesday dance lesson?

How about, because a) School, and b) Work?

Seriously, how is this considered news. People under 65 are mostly busy with school or work on a Tuesday morning. And of those not in school or paid work, many of the rest are busy with the unpaid work of raising children at home. My mom was a stay-home parent for several years during my childhood, and never once during that period did she have time on a Tuesday morning to join an adult dance lesson at the town's rec center.

Speaking for myself now, as a child-free adult, I would've loved to have an opportunity like inexpensive dance lessons anytime the past 30 years... but again, not on a weekday morning. Dance lessons at 8pm? Sure! But those are rare. And even more rarely just $5.

The cheap classes on everything at the community center are at... drum roll, please... weekday mornings. Nights and weekends the community center is generally closed, locked, and dark. Programs like these have always been offered during the day, because people who teach them and support them by operating the facility only work during the day, making them implicitly only for people who don't have to work during the day. So they've always been implicitly, if not also explicitly, for retirees. And now because Boomers are retirees it's news!

Hawk and I both had birthdays recently. ...Well, recently if you count a month and a half ago for mine; less time since hers. With our birthdays falling close together and right around the winter holidays we decided years ago not to have traditional birthday parties but instead to combine our birthdays into one party and celebrate it once the holi-daze has passed. We started our tradition 11 years ago with our combined 82nd birthday. Last night we celebrated turning a whopping 104!



Ahead of the party on Saturday evening we cleaned the house on Saturday. Hawk had already done some baking on Friday. Saturday evening we decorated and set out our snacks. I made a bowl of guacamole, as is our usual. I only have a photo of the table before our guests arrived (above), not once they arrived, many bringing additional food to share. Once guests started arriving I was too busy to take another picture. Plus, the room was crowded.

Speaking of crowds, we had a good number, about 20 including ourselves. A few friends who planned to attend dropped out at the last moment for various reasons. But like I said, 20 was a good number because it fits well in our house on the main level(s) without spilling upstairs or outside.

We appreciate friends who bring food to help with the party. Friends who know I enjoy alcohol often bring a gift of a bottle. Though...



It's not really like I need more bottles. 😂 But I got a few more last night. A bottle of Scotch, a bottle of bourbon, a bottle of rum.

We also had a fun time drinking from many of those bottles in the overflowing liquor cabinet above. I started by mixing half a dozen or so margaritas then figured, "Hey, let's open the even better stuff and save time by drinking it straight!" 😂 I took a handful of our friends on a tequila tasting adventure. Then Scotch and Japanese whiskey, especially for those who didn't have to drive. BTW, I was careful to pour very small servings, about 10mL at a time (vs. a standard shot which is 50mL), so everybody could try several different types of liquor, even those who did have to drive afterward.

All I am is tired anymore. Since returning from our trip to Panama nearly four weeks ago, all I've done is is work on workdays and veg other than that. My weekends have been mostly full of sitting around. Today I couldn't even manage to sit around all day; I took a nap for about 3 hours mid-afternoon because I was so tired.

What's going on here? Do I have long Covid? Do I have some other sickness condition that's sapping my energy? Is it because I'm depressed from my work situation? Did I suddenly get 10 years older in the past month? Or is it just because I've been a sloth the past few weeks and now this is my new energy level?

Either way, I'm not liking it.