Adios, 59

With any luck at all, this will be the last time you find me whining about turning 60.
Today is my last day in my 50s.
Tomorrow – Bastille Day, 2005 – is the 60th anniversary of the first breath I drew in my current incarnation. It was a Saturday. World War II was all but over. Adolf Hitler had eaten a bullet in his Berlin bunker two months earlier and Allied troops were settling down for the occupation of Germany.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was dead of a stroke and Harry S. Truman was getting up to speed in Washington.
But Japan was holding out even though it was obvious to everyone that the U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces were tightening the ring of steel around their homeland and daily raining down firestorms of incendiary bombs.
On the July Saturday that I was born, J. Robert Oppenheimer supervised the hoisting of the first atomic bomb to the top of a steel tower in the New Mexico desert. Two days later, on the morning of July 16, Oppy and his crew lit up the desert with their man-made sun, giving him a vision of the Hindu god Shiva, the Destroyer of Worlds.
Yeah, it was a heavy time.
And to those of you who came in later – some of you, much later – it must seem like an impossibly long time ago.
Maybe it was.
But I find it absolutely startling how fast 60 years can get away from you. How the hell did I get to be this old this quickly? I don’t feel old. My body isn’t falling apart. I’m at the top of my game when it comes to writing and photography. Could it be that old age is an illusion? Is it really true that you’re as old as you feel? If that’s the case, I’m somewhere around 30.
I had a bit of validation that I’m not completely old and in the way this afternoon.
I got a call from a corporate headhunter who’s looking for someone to coordinate the magazine and website of an international motorcycle organization. I’ve been aware for some time that the search is on for applicants for the position. It’s been the source of no little controversy among the membership, many of whom believe the job should go to the woman who now edits the magazine and who think the very suggestion of a search for other candidates is a slap in her face.
I listened to the pitch with some interest, but took myself out of the running when the guy said it requires relocation to a city two states away.
But it’s nice to know that somebody thinks 34 years in newspapers, 10 years as a Motorcycle Safety Foundation instructor, more than 300,000 motorcycle miles and freelance publication in a whole bunch of magazines and newspapers adds up to something useful.
So I guess I’ll look forward to tomorrow and my 60th birthday with a sense of satisfaction that I’ve done more good than bad in my six decades, maybe saved a few lives, maybe enlightened and entertained and can still enjoy a good 145 mph motorcycle romp across the Nevada desert.