My grandmother will turn 97 in April. She is still very active and still plays piano down at the senior center a couple times a week. Recently, she did some quick calculations. Here’s the results via email from my mom in Oklahoma:
Neat to think that she was born before even TV and other things. Wow, the changes she’s seen over the course of her life…
Bruce
Congrats to grandma on her longevity.
My paternal grandfather lived to 93, drove his car the day he died (the driving had nothing to do with the death), Carol’s paternal grandmother lived to 96, they had to take her license away a couple years earlier because she was hitting too many mailboxes on the way to morning Mass.
I had dinner at a pub called Dad Watsons tonight. The menu had this quote:
I stole one of the menus so I could quote that for you.
that’s amazing. just think of the changes you’ve seen so far in your life, and what if left to come…in my 24 years i’ve seen the birth and growth of cable tv, cell phones, the personal computer, the internet, video games, all sorts of medical and scientific breakthroughs(human genome just ot name one) and so on and so on. if i live to be that old, i’m sure i’ll have seen an amazing amount of advancement. especially because(they say) progress keeps getting faster.
Re: Heart beats
Crazy world because my grandmother (passed away 2 years ago) would be 101 if she were still around Looks like my family is missing a generation. (btw I’m 21 to give you an idea)
My wife’s grandmother died 2 weeks shy of her 105th birthday. She lasted that long by sucking the life out of her own daughter who she prevented from accepting offers of marriage, never let learn to drive, and kept at home caring for her.
My wife was invited to come “live” with them after she graduated college. She declined the offer.
Just another (true life) perspective. 
Oh and supposedly they both gargled with turpentine. Anybody else ever hear of that being thought of as healthful?
i realise heart rate may not have too much to do with this thread but i’ve been waiting to share this titbit of info with u and this seems to be as good a a place as any
during a recent unihoki game, one of the players brought along one of those heart monitor goodies and recorded a top heart rate of 192 bpm
plenty, very plenty
Dave, you just brought to mind Ben’s study on heart rate and unicycling. Remember this? Wow, it seems so long ago. The study mentions that he is 11 years old and weighs 87 lbs. Today, three years later, he weighs in at 150.
http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16842&highlight=wheeled+vehicles
no
another one of those threads that i managed to miss completely
would u say he’s even fitter now than back then?
i wonder how a simmilar experiment’s results would compare
how was that received at the science expo?
Dave,
So many of the science fair projects are things like “Which potato chip tastes better” and the common “Which foods rot the fastest”. Ben’s project was actually one of the more interesting displays and attracted a lot of attention, especially from parents. Ben actually had his unicycle set up in the display but due to lack of space, didn’t perform at all. At the time of the test, friends of ours had a developing premie baby that used a pulse-ox machine at night. We borrowed it for the test. Unfortunately I see that our original data chart has disappeared from the web but it turned out that, from our limited testing, the unicycle was the most advantageous exercise.
Yes, I would say that Ben is in better shape nowadays, especially after the wrestling season. It would be an interesting test to redo now plus it would be better to test to a stabilized heart rate as suggested in the previous thread.
Bruce
I have come to the conclusion after being a judge at 2 different science fairs that they are almost always rigged by teachers and PTA members. I remember possibly the coolist experement that I have seen at a science fair was one done by a kid, yes he figured the stuff out by himself unlike many others, on the conductivity of everyday objects. The crowning jewl in his experement was an electric pickle where he hooked up batteries and got them to arc through the pickel.
only in the ‘Do-that-first-thing-in-the-morning-and-nothing-worse-can-happen-to-u-all-day’ sense of ‘healthfull’
We’ve seen that too. The pickle we saw actually glowed neon green as the electricity passed through it. Last year, Ben did an interesting experiment on a Gauss rifle, or a more appropriate name for within the walls of the school, a magnetic linear accelerator. It actually fired a ball bearing at a very high rate of speed. Very fun. We used magnets from computer hard drives.
B
i’m wondering who has the most fun around these things…
My great-grandmother lived to 100. I can only hope I age gracefully and maintain my physical and mental composure if I make it that long. Maybe I’ll even ride my uni on my 100th birthday, Lord willing. How cool would that be? 
All of you people with long lived predecessors have good genes. Eat right, stay health and keep fit (ride your uni’s a lot) and you should live as long. I like to think that, at 50, I’m about half way through. I don’t know for sure though since, being adopted, I don’t know my family history.