Howdy,

We were wondering what folks in the PG Music Forum community spend their time doing when not working (if not retired) and making music.

The two of us are very outdoors oriented and although we are "seniors" we spend a lot of time mountain biking and hiking often with folks half our age. Janice won our state mountain bike race series two consecutive years and at 57 years old and only 98 pounds she can school a lot of the local guys on how to ride a technical trail!

I attached some photos of her that I shot last week. She's tough.

To make this music related Janice and I do get song ideas while playing outdoors! There've been times when I had to stop and make a note of a hook (not in a race )

Bud
www.janiceandbud.com

Great idea for a thread, Bud! I'd guess you'll get a lot of participation on this one! Everybody does SOMETHING with their time... we love our hobbies!

Is the bike trail in your photos located on your property? Or is it a dedicated bike park?

In my case, music *IS* my main hobby, and any time not spent dealing with life (fixing a hole where the rain gets in*, for example) is probably spent preparing tracks for performance, or practicing for performance.

In the past I also drew cartoons, which is something I hope to rediscover... maybe as a daily facebook blog or as animations to go with original BIAB songs

I have an old aluminum frame Gary Fisher mountain bike, but I only use it to ride in very undemanding places. (Like flat greenways). Now that you've warned me, when I come to visit, I will NOT have my mountain bike with me!!


Other activities (or more appropriately "wannabe activities") are posted in a separate thread about possibilities after retirement

I also like to drive around the country visiting people who never invited me, thereby wreaking havoc on their daily routines

I'm really looking forward to seeing what others have to say. We have some interesting people here, and I'm sure they also have some interesting hobbies.

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*had to keep it music related

What an eye opener this thread is. It made me realize I have NO life at all. I am not even all that active in music at the moment as I finish up this CD and am focusing only on that rather than new writing. I have recently become half of a couple (not married or anything, but "deep dating") and that takes a good amount of my time helping her with some medical issues and such. I have recently returned to church and that takes part of 2 days a week, and more than a general church goer because I am running sound for the church praise team (my girlfriend is the pianist and lead vocalist). I am in the midst of having a lot of medical procedures done, and will now have to add dealing with my dog having cataracts (phone call right after this post). Also dealing with winter snow removal, general house stuff always has to be done.

But hobbies? Not really. I am still in "I am retired" mode and love just relaxing when I feel like. I do dedicate that hour per day to exercise, but while it's stupid cold outside I just work out at home and don't go to the gym where I would be leaving with wet hair and walking out into single digit temps.

Remember too, a lot of us have a great amount of wear on our tread, so we don't have the energy to do as much as someone 30 years younger.

GREAT thread!

My wife and I love to take long walks, especially walking along the beach. At about a 20 minute drive from our house (and several to choose from), it's great to go see the Gulf Coast, winter or summer. Of course, in the summer, we'll go spend hours at the beach, both swimming and strolling. But we also like to find interesting walking trails through nature when we can.

I also like to get on my bike and ride the neighborhoods. In fact, when my car was in the shop recently, I biked to work (it's not that far and since it was mild weather at the time, the sweat factor was not a problem).

Even though I am now working (again), having come from the hustle and bustle of Northern Virginia to a much slower pace of life along the Gulf Coast of Northwest Florida, it kind of feels like I'm retired, even though I'm not.

We also love binge watching shows on Netflix, as well as enjoying wonderful home cooked food (especially seafood) with a glass or two of wine.

I work full time at the day job to keep my family in the life style they have grown accustom to. No time for much else. Oh, there is that music thing I do. But since much of my time is on the road, don't have easy assess to my instrument or DAW in a hotel room. But this won't last forever...

Guess I can chime in here....

I was a music/geology major. (late Pleistocene Epoch).
Did years of earthquake research in the field (USGS) with my professor turned good friend.
I didn't get to college until after the military (GI bill at 23 years old) and was the oldest in pretty much all of my classes.
So, all the sciences are what I thrive on away from writing/recording.
Especially, archeology, astronomy and ancient history.
Ironically, sometimes it seems the more I learn the less I know.

I retired 12/26/10 and love it but the time goes too quickly.
I did take on a part time/work at home job for extra buckaroos but still no myriad of expectations from the outside world and I can learn BIAB at my current snail's pace....I got myself the UltrPlusPak for Xmas.
Wrote a song about it called 'Retired' up on s/click and am working on generating the lead/solo track as we speak because I just had success over the weekend generating solo Real Tracks within Real Band.

That's it for me....carry on.

We have a flat river greenway and I'm on the advisory board and you are welcome! The trail in photo is our local public trail. Janice, me and two others built it in 2001 when we owned an outdoors shop (after retirement) but nowadays the trail is maintained by the local bike club. Just keeping up the trail on our property is all we can handle currently.



Hey now, I’m 69 and Janice is 57. We are of the thought that if you throw an old dog in with some puppies he’ll try and play! Most of our friends are half our age.



Nice, we are 175 miles from the nearest beach. I miss it sometimes.



It’ll come a lot quicker than you can imagine and enjoy every minute of when it comes!

\

Fascinating. Janice and I both love the sciences and have a strong interest in archaeology. We worked over the years with several archies on different projects.

J&B

being a part of my 3yr old granddaughter's life
reading e-books obtained from the library overdrive
watching some tv
dining out i only know how to make reservations
hanging out with fellow retirees
retirement is great BUT pressures of retirement

Camping

Ham radio

Guns.... lots of guns and precision shooting....

Working on training my German Shepard Dog....

Hanging out with family


Not necessarily in that order....simply a list.

I like to fly virtual F-15s on a DCS World free flight server, Virtual Aerobatics. I also assist maintaining the server remotely as an administrator. It's physically located in Paris.

For Janice and Bud... I used to enjoy triathlon but have retired down to mostly 5K runs. Don't have as much time to train for all 3 sports any more so I'm doing what I started out with before the triathlon days. The wife and I also do a lot of trail riding on the 75 miles of paved railroad trails on the Illinois side of St. Louis. Madison County Trails. A couple of the trails are less than a mile from our home. We occasionally ride a tandem bike on the trails too but mostly enjoy our independence there.

LOL - I'm similar to Herb. I also have an Advanced Ham license and I'm a certified dog trainer and own a German Shepherd.
I mentored with a trainer near Fort Bragg who was from Germany and was a Schultzund Champion trainer. Worked for a while with a charity organization that trains service dogs for veterans. Gone through lots of guns over the years.

Had a class C camper until a few years ago. Wife is after me to get another. Probably will.

I bought the family farm after retirement, been here all my life pretty much anyway. Bought a small tractor to play around on the farm and maybe have a garden. A real farmer takes care of the real farming. It's a tobacco farm.

I also do quite a bit of photography and consider myself as an advanced amateur.

Charlie.... that's cool...

I was contemplating becoming a professional photographer and even shot a wedding and did some specialized aerial photography as I also had a Private Pilot's license. Talk about an expensive hobby.... flying airplanes is right there at the top of the list. I was playing in a band at the time and making lots of money so I chased that dream for as long as I could afford to fly.

Yep.... we have a lot in common. The young lady we are working with training our GSD also has 3 GSD's of her own and is involved in the training competitions and is currently doing advanced protection training with certain ones in her pack. Actually, you already know this, the training isn't for the dog... it's for the people. It's fun working with a highly intelligent and driven breed.

Do you have any echolink repeaters near enough to hit? If you do.... once I figure out why I'm having trouble with the access tones, we could QSO....as often as we want. Our club has a repeater with echolink.... right now, we're on low power since the amp was hit by lightning and needs to go in for repairs..... it's a fun hobby and really useful at times. Even if I can't tone in near you... you could tone in here ... 835022....KW4BT

First of all, music is my life - I sing and play sax, wind synth, flute, guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard synth. I make my own backing tracks and write aftermarket style and fake 'disks' for Band-in-a-Box.

So is there time for anything else?

Leilani and I like to travel - that's probably the biggie. We've been to 49 US States, half the Canadian Provinces, a few states in Mexico and down to Costa Rica, the Bahamas and many island countries in the Caribbean, a half dozen countries in Europe, a couple in Asia and one in Africa.

We are both amateur travel and wildlife photographers and have done some pro quality shots (if you shoot enough, a few of them are bound to turn out great).

We like reading books, mostly non-fiction with a layman's scientific bent. We read books together, Leilani reads aloud and I listen (I learn things by listening), that way we are physically on the same page. Some days a paragraph or sentence will lead us off into a discussion and a half hour later realize we've not read much at all, those are some great days.

We do plenty of other things, but those are the most common.

Insights and incites by Notes

hey, Great thread! I'm enjoying hearing more about the people I "hang out with" on the forum!

I haven't been active in the ham community lately but will certainly check out local echolink's to see what is near. I'll have to do some research as I have been inactive so long I am not completely familiar with echolink. My call is KV4AV.

My son in law is a big wedding DJ and I have done some wedding photography for him in the past. I also have an apparatus that allows me to take extremely large panoramic photos in high definition that can be several gigabytes in size. Check out http://www.gigapan.com/ for some examples. On the upper right search box, simply click on the magnifier glass and the latest uploads page will come up. You can use your zoom function to explore into the pictures as if looking through a telescope. Lot's of fun and posts are uploaded from all around the world. (and Mars too. NASA uses this sight to share high definition photos)

You are so correct about dog training is for people and not so much the dogs. One of the interesting things I participated in during my field work with my school mentor was evaluating dogs for protection work. My mentor taught dog behavior at the college level, was German and had studied extensively in Germany prior to coming to the states. She was married to a Special Ops Colonel at Fort Bragg. It was also pretty interesting learning how to evaluate dogs for service work while volunteering for a while with a charity organization that trains dogs for disabled vets. Nearly every dog came from a local pound.

I’ve got to give two thumbs up to Janice for being a hard core mountain biker. Mountain biking is one of the coolest, most fun and hardest sports you can get into. I always loved it.

Unfortunately I’ve gotten away from the hobbies I love most in the last few years. Playing music, canoeing, whitewater kayaking, whitewater rafting, mountain biking, hiking, camping and reading.

Me kayaking on the Cranberry River in WV:





Me kayaking over Baby Falls on the Tellico River in TN:









Okay, … the last pic isn’t me. It’s a gratuitous photo of 3 bikini clad chicks jumping off Baby Falls on the Tellico River at low water levels, … but it kept you interested didn’t it!



Me riding the Tsali Mountain Biking Trails in NC with the Fontana Lake in the background:





My son and I performing at the Vandalia Music Festival in 2005:





My son, … condemned to a life of playing guitar:

Echolink is easy. several ways to access it. You can do it by computer or smart phone with the app. But that really doesn't "feel" like ham radio..... or the better way is to find a local repeater that's linked in.

Simply key up and ID... then key up again... and press the node number into the keypad. the echolink system should hear it and announce that you are connected and ID the remote repeater. You can now call on the remote repeater. Folks on BOTH repeaters will now be able to hear you and QSO. To disconnect simply key up and press the # key and you will hear it announce the disconnection.

I've had problems connecting with some of the tones generated from certain keys. I did connect to Malta and somewhere in Russia and disconnected successfully. But I'm still trying to figure out why my radios won't log in to other US repeaters..... but folks can log in here to reach me..... just let me know when you'll be calling.

Hey, enjoyed ALL those photos. All we ever do is flat water kayaking but we enjoy it. Here's a photo that oughta look familiar to you. Same location as yours. Last October. BTW, I've raced at Tsali nearly every year since 1996.

Bud

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Its interesting to see how some people naturally gravitate toward very similar hobbies... we might not have known any of this if you hadn't started the thread Bud!

Bob & the Merritts: Bluegrass, mountain biking, BIAB and kayaks...

Charlie and Herb: short wave, guns, BIAB and dog training

those are a LOT of common interests

Thanks for the info on echolink Herb. I'll check out the local repeaters I can access from home to see if any are capable of linking. Sounds like a lot of fun and I'd certainly enjoy talking 'live' with you.

Charlie

Charlie and Herb... y'all don't really live that far apart. Y'all are both located pretty close to I-95... not a bad drive at all.

Look up the local repeaters on REPEATER BOOK. It should indicate if the repeater is echolinked.