My concession to aging is to take better care of myself than I did when I was younger. There are still so many new experiences and challenges, like hang gliding or fooling around with ultralight aircraft. Not long ago, the Piper Aircraft people asked me to fly one of their airplanes nonstop from Seattle to Atlanta, to try to establish a new distance speed record. I did it shaving a couple of hours off the old record. Nobody needs to remind me of how lucky I am.
Nowadays, I hunt as much for the exercise- traipsing for miles through hill and dale-as for the sport. As long as I can put one foot in front of the other, I'll be out there ten years from now. I don't still fly high-speed jets out of some nostalgia for the past: I do it because I love it. If it wasn't fun, I'd drop it in a minute, including the consultancy jobs I have with a couple of manufacturers. My lifestyle doesn't demand much money. But I'm definitely not a rocking chair type. I can't just sit around, watch television, drink beer, get fat, and fade out.
And there's so much more I want to do, I've never lost my curiosity about things that interest me. Fortunately, I'm very good at the activities I most enjoy, and that part has made my life that much sweeter. I haven't yet done everything, but by the time I'm finished, I won't have missed much. If I auger in tomorrow, it won't be with a frown on my face.
I've had a ball.
ABOUT LEO JANOS
LEO JANOS is a prize-winning author who has written extensively on a broad range of subjects for The Atlantic Monthly, the Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, Science, People, Cosmopolitan, and the Reader's Digest. Janos was a Time correspondent for nine years, where he served as Washington correspondent, then as Houston bureau chief, covering the Apollo space flights. A former White House speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson, Janos was recipient of the 1981 American Institute of Physics-United States Steel Foundation science-writing award. He is the author of Crime of Passion.