Geezer was a character in the Beezer...

Comms, reminds me of my Grandmother in her huge Mercury.

Except you saw her head peering through the steering wheel. From ehind she was invisible.

much like my 4'10" grandma was behind the wheel of her '57 caddy. and if you saw the vehicle pass by, you'd swear no one was driving.

The character is, the name isn't.

Sue

I am 57 and have a busy life, so that makes me ...er .. an "adolescent" type of geezer .. LOL

OK, back to topic

(1)

My eyesight isn't good, and have been going south with age. Sometimes, I was stuck with my glasses broken or a lost screw. So, I bought lots and lots of cheap reading glasses and pre-positioned them in almost everywhere that I can be. Plus a few in almost every kit I have. Older glasses are never threwn away. They becomes backups.

(2)

Due to heavy weight, I had occasional pain in my feet or ancles. It was not persistent or frquent enough to visit a doctor but bad enough to get me thinking. What if a pain episode hits me while I am trying to escape a disaster or do an importnat job ??

The other day I was in a camping shop and saw a hiking staff. It was made in China and did not trust it enough, but it gave me the idea. So I am going to visit some drug stores ..etc to look at walking aids and may buy a walking stick and throw it in the car trunk. Worst come to worst, I can use it for light-duty defense or even combine it with a tarp for a make-shift tent.

Expand your search for walking staffs to include your hardware store where you can buy a replacement tool shovel handle. They make great hiking staffs, as does the carefully chosen branch for a suitable tree. I have lots of hiking staffs, being well into geezerdom, and my favorite was a somewhat modified branch. I do have a pair of collapsible sticks, and they are quite useful, since they can help hold up a tarp and can be shortened to tuck away on the pack when not in use.

Your shovel handle, particularly if you equip it with a metallic point, is now an alpenstock, a tool developed by shepherds in the 1500s and used by early alpinists until it was modified into an ice axe in the early twentieth century. Your hardware store may not even know they are selling them.

The thinner pricier collapsible staffs have another virtue. When used in fording fast moving streams, their smaller diameter gives much less resistance, and they are much easier to manipulate. Crossing a stream is just one situation where you will really appreciate them.

FYI, test it before you walk out the door with it. I purchased a 1 1/4 inch diameter ash handle to use as a heavy duty walking stick, but it was so clunky it ended up in the scrap material bin.

As far as the drug store walking sticks go, there's two items you might find interesting. There is a style of walking stick with a T-handle that are better off pavement than the drugstore ones. And two, there are martial arts specifically for the geezers sporting a crooked top cane.

Off topic, but of historical interest; there is a tale that in 1835 Andrew Jackson responded to an assasination attempt by Richard Lawrence by bayoneting him with his cane.