I am leaving in a little while for the 24 Hour Walk for Rides. Send me messages if you are walking, too. My wonderful staff is going to give me a Twitter lesson later so I can send messages as I go. I’ll meet you in the air up there, wherever these communications float…

Image Gallery










Image Gallery 2

This was my last training walk and I am glad Dougie could join me. He’s been sidelined with an injury, but he will be back to walk with me again on Friday, June 18, for my 24 Hour Walk for Rides. We did an easy walk part way around Baxter Boulevard, but the Celtics were playing at 8PM, so that was it for Dougie’s interest in walking. Looks like my grand total mileage for training is just shy of 50 miles. See you all in person or in spirit at Baxter Boulevard, in Portland, Maine, for the day we all stand up for dignified transportation for the older people in our lives who have given us all so much, and who now need us to stand up for them, for the mobility they need to lead full and active lives, whether or not they drive a car.

(.2 miles, 49.5 miles total)

After walking with Senator Susan Collins on Capitol Hill, I took the night train back to Hartford, Connecticut, where I left my car, and drove back to my mother’s place to spend the night.  The next day, I drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I walked along the Charles River with Andrew Wolk, of Root Cause.

(0.5 miles, 47.5 miles total)

I caught a late train to Washington and arrived at the Hart Senate Office Building at 10:30am for my walk with Senator Susan Collins.  Senator Collins has supported dignified senior transportation for more than a decade, first through the years of sustainable ITN model development in Greater Portland, then through the planning of the national organization, ITNAmerica, and now for the national rollout as we work to support communities across the nation.  In this year’s budget, Senator Collins has introduced a $5 million appropriation for amendments to Title IV, Section 416, of the Older Americans Act.  Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut has sponsored a similar appropriation request in the House of Representatives.

In her appropriation request Senator Collins said:
Most older Americans depend upon the private automobile for transportation.  But for older drivers with diminished capacity, driving can become difficult, or dangerous. Older people who continue to drive face the highest fatal crash risk of any group except teenagers. Those who stop driving outlive the decision by as much as ten years, and become dependent on family and friends. So great is the need for transportation options for older Americans that delegates to the December 2005 White House Conference on Aging selected it as the Conference’s third highest policy priority, ranking it ahead of reforms to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Despite this pressing need, more than half the nation’s older citizens live in communities with no public transportation, and where transit does exist, the magnitude of this need outstrips the public resources available to meet it.

Amendments to Section 416 of the 2006 reauthorization of the Older Americans Act are specifically designed to bring the principles and practices of social enterprise to senior transportation through:

1. “volunteer driver programs;
2. economically sustainable transportation programs; and
3. programs that allow older individuals to transfer their automobiles to a provider of transportation services in exchange for the services”

The 416 amendments define “economically sustainable transportation” as “demand responsive transportation for older individuals—

1. that may be provided through volunteers; and
2. that the provider will provide without receiving Federal or other public financial assistance, after a period of not more than 5 years of providing the services under this section.”

This approach to sustainability sidesteps the creation of additional transportation services that will add to the future tax burden or compete with existing transportation providers that rely upon public funding for on-going operating expense.  Instead, funding for economically sustainable senior transportation projects uses federal funding to leverage voluntary local community support and creates, instead, social entrepreneurs who turn to consumers, their families and their business communities to build sustainable solutions that will bring private resources to bear.  Private expenditures for transportation actually outnumber public expenditures 5 to 1, so by guiding development toward private resources, Section 416 uses a small amount of public dollars to leverage a far larger pool of private resources.

To address the long term mobility needs of America’s aging population, we really do need a public/private partnership.  Neither alone will be sufficient, and neither alone will be as strong as they are together.

To support Senator Collins and Congresswoman DeLauro’s appropriation request for Section 416, contact your Senators and Congressional Representatives.

To support ITNAmerica and our work on behalf of dignified transportation for older Americans across the nation, pledge here.

(0.5 miles, 47 miles total)

I got up at 4am, left my car at the Hartford Amtrak station and took an early morning train to New York City to meet Dr. Robert Butler at 5:20 in the afternoon at the International Longevity Center on 86^th Street.  With a whole day to walk in a beautiful city, I decided to walk from Pennsylvania Station on 34^th Street and 7^th Avenue to the Lower Eastside, a mythic place to a second generation immigrant family who came through Ellis Island.  So I set off for the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street in the Lower Eastside, a 2.5 mile walk.  I bought a ticket for the 1:00 museum tour and headed for Yonah Schimmel’s, a local restaurant famous for a 100 year old recipe for potato knishes. Yum.  When the tour was over, I decided to walk uptown from Delancey Street to the International Longevity Center.  I made it as far as 45^th Street before I ran out of time and took a taxi so I wouldn’t be late.  The taxi driver was great.  We got into a conversation about the 24 hour Walk for Rides, and agreed that people can all always do more than we think we can.  That is actually advice from one of my valued Advisors—my mother.

Dr. Butler planned our walk through Central Park to his apartment, where we both gulped tall glasses of iced water.  We talked transportation, children, staying fit as we age, and the transportation needs of people who outlive driving by a decade—most Americans.  Dr. Butler has not owned a car in 27 years because he has lived in New York City.  That makes perfect sense, but we both know it is not the norm in our country, where more than 90 percent of trips for people age 65 and older are taken in the private automobile, either as a driver or as a passenger.  I downed my glass of ice water as I looked through the doctor’s newest book, The Longevity Prescription, just reviewed in the Los Angeles Times (book review: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/06/book-review-the-longevity-prescription-by-robert-n-butler.html). I had such a good time walking through the Park, I forgot to take a picture, but Dr. Butler graciously allowed me to snap one in his apartment, before I left for Penn station and the next leg of my journey.

(6 miles, 46.5 miles total)

Image Gallery

Image Gallery

My folks moved to Connecticut this year and decided to stop driving at the same time, for safety reasons.  But that doesn’t mean my 85 year old mother, Betty Abrams, sits home, or that she is not fit.  She walks practically every day, a 1.25 miles loop through the grounds at MacLean in Simsbury, or, if the weather is bad, she walks indoors, a similar amount.  Many people where she lives keep little tables or chairs outside their doors and change the decorations with the season.  My mother takes note of them all on her indoor walks.  We did the indoor and the outdoor loops, so I am guessing we did about 2 miles.  Why am I including my mother as an advisor?  She’s a very smart lady, but more than this, because we all have older people in our lives who are trying to remain active and engaged when they limit or stop driving.  No dialogue about mobility for older people is ever complete without the full engagement of the older people. 

(2 miles, 40.5 miles total)

It’s been awhile.  I’ve been walking; I just haven’t been blogging.  I would estimate the miles I have walked since I last logged in at about 12.  Not great, but better than nothing. Two complete Baxter Boulevard laps on two different days, and several one mile walks with a few different people.

Last week I traveled down the east coast by car and train for visits and training walks with my Council of Advisors, my mother, and Senator Susan Collins.  My 24 hour walk is just a few days away, and the visits boosted my strength and built my sense of adventure for the big day, June 18-19.

My trip was a small adventure, but I loved it.  The 24 hour walk is also an adventure, a simple way to take a stand for something I believe in—dignified and sustainable transportation for older people.  I like walks—fundraising walks, leisurely walks, competitive walks.  There is something so simple and democratic about standing up and being counted, like the impulse to jump to your feet for a standing ovation, an impulse that propels you vertically, a jolt of enthusiasm.  A walk in support of something we believe in is like a standing ovation in motion.

The ITNAmerica Council of Advisors is only three people, so each member is so very important to us.  The first person to join our Council of Advisors was former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.  Next, after we completed our business plan for the national roll out of ITNAmerica, the architect behind the plan, Andrew Wolk of Root Cause (on the picture), agreed to join our Council of Advisors.  He was also very kind and said he would always be there for us.  Andrew is in Cambridge.

Finally, Dr. Robert Butler, CEO of the International Longevity Center in New York City is a member of our Council of Advisors.  Dr. Butler is probably the most famous geriatrician in the United States, perhaps the world, so when he agreed to join our work in senior transportation, I was deeply honored.  And when he agreed to walk with me, I was just tickled.

Here’s my gallery of Walking Advisors:

• Betty Abrams, my mother—Simsbury, Connecticut
• Dr. Robert Butler, International Longevity Center—New York City
• Secretary Norman Mineta—Washington, DC
• Senator Susan Collins—Washington, DC
• Andrew Wolk, Root Cause—Cambridge, Massachusetts

Could anyone wish for better advisors?

(12 miles, 38.5 miles total)

Andrew Wolk, member of the ITNAmerica Council of Advisors

Today I am 60. Here’s my cake, to prove it. Some people say 60 is the new 40. What’s inside that idea? First, what’s wrong with being 60, and second, they must think the extra decades we have gained have been added to the middle of life. They haven’t They’ve been added to the end, and we are just beginning to discover what that means.

At 60, I’m now old enough to qualify for programs through the Older Americans Act, and old enough to use the ITN. Yayyyyy. I think this also means I am officially old enough to be an older driver.

I can remember the first day I realized that I am an older driver. It was about 20 years ago, when I was first studying senior transportation as a public policy graduate student at the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service. Back then, there was no school where you could study senior transportation as ITNAmerica does it today. Now, I speak at schools all over the country, but then, I pretty much had to talk to myself.

That’s what I was doing the day I realized I am an older driver: talking to myself. I was dust mopping the front hallway and stairs. It was a sunny morning, and the dust motes floated in the sunshine slanting through the front door windows. The sun was so clear, it seemed as if I could run my hand long the edge of the light beam like a piece of furniture. Ryan and Alison were still little guys in elementary school, so it must have been a Saturday, the day I cleaned house. I was dusting and thinking. Sometimes, asking and answering questions, even in your own head, is a good way to solve problems.

“Who is an older driver,” I asked myself. The house was quiet. Mop, mop. “Who is an older driver?”

I sat down on the landing of the stairs and looked at the golden oak floors I had been mopping. That’s when I saw the dust moats in the sunbeams.

“Me.”

The realization came suddenly, but the understanding that lead up to it took years. For awhile, I had been looking into the faces of older people and trying to imagine their face when they were younger. I’d look into the face of an 80 year old man and try to imagine him at five years old. Then I’d look at young woman, and try to see her at 85, like time-lapse photography in my imagination. Now I do this all the time, with practically everyone I meet. But I was pretty new at this imaginary time travel into aging back then, so I had to sit myself down on the stair landing to absorb my idea, which was actually so simple.

The older person we will all be is just us, in the future we will become, and the child we were is inside us, in our memories, experiences and hearts.

Older people and older drivers are just younger people who have aged. We will want the same things when we are older that we want now. Everyone is an older driver someday—we might as well try to plan for it now. That way, we won’t be forced into denying we have problems driving because we have made no plans for how we will get around when we are older. Pretty simple, when you get down to it.

On my 60th birthday, I walked a mile. (1 mile, 30.5 miles total)

From Alberta, I flew straight to Michigan for my daughter Alison’s graduation from the Ford School at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. If ever I saw a walkable community, Ann Arbor is it. Alison and Ben, her fiancé, live about one mile from campus, and even though they have a car, they easily walk everywhere, using the car about once a week for grocery shopping and picking up mothers at the airport. We even walked to the graduation ceremony in the football stadium. As we sat in the bleachers, Alison pointed to the graduates in the black robes and turquoise collars on the field, below.

“Look, Mom,” she said, “those are the students from the Ford School.”
I swiveled my head to face her. “Those are your classmates?” I asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be down there with them?”

Without pausing Alison answered, “I’d rather be here with you.”

This is why mothers are willing to throw themselves in front of trains for their children. Not because they get university degrees, but because they sit in the bleachers to share the experience.

I do need to add that the commencement speaker was the President of the United States, Barak Obama. (2 miles, 29.5 miles total)

View the image gallery.
My daughter Alison’s graduation from the Ford School at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.