Indiana Jones didn’t age well, it turned out, but that’s OK because we found a new role-model globetrotting adventurer, and she’s old enough to qualify for a 10 percent discount at The Sizzler.
Helen Thayer is a photographer and author with a unique approach to aging: Rather than throttle her life back and take up less challenging hobbies like scrapbooking, Helen decided to travel around the world daring God to bring her down.
At the age of 50, when most of us are well on the way to heart attack No. 2, Thayer hiked alone across the North Pole. She was the first woman to solo any pole (wow that sounded really dirty) and shepulled her own sled. At 50, who has time to stop for a bunch of dogs to pee on every neat rock they pass by? Helen wrote a bestselling book about the experience and spent her next few years laying low and hiking across every desert in the Americas.
That all turned out to be practice for her real desert hike in 1995. At age 57, Helen trekked the entire 4,000-mile length of the Sahara Desert. But marching alone through the world’s harshest deserts had only bored her. Antarctica was the real challenge. So in 1997, Helen took a 625-mile walk alone through the South Pole. We should point out that the area Helen walked through was almost completely devoid of other life, and is basically as close to the surface of an alien world as it gets.
6 Old People Who Could Kick Your Ass