Go-Go, Slow-Go, and No-Go

Someone once told me that there are three successive phases that one goes through in life after retirement: go-go, slow-go, and no-go. I really like this description because the terms explain themselves. I’ve shared this model with probably 100+ people, and everyone understood the concept without the need for explanation.

The other observation about this categorization system is that nobody assigns the phases to you. Everyone determines it for themselves. They start out doing what they want to do (within the limits they can afford). At some point either physical changes or attitude or preferences causes them to develop self-imposed restrictions. Then later, there are reasons why you cannot do things like travel from home for any period of time (perhaps even overnight), or drive a car, or miss a weekly hair appointment.

When I think about the makeup of the ship’s passengers, it occurs to me that even though the age distribution is toward the high end, a majority of the makeup is still in “go-go” mode (perhaps 2/3rds of them?). There really are few pure “no-go” types because all have at least traveled onto the ship. There may be 20-40 passengers who take no shore excursions, but stay on the ship even on the port days. A handful of these may not even leave their cabins, even having room service for all their meals in their rooms.

Perhaps 1/3rd are “slow-go.” They did adventure onto the cruise. They do sign up for the excursions…and they almost exclusively take the excursions set up by the ship. Their intentions are good, but they sometimes overlook the warnings about an excursion being physically demanding, and they poop out. They are late getting back to the bus, or painfully slow…or sometimes stay on the bus while the group goes into some magnificent site.

A majority of the passengers are “go go.” They are always figuring out their plans for the next port and keep busy all the time.

Kathleen and I have each concluded that one should do this type of trip while you are still in the “go go” stage. Once you move on to “slow go” it will difficult to extract the entire potential of the trip. Once you get to “no go” the trip is no longer an option.