After Glenn Cotton retired, he suffered a bad fall and a heart scare. But now he's fitter than ever after seeing a strange-looking bike online.
"I slipped off the front porch and wrecked my shoulder," he said.
"I always liked riding a bike. And I didn't feel safe — I've lost a bit of balance.
"And the two-wheel bike was pretty hard on the back and hard on the posture."
He got sucked down a rabbit hole while scrolling on his phone one day and discovered the recumbent tricycle. It allows the rider to be reclined.
"This bike is one of the few bikes, or trikes, I can ride that suits my back and makes life comfortable," he said.
Mr Cotton's doctors said he needed to get more exercise after his heart scare and a recumbent tricycle made this achievable.
"I tried jogging, but the problem with that was it gave my back a whole lot of pain," he said.
"Twenty minutes of jogging and I was buggered.
"With this, I can ride for two or three hours without any back pain at all."
Several times a week Mr Cotton departs in the cooler early morning and spends hours riding all over Darwin's path network.
Safety first
Mr Cotton is spotted easily by the bright flags on the back of his trike and sticks to cycle paths as much as he can.
"It's a heck of a lot safer than riding on the road," he said.
"The network is enormously good. It's fabulous. There's a few lumps and bumps and cracks and tree roots growing up through the bitumen.
"Most of the cycle paths are pretty damn good."
If you don't use it
Council on the Ageing Northern Territory chief executive Sue Shearer said keeping fit after retirement was essential for combating high cholesterol and diabetes.
"If you want to enjoy your golden years it really is imperative that you either pound the pavement or [do] aqua aerobics or yoga [or] armchair aerobics," she said.
"There's all sorts of things that you can do now."
Ms Shearer says it's important for older people to maintain their fitness.
"We're not quite as active as we should be, through different reasons, probably through our joints and things like that," she said.
"If you don't use it, you lose it.
"If you can keep fit, you can keep mobile right until your 90s."
