And then there are those of us at that tail-end of the boom (the wrong end, I like to think) in 1960 who saw all the permanent academic and government-based jobs taken by people 5-15 years older than us - who are still in those jobs and will be there for some time yet to come. Many of us in that bracket have had to scratch, scrape and claw to try and make a living (some of us have even had a few career reincarnations a long the way - I just finished my latest round of graduate work last year and for a while felt relatively young again!!!)
On the bike side, however, it was a gang of local teens, about half-a-dozen of them - 4-5 years older than me who really sparked my interest in bikes. I still remember frames, picked up at police-auctions, hung on trees in the front yard of a neighbouring house while paint dried. As well, there were peach-baskets full of Campy parts from the same sales, all bought for next to nothing. The bikes they rode (not the ones they tarted up with rattle-can paint) were Frejus, Holdsworth, Dawes, Condor, Raleigh Internationals, .... and this was in a small, rather sleepy, city - Kingston, in Eastern Ontario.
I guess that they would all fit nicely within our demographic survey right in that middle bulge. I know that a couple of them still ride their old mounts on occasion.
Paul Williams, Ottawa
Paul B. Williams, PhD (Queen's)
70 Viscount Ave.,
Ottawa, On, K1Z 7M9
ph: 613-761-3867
e-mail: castell5@sympatico.ca
> Charles,
>
> The original definition of boomers was 1945-1960. I don't know what
> idiot started claiming it was 1945-1964. Generation X is not a full
> 20 yearsa in length - by definition its a of a class of people that
> are economically oppressed by huge numbers of people ahead of them in
> line for an economic future. If you read Douglas Coupland's book,
> "Generation X", and live in Vancouver BC (where Coupland wrote the
> book, and where I lived for 2 years), you will understand better why
> 1960 is the correct cutoff date. In particular, 1990 brought huge
> waves of hong kong millionaires to Vancouver which made boomers rich
> and gen'Xers into paupers.
>
> As someone who finished his graduate training in 1993, I can say
> without a doubt that after graduation I fit into generation X. Among
> other things, gen-X'ers got no college subsidies (no Pell grants), go
> to jail for not paying back student loans, have to eat ramen for 10
> years to get a postage stamp house on a floodplain on a flight path at
> age 35+ (avg. age of first hosue) because the boomers "got all the
> good houses". That's me.
>
> - Don Gillies
> San Diego, CA