'Geezer pass' was a real bargain

It’s official.

I am now a geezer, a card-carrying geezer.

My card came in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and while I haven’t yet used it, I’m looking forward to having it.

“Geezer pass” is, of course, not the official name for the lifetime pass to U.S. National Parks and recreation lands. But that’s what most folks call it.

I learned about the pass in an appropriately geezer-like way, through Connecting.

Connecting is an email newsletter that arrives in my inbox nearly everyday. It’s the product of a guy named Paul Stevens, a former Associated Press executive who was at one point AP’s bureau chief in Indianapolis.

That’s how Paul and l became acquainted. When he was transferred to Kansas City, we stayed in loose contact, usually via our mutual friend Andy Lippman, who followed Paul as the Indy bureau chief.

In retirement, Paul thought it would be a good idea for AP retirees and other senior members of the news business to keep in touch, share stories and tell lies to one another. Thus, Connecting was born.

For me, it’s an easy way to stay linked not only to Paul and Andy but to former Indianapolis AP news editor Lindel Hutson, former bureau chief Robert Shaw and others. It’s also an amazing opportunity to rub elbows — electronically — with some of the great journalists of the past 50 years, guys like Nick Ut, the Vietnamese photographer who took the famous photo of the “napalm girl,” and Walter Mears, whose reporting from Washington in the 1980s set the standard for excellence.

Several months ago, for instance, retired journalists who had covered the civil rights movement of the 1960s shared some remarkable, electricity-charged tales of those events. These were people in the trenches during some of this country’s most transformative moments.

Connecting is also the place where this community — now more than 400, I understand — grieve the passing of our colleagues and share anecdotes about those we’ve known and loved.

When my good friend George Krimsky died last winter, Connecting was where I could share reminiscences of our time together working with editors and reporters in Central Asia on behalf of the International Center for Journalists.

But many of the entries that pop up in Connecting are more mundane: Advice from one retiree to another, with those of us who refuse to retire weighing in now and then.

That’s how I heard about the “geezer pass.”

And about the fact that the price was going up.

What is it? A lifetime pass for U.S. citizens or permanent residents 62 years old or older for entrance into any lands managed by the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The pass admits its owner and any accompanying passengers in a private vehicle. If the area charges a per-person fee, the pass admits its holder and three additional adults. All free.

So what was the cost? $10.

That’s right. A lifetime pass for $10. Keep in mind that places like Yellowstone and Yosemite charge $30 for a seven-day pass, and you have some idea what a bargain it is.

It just covers entrance fees and day use. Camping isn’t covered, nor are tours although some sites offer discounts for those with the pass.

But within days after I received mine, the price jumped. As of Monday, it’s $80. That’s still a bargain, but who knows when Congress will raise the price again.

I got mine via the internet, paying an additional $10 for processing and mailing. It required that I send a PDF file of my passport to prove my age and residency, but in the end it was worth it.

If you want to check it out, go to https://store.usgs.gov/pass for more information.

And, by the way, the official name is Senior Pass.

You can trust this geezer on that.