- I feel like Little Red Riding Hood.

- It's called sourgrass.

- Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho.

- [Dog Trainer] You can say hi to him.

- Oh.

He's well trained.

- [Dog Trainer] Yeah.

- How do you say Cheers in Sweden?

- Skal.

- Mm.

- Skal.

- Skal.

I've heard that one before.

♪ California, here I come ♪ ♪ La, la, la ♪ My name is Birgitta Bexelius and I will be 92 years old in August.

I really don't know how old I feel.

I don't feel young anymore, that's for sure.

I usually wake up around 6:00 and then I do my warning walk.

I love animals.

Around here, we even have a couple of squirrels or rabbits.

We take them for granted, but if you find them and can look at them and chat with them, you enjoy nature better.

I think that they would be nice if more residents would do the walk.

I am only the one.

I don't meet anyone when I walk around.

- Birgitta.

- Yeah.

- I'm John.

Hi, I'm John Siegel-Boettner and I'm your pilot for this episode of "Joyride."

So if you'll gimme your hands, I'm gonna take you this way.

This is your plane right up here.

- Ho, ho, ho.

- Ready?

Okay.

I think in the same breath that I proposed marriage to my wife, I proposed a bike trip as our honeymoon.

And then when we had our children, we brought 'em home from the hospital in a bicycle trailer.

All right.

Is that good?

Okay.

We're gonna do a blanket keep you warm.

- Oh.

I feel like Little Red Riding Hood.

- We good to go?

- Uh-huh.

- Okay.

How's that?

- Bye, boys.

This is beautiful.

This is beautiful.

- Isn't this beautiful?

- I first heard about Cycling Without Age, I turned in my classroom keys and some people would say I was retired, but I was calling myself being rewired.

And one of the families who knew my cycling history said, "John, you gotta check out this guy in Copenhagen named Ole."

So I watched his TED Talk and I went, "Oh damn, that's my next chapter."

So my wife and I purchased the first Trishaw.

We figured if we showed it, they will come.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

We don't take older people for rides.

We get to ride with older people and that subtle language is huge.

You know what, I might be going to Sweden for the first time this summer.

- Oh really?

- I've never been there.

- Sweden is a long country like this.

And I'm from up north.

- Oh, so you're used to the cold?

- Yes.

The snow.

- So were you near the sea or were you inland?

- No, in the country.

My father was a forester.

I was a middle child of three.

This is my beautiful brother Per.

He was 20 or 21 years old.

These are my parents.

Our father was authoritarian, so we had a lot of respect for him of course.

- I want to hear how you ended up in Santa Barbara from northern Sweden.

- My brother once wanted to go to Los Angeles so he could find a photography school, because we didn't have any photography schools in Sweden.

- Really?

- And I was gonna go with him.

And I was a new graduate nurse so I could work and make money.

So off we went.

And that was 1958, 10 days on the ocean with a boat.

You didn't fly in those days 'cause of the boat.

We had a cabin, next to us was another couple, older couple in our parents' age, also from Sweden.

And when they said, "Well, we live in California and we live in a city called Santa Barbara" that we had never heard of.

And so we just set our goals to go to Los Angeles.

And then we started driving from New York.

And everything, you know, was so new.

So my eyes grew, everything.

I remember seeing the first cowboy in my life, that was interesting.

And the sky was so huge, the clouds, everything was so big here.

So when we came close to California, or in California, we started singing in the car.

♪ California, here I come ♪ ♪ La, la, la, la ♪ - Really?

♪ La, la, la ♪ ♪ Yeah.

Really, really.

♪ Oh, yeah.

And when we finally came to Santa Barbara, our friends from the ocean liner, we called them and they took us in, you know, and helped us with everything.

And they said to my brother, "Well, we have a photography school here in Santa Barbara that is better than the one in Los Angeles, and it's called Brooks Institute."

- Really?

- They said to my brother, "Well, you just go up right there to that address, that's Brooks Institute."

And he enrolled the same day.

Yeah, he was very happy.

And then to me, they said, "And you got a place called Cottage Hospital."

And I got the job right away.

So this is the country with all possibilities.

- And how long did you work as a nurse there, for a long time?

- No, I retired when I was 70.

- You went from the time you were 28 until you were 70, you were a nurse?

- Yeah.

- Wow.

Hold on, don't go anywhere.

Okay.

Watch this.

See if you know what this is.

Taste it.

Go ahead, chew.

It's called sourgrass.

It's tastes like lemon, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah?

- Ho, ho, ho, ho.

- See, there's always room for a first time, right?

Something you've never done before.

- You live and you learn.

- Were you married?

- I did marry.

It didn't last forever.

- Okay.

Any children?

- But I had one child.

I wanted six.

I became a mother when I was 31 years old.

I actually wanted six children, but life didn't turn out that way for me, so.

But I have one.

This is Peter, my son, the father of the boys.

He's a very good son.

He can tell where I need help more and more because my memory is not perfect anymore.

- Oh, look at this big dog on the bench up here.

- [Birgitta] What?

- [John] Coming up right here on the left.

- Oh, here.

- Look at that big dog.

- Oh!

Hi.

- What a good dog.

- [Dog Trainer] Yeah, we breed German Shepherds and train dogs.

You can say hi to him.

- Oh, he's well trained.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

He's a good boy.

All right.

- See you.

- Take care, you guys.

- Good to see you.

- You too.

- Thank you.

All right.

I see our bench up here, Birgitta.

I reserved a table up here.

Table for two.

- Who decided this arrangement?

- Here's your cup.

- I heard you were Swedish and I heard there was this fika thing.

So I figured, okay, I've never done that before.

- Really?

- Just like you've never chewed sourgrass before, I've never had a fika moment before, so, okay?

- Not very many people know about that expression, fika, because it has been used in Sweden for a long time.

And fika is coffee with a muffin or a cookie.

- We have- - Really?

I didn't know that.

- A cinnamon bun.

Mm.

- Did I do all right?

- Mm.

- Okay.

Okay, let's make a wish here.

I got a penny for you to make a wish.

There's a nice bright one.

- Oh, that's too pretty.

Don't you have anything old?

- Oh, you want an older one?

- I want an old one.

- [John] Okay.

- Okay.

I'm so fortunate that I have good memories.

I can still find them in my memory bank.

Lot of pictures up here of my families.

And I remember every moment that picture was taken.

So this is my dad and now it's his turn to have this.

And he was my age probably.

And this is around the nursing home I think.

And my mom is two or three years younger and she lived about two years longer than my dad.

So she was 95 when she passed.

And my dad was 92 or 93, something like that.

Death doesn't frighten me.

I'm comfortable thinking about it.

Would like it to be a painless departure if possible.

Since I'm not unhappy, that means I'm really pleased with life.

The best is the maturity because that means that you're getting wiser.

When you become aware of that, you feel stronger.

I've been there, I know that, I've done that.

Nothing is really new to you anymore.

So there is a comfort with that.

I do, I really like that.

- [Interviewer] How are you feeling after this ride?

- I'm feeling very satisfied by the whole trip and the day has been wonderful.

What a memory.

It was very interesting way to see all this and experience all this because I wasn't moving, but I was moving, you know?

And I had fika with a cookie.

I did that too.

So I'm totally satisfied.

Yeah, couldn't have been a better day.

- Well, thank you.

Thank you, Birgitta.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- It's been so great to be with you.

Thank you, all of you.

All of you.

The whole team.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.