Always ride with someone, now usually my wife.
From youngest days, ingrained not to go off alone.
My parents bought me a 26" bike in 1961. After that there was no "Mom's taxi". I was supposed to get there myself if the school bus would not take me. I rode city busses to downtown Houston on some Saturdays.
My Mother used to wander the mountains of West Virginia alone. In 1930s there were no bears. She met Chuck Yeager up on the mountain, with a crew drilling for gas. He was 15, she was 11.
My grandmother used to walk the electric lines over the mountain to get to her store clerk job, 4 miles by road and 1.5 direct. She was a 30 something widow.
I have walked over the mountains from my Grandmother's house to my grandfather's house. 12 miles, 2 days. 24 miles by road. There were strip mine high walls, fortunately only on the down leg. No cell phones in 1978.
I have walked and hitchhiked by myself from 701st Maintenance Bn field HQ to 1st Infantry Division field headquarters. Division HQ had shorted two 100k generators in 3 days. I found the problem, and told them. No more shorts, which was good because the one we loaned them was the last one in Kansas. Next year 1st Inf Div added a Chevrolet Blazer to the TOE (table of equipment) for my job. Both in Kansas and in storage in Germany. I hope they allowed my successor to have an Army drivers license. 701st maintenance Bn had lots of trucks parked, but I was not allowed to drive any of them. I held a Texas unlimited class Chauffers license, with 4 years driving school busses (from age 18) and 2 years driving moving vans for a North American Van Lines agent.
At age 74 I do like having a cell phone in my pocket. I'm more afraid of dog attacks than heart attacks, however. I've had to pepper spray some off, and beat some off with the security cable. Dogs think they own the road. No wolves in Indiana yet, and coyotes are afraid of people standing up. Some old ladies whose car slid down a hill and they froze to death were eaten 3 miles from the mall in Florence Ky. No cell phone service there.