Ham is definitely full of a lot of old retired dudes. I'm ok with that - mostly, they are not the grumpy variety.
As you know, there's always an extremely vocal minority online that can ruin the experience for a lot of folks. I read a thread where one guy was going on and on about "no-code extras." I mean come on, man, that was 32 years ago, let it go. Sooner or later that guy is going to look around at his "peers" and realize he's the only one left.
I would not have taken my tests if I had to do CW. That said,
having my license now has exposed me to more of the hobby and I want to learn CW. Just like some folks may never do RTTY or FT8 but be very accomplished hams, we need to treat CW just like any other mode - optional.
I am signed up for CW Academy for a class starting in May (assuming they slot me where I need to be.)
There's an 11-yr old girl in my club that just got her Extra (!), so there's still hope for the future of the hobby.
That makes my heart warm - and it sounds like she has people around her who are a great influence.
My local club has a Slack chat that is very active. Most of the members are within a mile or two of me.
I wish there was a club local. I actually got my first VHF contact yesterday! I was driving through a town and I had the foresight to program in the repeater there. First contact sounded like a scratchy record through a torn kazoo. The second gentleman answered me back, told me that the first was indeed scratchy (made me feel better) and that the local repeater was having a bit of trouble. He was nice enough to tell me my audio was good even though I know it's not (I'm on a Baofeng with a decent mag mount.) I forgot to ask if there was a club there.
When the snow melts I am going to see if I can access the DC line, I
think there's a power-pole looking thing down by the inverter. If so I can put one of those distribution blocks down there and be in pretty good shape. Grounding will be issue #2, but one insurmountable obstacle at a time. By the way, if you search for "
power pole" [NSFW] on Amazon, be careful what you click on.