At an airport a few months ago, I pulled a muscle in my lower back lifting the bag I'd been hoisting blithely for almost a decade.
Last fall in England, I drove around the same rotary four times because I couldn't read the small print on the exit signs.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday December 12, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 30 words Type of Material: Correction
Her World -- The Her World column in today's Travel section says that Sharon Wingler, creator of the Internet site Travel Alone and Love It, is 55. She is 54.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday December 19, 2004 Home Edition Travel Part L Page 3 Features Desk 1 inches; 37 words Type of Material: Correction
Her World -- The Dec. 12 Her World column ("You Can Bum Around Europe in Bifocals") incorrectly reported the age of Sharon Wingler, creator of the Travel Alone and Love It website, as 55. She is 54.
Sitting on a bus in Argentina a few years ago, I realized the waist of my blue jeans was digging into my stomach, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had begun storing fat around my middle.
Aggravating, such incidents, but isolated and meaningless -- or so I thought, even when I turned 50 in August. Of course, I didn't believe it, never mind the birth date in my passport. Besides, I considered myself an iron woman traveler, impervious to denting, like the mistreated piece of luggage in the old Samsonite commercials.
If you remember that TV spot, you too could be an aging baby boomer, subject to the aches, pains, diminished stamina and general withering that almost inevitably pile up with the years past 50. If you're a traveler, you can't keep denying it because life on the road takes a particular toll. Someday, in some otherwise undistinguished hotel bathroom, you'll be standing at the mirror, taking ibuprofen for your aching back. You'll catch sight of yourself in the mirror and suddenly you'll know you're on the long bus ride down the mountain.
So is it compression stockings and cruises from here on out? Not at all. The key to happy travels as you get older is recognizing and dealing with increased challenges, I've found. Apart from serious medical conditions, these include common complaints travelers too often ignore:
* Fatigue. That's my biggest problem. It hits me in midafternoon, when I suddenly would rather take a nap than see India's Taj Mahal or any of the 3,000 miles of the Great Rift Valley from Syria to Mozambique. I e-mailed Dr. Lyle Kurtz, my physician in L.A., to ask him about it.
"Just being out of one's normal routine is taxing," he replied. "Unless you are exercising regularly, you will be more easily fatigued as a function of being older. When you are traveling, you are always on the go. At home there are plenty of times when you just loaf.
"I wonder if you are eating heavier, richer foods and drinking more wine, which we all know will make us want to take a good nap. People are machines, like cars, that need tuneups (exercise) and high-grade fuels (healthy food)."
