Travel with a sting

So, we are going to Berlin this summer. Just one week and it's at the Berlin city governments invitation and I 'm already exhausted.

Travel isn't easy these days - there are long lines, security checks which take forever, huge airports with complex designs to move from one area to another blah blah blah. But the real headache is that I'm older now and EVERYTHING is harder. So today, I'm not looking forward to all this - tomorrow I may feel differently.

First of all - my cell phone won't work in Germany. So we all have to look into what will work as far as cell phones because we want and need to stay in touch. We aren't all going to be doing everything together but we need to touch base with each other and have some meals together
etc.

I don't want to buy a new and fancy cell phone that I'll have to sign a 2 year contract for just for one week's worth of calls - but I may have to go there. And I may need to have Morey do it too;
let alone Carol, Kelly and Martin.

I definitely will have to take some kind of assistive device so I can keep going and my preference would be my electric scooter. But that creates other problems - like I can't find out if the various sites of the tour are accessible for handicaped people. I don't want to find myself on the Spanish steps (I know they are someplace else but you get the idea) with no way to transport my scooter down short of bumping my way down - in which case I'd definitely need surgery again, or carrying the beast down - in which case the carrier may need surgery.

If there are curb cuts in Europe I haven't been able to find out.

Also, my scooter has the definite disadvantage of going on strike occasionally and leaving me stranded. It beeps dispairingly 7 or 10 beeps (I can never count them) trying to tell me something and I don't know what. My booklet tells me that I should count the number of beeps, but when I look to see what that number could possibly mean the answer is inevitably "Call the service person".

When it happened in Albuquerque one time, I felt helpless and angry - I don't even want to imagine how I'd feel in Berlin. Of course, that time in Albuquerque it spontaneously healed itself and by the time Carol found us it was working again. Maybe it just needed to cool off.



My next choice is my handy dandy walker - but that means I walk a lot - the walker means I can sit down frequently but it begs the question as to whether I'm better off because I will be on my feet a lot and that has consequences. Painful consequences.

I can walk 30-40 minutes with the walker - and I can probably do that more than once - but is that enough? For a day of "touring the city"?

The spirit is willing - really - to keep on trudging along but my body is definitely not cooperative.

Naturally, I'll take along a cane but that is very limited - one or two blocks and I'm done.

And there are all the various and sundry things this old lady likes about not traveling - I like my own bed! I like that I can wander about the house at night when I can't sleep and I'm not disturbing anyone. I like that I have my pharmacy of medications available if my various and sundry body parts go on strike. I like that I have a supply of almonds in case of sudden hunger surges and my diet tonic water in case of leg cramps - how will I manage without that?

I'm cranky about temperatures these days. I do not like to be cold! But I'm not crazy about being hot and sticky either.

Oh whine, whine, whine - I'm tired of hearing all this stuff - even if it's my problem to solve. I'm sure no-one else is going to find this fascinating. But I did want to get it off my chest and move on.

I should have entitled this the Old Lady's Lament. I just am not used to being an old lady. I had a strong and energetic body and I expected it to perform and, within reason, it did. For the last 10 years this wonderful body of mine has been deteriorating - in bits and pieces - and I ask but it doesn't respond, or if it does it's cranky and makes me pay. I expected better of it. But it is what it is. That doesn't mean I'm reconciled - it just means that I'm forced to accept reality.
I'm not what I once was and I probably never will be again. I'm lucky to be alive!! I just don't feel lucky. But maybe tomorrow I will - feel lucky that is.