Planes, Trains and Orthotics: A Middle-Age Woman's Guide to Travel

 In the interest of keeping my 38 year marriage on an even keel, I am adding a retraction to the comments in my last blog regarding the limited conversations had by the men on our hiking trip.  Evidently, as per my husband, they did not speak solely of their jobs but also had deep (although I’m betting not intimate!) conversations about their lives and children. I stand corrected and now I believe our journey towards year 39 remains intact.   Our daughter, a third grade teacher, often asks us “What was the rose, thorn and bud of our day.”  In other words, what was the day’s high and low points and what are we looking forward to in the day ahead.  In reflecting on this vacation, Norway’s scenery was my rose.  I huffed and puffed up a lot of mountains but the views from the top were always worth the sweat and cursing under my breath.  I’m not sure how many years my knees (most particularly the right one) will be able to withstand that strenuous of a vacation, but while I can and as long

 Days 5, 6 and 7, I think.  Our last full day of hiking was a killer—and I took the easier path!  We started a little later that morning and the information given was that we would finish the hike and have the afternoon to relax in the beautiful town in which we were staying, Balastrand. I started the hike on fire, walking at a fast clip, just behind the guide, my daughter and her fiancé.  After a while as we ascended, I listened to my future-son-in-law and the guide have an animated, LONG conversation and I began to wonder how either of them were breathing because I was having difficulty doing that very act. I focused on inhaling and exhaling because idle chit-chat was, as they the saying goes, “not in my bandwidth.”  I realized that I needed to be with the “slow but steady” folks at the tail end of the group.  I had found my people but by the time we finally returned to the hotel, there was about 45 minutes left to my “free afternoon.”  The  next morning, we took a four hour high-spe