Europe Fall 2024 - Finale, Great Navel Gazing Post

We are back home after a relatively uneventful trip back home. Actually with the exception of the chaos of our getting out of Alicante to Amsterdam, the rest of the trip was smooth. We were even able to get our bags in Albuquerque and secure an Uber home in record time. Both Wife and I have done a good job at managing the jet lag and have been very productive despite having only been home for a couple of days. The transition from the travel life state to the home base state has been relatively smooth. I will discuss that in the next post. But, as I have done ever since we started our significant travel life a decade ago, I will conclude with my analysis of our experience or as #3 has called it the 'deep navel gazing'. 

Accept and Enjoy

The backdrop of this trip was Wife and my desire to transition from travel oriented on going to many places to a more single location oriented model in line with our decreasing capabilities as we age. However, finding the 'place', that locale where one would be happy going back again and again had proven to be a mighty challenge. 

Thus a major goal of the first part of our trip was trying to find this elusive 'El Dorado', the place that would have all the features we wanted. As you know, that turned into an exercise of extreme frustration. We even carried this attitude of looking for the 'perfect place' into Spain when we first arrived in El Campello and started to visit the other coast side towns of the Alicante area along with the accompanying frustration.

It was at this point that Wife had a powerful realization. Something she had read talked about the importance of accepting, meaning accepting where you are at and taking joy in that as it is. She said she was ready to make that leap. And if she was, I sure was too.

From that point, we just immersed ourselves into our lifestyle in Campello. I wrote four posts on the specifics of why this small city resonated with us and why the specific apartment we were in was such a big part of it.

The Transition Bullet Train Keeps Chugging On!

In July, I wrote about the growing realization that my 'transitioned lifestyle' was not an even but an on-going process with (it seems) no end in sight. I took this to heart for this trip. 

First, had to do with letting go of managing Theodora day-to-day. My Board members (aka #2 & #3) had beat me up with this at our annual meeting in July. When I was in Ghana in August, I worked with the team to let them know they would have to take responsibility for their day-to-day work. And with my departure to Italy in September, I did just that. And, low and behold, the team stepped up and have taken care of just about all of the regular execution of their business. I will write a separate post about this as it is actually a fairly major accomplishment.

Second was now filling in the time that we'd created by not running around all the time, and, for me, the time I was using to manage Theodora. We did this by renewing projects we'd both put on hold. Wife threw herself into her photography. She essentially created her own 'course' by going to multiple online resources. I found my 'new' passion going back to an old one, the writing of my 'Story'. This had been essentially been on hold/stuck (depending on your point of view) the whole time I'd been creating Theodora from scratch. Suddenly, I found breakthroughs in the story line. There followed an out flow of ideas that have led to an outlining of the end of the current book in the series, along with the first parts of a next book. I will write more about this in a future post.

Pluses and Minuses on the Physical Capabilities Front 

One of the most amazing things of this trip was a rebound of sorts by both Wife and I in our physical capability. Please! Don't get me wrong. We are not suddenly back in our early 50's. But over the course of our trip, particularly while we were in Campello, we found ourselves doing more and more walking, and particularly climbing. Issues we've both had for quite some time, seemed to mellow out.

Be assured, we felt it. I think there is another whole post I can write on dealing with pain as you age. But the point is we were doing things we couldn't do just last year. We still had to be very circumspect and not do too much, stop when we recognized the signs that we were going over the limit. 

But it was a joyous realization. It made us much more upbeat about what we will be able to do going forward. 

Now the negative. It is so clear that there is only so much stress I can handle. And if you combine stress with significant load bearing physical effort (i.e. moving luggage around), I am going to go into an exhaustion mode pretty quickly. This was fully brought to light during the Italy part of trip with our having to find and move into many different lodgings. I would find myself completely drained and barely capable of doing anything. Scary. Fortunately, it would only take 2 to 3 hours of rest for me to bounce back. Nonetheless, this yet another motivator to make the transition to staying at one place for longer periods of time.

The Miracle of Our Being European Drivers 

A key to our ability to do as much as we have done traveling in Europe during the decade of the transitioned state has been our ability to drive. I discussed this right after we arrived in Italy. As we continued our trip, especially during our time in Spain, I continued to be amazed at how much we've learned and incorporated. I am very proud to say during this trip we managed to not have ourselves inserted into narrow, dead end mountain village roads. We only went the wrong way in parking garages when there was little to no traffic. And for the most part, our guests seemed to not have their hair turn white while they were driving with us. I know this is a bit egotistical ("but hey, you're de-I? Isn't egotistical a synonym for you?") but I take a lot of pride in Wife and I (for we are a total team in this) in our late 70's being able navigate and get around in Europe.

Sharing the Experience 

One of the joys of our stay in Spain was our ability to share what we were enjoying with others. We had our niece, RMG, visit us. We went to see our granddaughter, 2.2, in Valencia twice. We had the VEFS mercenaries 3.1 and 3.2 visit us from Sweden. Seriously. This was such a joy. 

How Good Was This Transition? We're Going Back 

Yes, even before we had completed our trip, Wife and I talked and decided we wanted to come back to Campello, to this same apartment in 2025. And we have so committed. We booked the apartment again for October 2025. All our guests from this year have already expressed interest a desire to repeat. This is so exciting.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Two months of European travel with a lot of beauty and enjoyment. Some great personal growth and I believe the laying of a foundation for the next stage in our personal travel adventures.

Age: The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of de-I Sandia Outfitters' Eldership. Its mission to keep going and not stop. To go boldly go where few elderly have gone before.