Another Year Older...

I hate to admit it but today was my birthday ..I love the flowers and cards..but geez...another year has flown by! I am now 79! That big 80 looms! A few of my friends have already met the big one; the rest of us are within a year of it....Scary stuff. 

I do remember, when backpacking through Spain and Portugal with a friend Pam eons ago, walking along the promenade at one of our overnight stops and seeing some lovely white-haired ladies having a wonderful time sipping wine at a bistro table in the sun over looking the water.....

We both had the same thought (by this time in our trip, we could read each other's minds) .... "Will that be us one day? Will we still be having fun like that when we are old and white-haired? 

We both - at the same time - thought of our friend Donna - with whom we had unexpectedly just run into in a taverna in Cascais a few nights before..(we thought she was in Spain, but now, there she was in Portugal!) She was the glamorous one of our friends.. and we laughed at how we could just picture her sitting there in her 80's in some very chic outfit, looking as fabulous as ever, fitting in perfectly with the "fashionable ladies who sip wine on the coast of Portugal". 

It was just a given - that if any of us would have given up on traveling by then, it would not be Donna... 

I can't say whether Pam is still out there galavanting around Europe or wherever, as we have lost track of her now, but the sad thing is...Donna has been the first one of us who still hang out together, to say that she can't do that anymore; health issues catch up to us and for her, traveling just isn't manageable anymore. I thought I would never see that day! But I can certainly understand..the challenges of travel give me pause now too.

Still, some of us, me included, are not ready to give up yet...but I know I will have to make some changes in the way I travel...My trips will be much less adventurous and more slow-paced than before, but if my aging body will let me, I will be packing my suitcase as soon as I can!  

Birthday #79? Pshaw!