Traveling fat

The count-down has begun.  

My calendar proclaims at the top of each page the number of weeks remaining until we get on a plane and fly from San Francisco to Frankfurt to Toulouse, pick up a car and drive the remaining kilometers to Arrens-Marsous, site of the ancestral home.

In 8 weeks, we will be there, unlocking the front door with our own keys, inhabiting the house by ourselves for the first time.

Eight weeks!

With each passing day, I am more and more focused on this departure, on being away for two weeks, on packing, and on boots.

Because fall travel naturally calls for boots.

And being comfortable.

Which is why I've also had renewed enthusiasm for fitness, for losing most (if not all) of the weight gained during my recovery from back surgery and ensuing idleness, for regaining stamina and confidence and muscle tone and power.

Because stamina and confidence and muscle tone and power are essential when traveling.  Probably the most essential thing of all. 

It's been hard enough at home, but I really can't bear the idea of traveling around in clothes that pinch or make me all-too-aware of the new chub around my middle.  

I hate traveling fat.

So I'm devotedly doing my work -- walking, hiking or riding my bike on a trainer in the garage -- most every day, doing my PT exercises, resuming my old practices all while maintaining my hard-won awareness of my transverse abdominis, working that sucker with everything I've got.  And trying to eat less and better, making small sacrifices now in trade for greater comfort later.  

Greater comfort and croissants later, in 8 weeks, walking home from the boulangerie, bag of goodies in hand.

It's working.  I can already feel things changing, getting normal-sized again, and am grateful that I still have 8 weeks to get in travel-shape.

And 8 weeks to find the right boots, the perfect boots for cruising around the globe with confidence, for this trip home.

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