up n' down

I've been gone for a while. Out of the country. In Switzerland and Italy. Visiting my beautiful daughter. Climbing upstairs and downstairs... the difference between Phoenix, Arizona and where I've been for the last ten days as far as I am concerned. Phoenix is flat... even the hilly parts are flat, or have been made flat... In Geneva, in Italy, nothing was flat. Stairs everywhere. Liz is four flights up. Every hike we took involved stairs. Walks through town, into and out of the hotels, all stairs. I lost four pounds from all the climbing up and down, but also did a number on my knee, so that the last four days of my stay I felt limpy and gimpy. Still it was wonderful
And I did find one flat place to sooth my feet... but I didn't get to stay there for too long.

We started at ocean level and came up, then dropped back down... then up and down a couple more times. No wonder Europeans tend to be slender... but look at the view. This rusty thing I'm standing by has handles, can you see them? A motor bike of some kind that was reused as some kind of motorized pulley system . Beautiful day and second day of our walk from one end of the Cinque Terre to the other and back again.

Villages and paths hanging onto cliffs overlooking the blue Mediterranean. Spectacular views... and being able to do it with this used-to-stairs-now daughter of mine was wonderful.

I got back to Phoenix Tuesday night. Wednesday, three times I walked out of my house to the car, got in, and went on one errand or another, got back in my car and then walked the twenty or so steps back into my house. If I'd been at Liz's I would have had to climb down four flights of stairs, walk to the store or bus stop, walk back to the apartment house, up for flights of stairs before I was in the apartment. Kind of an eye-opener for me.

I've been recovering from jet-lag and still nursing my knee, but I need to get moving. I need to build climbing up and down back into my life style... there are ways, I tell myself...