Turning Travel Backpacking into an Extreme Sport
8.20.22
Before embarking on this new vagabond lifestyle, I worked incredibly hard for nearly a year to get a diet and exercise plan in place and whipped my own butt to stick to it. It worked. I lost just shy of 30 pounds, gained muscle, felt better overall. And then I ripped all of that to shreds to spend the past few months bouncing from hotel to Airbnb to hostel. I bemoaned not having space to work out. And when I did find myself with adequate space, I found climbing back up after a fall off my routine a lot tougher than I’d have liked. Not for the physicality of it, mind you. I surprised myself with how my body remembered its paces and performed them with relative ease. (I mean, “ease” being a relative term, right? Since the whole point of exercise is to challenge our bodies.) But consistency was the key for my transformation. And in travel, especially vagabond-style travel, consistency is never the name of the game.
So I promised myself I would find new ways to exercise when space was not at the ready. While schlepping my backpacks from location to location, I would make sure to always take stairs. Most times in Europe and Asia, it’s not an option anyway, but regardless, I would always take the stairs. And while lugging that cursed extra pack along, I would make sure to curl it so that at least I am getting some arm work in during all of this inconsistency. Walked the hour from my hostel to downtown Paris and around and around Paris multiple times during my week there. Climbed the 674 stairs to the second platform on the Eiffel Tower. My physique has been commented upon from several different sources under varying circumstances, many assuming that I am a fitness instructor of some type. Yet still, for some mysterious reason, I see fit to berate myself for not doing my high-intensity-yoga-style workout for weeks. Go ahead, you can laugh. When I actually see it on the screen now that I’m writing about it, it is pretty ridiculous. (Can’t promise my inner ridicule will cease any time soon though.)
I decided to take a train from Toulouse to Narbonne. I splurged on a first-class cabin ticket after the nightmare week I’ve had. (Blog coming, I promise. I just have to heal enough to write about it first. In the meantime, if you like, you can refer to Freeze.)
When my train arrived, rather than investigating the car at the back of the train, conveniently located at the entrance to the train platform nearest to the stairs I just climbed, I proceeded to schlep all the way to the front of the train, thinking that must be the first-class car since we’re heading in that direction. With no time to schlep all the way back to the other end of the train, I found a seat in the very last, very not first-class seat right next to the, erm, smokers lounge, where two chain-smoking gentlemen stood on the platform between car and the engine while the sliding door “separating” them from the rest of the passengers on the train continually slid open/closed, open/closed, open/closed like very OCD convenience store sliding doors. For the next hour and a half.
Lungs full of smoke I never smoked and heart full of resentment, I fought a giant wheels-locked stroller (owners nowhere to be found) from in front of the luggage rack so that I could retrieve my packs. Hiked my 35-pound green backpack onto my back, picked up my cursed 25-pound secondary pack, and proceeded to walk the wrong direction, through the noonday heat, into the city center instead of toward my Airbnb. Discovered my mistake in the city center, so I sat down for a bite and a well-deserved drink. Green pack needs a name for when I plant it in the chair across from mine in cafes. At least if it has a name, I won’t feel quite as silly when I order drinks for it. And, no, hiking through the high-noon heat carrying packs that equal just shy of half my own current body weight cannot possibly be the reason for my current slap-happy bag-naming state.
After a break and a snack and an incredibly ill-conceived midday drink, reloaded myself, found my direction, and launched myself off towards my Airbnb, curling my black bag like a champ all the way. Under such force of will, I did not one time pause to consider just how long I had been walking or how far I may have left to go. Quick pause to double-check direction, maybe switch black bag from one curling arm to the other, resume curling, and onwards.
I did not at all clock in to just how much of a number I’d done on my body doggedly muscling through a 40-minute walk in the sun while viciously demanding it not only carry but curl my extra baggage until I actually found my Airbnb, navigated the locks, climbed the stairs, and negotiated my way into my apartment. I cranked the air, mercifully found a couple of ice cubes in the freezer to wrap in a towel and put on the back of my neck, and promptly passed out on the sofa.
And this is what I do. I push and push myself so far beyond. I get frustrated with my limitations and try to bulldoze past them without acknowledging them. Until I find myself in utter peril, at which point I plaster a smile on my face so no one around me can possibly catch a glimpse of the struggle. In this bucket of extreme falls the time in high school I ran a track race on two broken legs rather than let anyone know the extent of the pain I felt. In this bucket of extreme falls the time I once fell asleep while delivering newspapers through an apartment complex in the wee hours of the morning after working a swing shift and taking care of two toddlers and a newborn between the two jobs for months on end without reprieve. In this bucket of extreme falls stressing myself into a case of mononucleosis (did not know that was a possibility until receiving my diagnosis after spending months alone, yes, completely alone, during COVID’s first year) and sending my liver levels so far off the charts the doctor threatened to make a house call to physically drag me to the ER. In this bucket of extreme now falls hiking through the heat of a midday summer sun in the south of France for 40 minutes, 35 pounds on my back, manically curling the 25 pounds on my arm, exhausting my body beyond breaking.
Oh, and when I did finally come to, noticed the time and ran, yes, ran three blocks to the little grocery store minutes before it closed so I could buy a case of water…and curled it all the way back to the Airbnb.
I don’t know where this masochistic self-torture arises. I know it’s a trauma response. I can’t even identify which one or ones anymore. I know it’s been a part of me as long as I know, and I know it has continued to intensify as life and trauma commence. I only know how to punish and rebuke myself. I only know how to make impossible demands on myself and then destroy myself when I inevitably fall short. They say identifying the problem is the first step. One can only hope. One can only hope. In the meantime, maybe I’ll teach myself how to overhead press while walking.
