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DOLOMITES: SELVA DI VAL GARDENA IN JULY 2023

PUSHING BACK ON AGING
A Summer in Selva
A year ago, when we booked 2 months in Selva, Italy, we weren’t quite sure what our days would look like. There would be near-daily hiking but traveling by bike had always filled-in the empty spaces and cyclotouring was put on hold for the year. Our hostess’ new assistant presumed we would be like their other older guests who came to the mountains to relax, but we knew we wouldn’t be at that end of the activity spectrum. By mid-July, the answer became clear, we would be pushing-back on aging in new ways.

Bill’s Program
Bill’s growing frustration with both his substandard vision due to bad-luck retinal damage and garden-variety hearing loss, hit critical mass early in the summer and he devised self-improvement programs for both. Improving his plight with the two sensory channels involved targeting one organ: his brain.

More retinal surgery in December and yet another pair of new glasses would only restore his vision so far, but his brain was an untapped resource. He began wearing a grocery store grade eye patch over his better eye for an hour most days. Initially, he wore it when puttering indoors and after about 10 days, he took his monocular vision to the streets and trails

Unusually, the multiple, massive thunderstorms brought down dozens trees.

Predictably, navigating outdoors without binocular vision was tricky and frustrating, but that was the objective. The brain thrives on frustration and challenges and meets them by laying down new neural pathways to improve its plight. By pressing through the initial resistance to it being too hard to do, his brain caved and improved. On walks together, I would add variety to his program by pointing out subtle architectural details, people in shadows, and other challenges for his brain to discern. He quickly refined his understanding of his visual discrimination issues and limitations and noted them as future projects and as ways to judge his progress.

A similar strategy worked with his hearing. We’d both lamented our age-related, mild to moderate, high-frequency hearing loss and experimented with over-the-counter hearing aids. We were devastated in October of 2022 when the FDA’s significant broadening of that market didn’t result in a flood of new, improved products. There were only incremental upgrades, and the new features were scattered between products instead of being consolidated in single products like we had hoped.

Steeped in disappointment, Bill bit the bullet this summer and bought a “listening” program: “LACE,” which is a tutorial for improving listening skills. Like with his vision, the responsiveness of his brain to the challenges was quickly apparent. Frustration set-in after a lesson or 2 but suddenly, he was hearing better.

He had shopped carefully, and LACE was the perfect program for him. With each of the 12 lessons, the program starkly revealed where his auditory skill set was lacking and what to do about it. He was humbled but up to the challenge. He viewed the tutorial as his ticket for dodging some of the hazards of aging, including dementia fueled by poor hearing.

I was thrilled! As any audiology technician will tell you, people with hearing loss are quick to specifically identify the shortcomings of their spouse's communication habits as the problem, not their hearing. We all can be more careful with our speech, but training the other person only takes you so far in improving your hearing. One by one, his listening program identified areas where he could improve his skills rather than relying on me accommodating him so he could hear better.

Hay drying on the the asphalt bike path.

Interestingly, I had stumbled into my own listening improvement program last summer in England. During our 3 months there, I rarely had easy access to the US or international news I craved, and I settled upon listening to the BBC’s World Service radio program while lying on the floor doing my morning exercises. The content didn’t meet my needs, but I discovered that the programs presented by speakers of British from multiple continents was baffling to my brain, so I was all in. It provided the stimulation my mind longed for and I concentrated hard every morning to hear familiar words that were unrecognizable to me. Little did I realize in the moment that I was giving my brain the frustrating growth opportunity it needed, but I did notice that I stopped using my hearing aids that summer.

Informed by my experience in England, Bill expanded his hearing augmentation studies to include listening to books with a new objective: to frustrate rather than entertain his brain. He picked books from our audio library, then increased the speech speed to that which he could barely process. It didn’t take long, and he was listening to some books at almost twice the offered rate. He didn’t focus on comprehension of the content, only the comprehension of the individual words, the careful listening. Like with the vision challenges, there were many details to reflect upon to refine his self-directed program.

Upgrading our listening skills this summer was complemented by listening to 2 books (at normal speeds) regarding being fully present and clear about content when communicating with another. The books more broadly expanded our summer project to better interpersonal relationships generally.

Barb’s Push-Back on Aging
My summer anti-aging program was the same-old, same-old of trying to keep this old buggy on the road. The good news was that by the time we arrived in Selva on July 1, I was increasingly confident I was succeeding. Almost day-by-day in early July, I was making gains in my spinal recovery that would have taken weeks or months to achieve during the first half of the year. Suddenly, the time was right to push.

The likely spinal stenosis pain my Portland PT had glibly dismissed as a “one-off” was becoming less threatening. Bill predicted it would require a total of 2 years of healing to attain its maximal recovery, but nonetheless, I was feeling more confident about intensifying my exertion levels.

I was able to ramp-up the number of miles I hiked per week and variously do more gain or carry more load some days. My slow walking speed seemed to be set in stone and I respected that until around July 10th when my body signaled its willingness to go a little faster. A few days later when walking on relatively flat paths, the flag dropped, I felt more power being transmitted through my hips to my feet, and I zoomed along like I hadn’t since the previous fall. I suspect my body was also sensing that it no longer needed to protect itself from me by continuing to trigger multiple muscles to guard or splint.

I was exhilarated: suddenly, I had switched from rehab to re-training. The prospects of spending a night in our reserved cabin on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in October were taken out of deep storage.

The backside of Steviolo prominence on the improved stairs.

I knew it was at best a 50-50 chance I’d make the epic hike, but I accepted it as a worthy motivational goal. I revised my training program every few days to achieve that fitness pinnacle as the nuances of my emerging capacity became evident.

A BIT OF GAMBIA
When on the gravel service road portion of our long descent off the Steviola prominence from Selva, we spotted a smiling construction worker with too little to do standing next to the fencing. We approached him and he eagerly greeted us when I asked, “What are they doing here? We are very interested.” He was quick to engage us, saying they were building a lake for tourists like us to admire. In no time at all, we learned he was 28 years old, had come to Italy from Gambia via Libya after spending 11 days at sea with little food in 2018.

We were totally caught off guard when he asked, “Do you have work for me?” He then commented about the racism he was experiencing, that he hoped to get to America, that he had a heavy equipment operators license, and that he spoke 9 languages, most of which were regional, presumably in Africa. It was a good natured, whirlwind tour of his startlingly different life experience.

We all had a laugh when I said we were old enough to be his grandparents and he used my comment as a chance to slip in another casual bid to go with us to America. His language and social skills combined with his easy manner and quick smile helped us understand both how he got to where he was and how he’d keep moving forward.

LETTING GO IS HARD TO DO
With covid and the more recent fear of getting caught in heat waves, this was the 4th year in a row in which we hadn’t toured Europe by bike since beginning that journey in 2001. For 10 years, we circled around Europe for 9 months a year on our loaded “push” bikes until the EU immigration folks said “No.” Next, it was 9 years of limiting ourselves to 3 months abroad on bikes, and then covid hit.

We hurriedly switched to e-bikes in 2018 and 2019 because my respiratory capacity was flattened by anti-hypertensive medication, and then covid kept us at home. Italy opened to tourists too late for us to obtain the needed reservations for even a month of touring in 2022. The dreadful European heat wave in 2022, which killed 61,000 Europeans, terrified me and I lobbied for spending the summer of 2023 in the Alps to give us another year to assess our vulnerability to more heat waves in Europe.

The new lake worksite where we chatted with the young Gambian man.

And there we sat this summer, safely ensconced in our Dolomite retreat where our little-used e-bikes spend their winters without us. We wistfully remembered the joys and horrors of loaded cyclotouring and both wished we were out there on the roads and, simultaneously, were glad we were not.

Even by easing the considerable physical strain with e-bikes, cyclotouring is an exhausting lifestyle. Packing up every morning, lifting the heavy bikes up a basement stairway, and getting on the road. There is shopping for food to be done daily, perhaps both at lunch and at dinner. Carrying the bikes down into another basement bike room that night, maybe with an extra corner or 2 to navigate; surreptitiously cooking in our room; sneaking the kitchen garbage out in the morning; and repeating the cycle day after day. And there were the days in which I was so exhausted that I couldn’t stand up in the shower; instead, I had to sit on the shower stall floor to bathe. Gorgeous views and memorable experiences were the pay-off, but they were hard won.

Cyclotouring this summer was out of the question for me given that when we left home in early June, I wasn’t certain that my spine was stable enough for even much walking, but it was a question for next summer: “Would we or wouldn’t we cyclotour?”

Previously, Bill was always the one with the vulnerable back and though his back was much better now, he lacked the reserves to take over all the heavy lifting, like with the “Bikes to the basement maneuver”. We dreaded saying we were too old for the sport but gradually began saying out loud: “Perhaps the time for that activity in our lives is over.”

A temporary, rather than constructed lake, due to the excessive downpours.

When taking very modest rides around Selva on our cherished Bulls e-bikes, we noted the new pleasure in riding up any steep, paved road just to see the view, something we never had done in the past. We started considered biking for pleasure, not travel: to let cycling be fun again, something it had never been in Europe.

“OH, WOE IS ME”
Our vision for the summer of 2023 was of having little on our minds besides hiking as hard and as often as we could to allow me to regain my fitness after a rough bout with disabling spinal pain around the first of the year. Like expected, I didn’t listen to books while I walked and did my rehab exercises, I only listened for feedback from my body while I was in motion, but unlike what we anticipated, we had a growing list of things about which to fret.

A repeat of last summer’s deadly European heat waves was calculated into our plans, resulting in us booking ourselves to be in the Alps for our entire summer in 2023. But right away, in June and early July, we had a few difficult night's sleep because of the heat, but more than that, it was the unexpected air pollution that brought us down. We couldn’t sleep with the window open on those hot nights because of the toxic air.

In June, we quickly ordered a bagel-sized air quality monitor like we had at home, which helped us plan our activities to be as safe as possible based on the intensity of the air pollution. In late July, Bill found a tabletop air purifier, which we received at the end July. When we placed the order, the air quality was almost 3 times worse at home than in our mountain village, but after 4 days of breathing the toxic air here, when the air finally cleared, both Bill and I felt the restrictions in our chests from the inflammation 3 days later. After weeks of struggling with intermittent asthma, the promise of protecting our lungs while we slept and having a daytime oasis should we need it, was uplifting.

A Vespa club stopped in Selva for a snack.

Overlaid on our struggling-to-breathe drama, there was the unexpected and increasingly difficult negotiations with our landlady about our upcoming lease renewal that went on for weeks and rocked us to our core. Not only were we dealing with the low-grade panic of “How will we breathe?”, but we were also asking the question “How much longer will we have a place to live?” In the midst of these stressors, the realities of life took a more serious turn when we learned of the passing of a dear friend.

News that there was no resolution in sight for the UPS strike on August 10th also sent shockwaves through us. We would return home less than a month after the strike date for only 10 days. The new uncertainty was, even if the strike was over at that time, would the shipping backlog be cleared sufficiently so we could order and receive some of our supplements that we are not able to purchase locally? We’d been unusually meticulous about planning and organizing for a quick turnaround in September and, suddenly, foundational assumptions for that interval were on shaky ground.

Our personal, short-term dramas were against the growing uncertainty about our itineraries a year from now. Heat waves, forest fires, industrial pollution, climate change in general, and travelers increasingly competing for services, all combined to make enjoying our familiar, annual itineraries uncertain. I jokingly longed for covid times which compared to the moment, look more predictable.

AND A JOYOUS SURPRISE
For more than 10 years, I’ve intermittently been dealing with another medical issue that isn’t much of a burden, other than it reminds me that my body is slowing disintegrating with age. It’s called an “ocular migraine equivalent”, and even though it’s got the word “migraine” in it, I don’t get classic migraine headaches. It comes on out of nowhere, usually after I’ve been up a couple of hours, and rather suddenly disturbs the vision in one eye. For years, it was only in one quadrant of my left eye, but it can also be the full visual field of my right eye.

The first time it happened, we rushed out of our mountain campground in California with our in-bed truck camper to sit in an ED waiting room for hours, fearing I’d had a stroke. It’s a very odd-ball phenomenon and I was extremely lucky that my attending physician had had a nurse with the condition, so he knew precisely what it was. He kindly referred me to a local ophthalmologist just to make sure. I was in luck again, as the ophthalmologist’s wife was also a yogi and when I asked, he confidently replied that my 5-minute, daily headstands were safe for me continue doing.

Assembled for a Ladin festival in St Cristina.

Fast forward to July 2023 and minutes before setting up for my pre-breakfast headstand, one of the fiercest of these “disruptions” began. I’d had trouble reading the little numbers on our travel-sized digital kitchen scale and had started to feel mildly ill. Hardly a crisis, but I was planning an hour-long, vigorous climb up our local fitness trail. A very, very steep trail with treacherous, loose rock, I wasn’t pleased to anticipate doing the descent with compromised vision and feeling a little icky, but I wanted to complete it before the next thunderstorm hit.

I contemplated whether the vision disturbance would throw-off my balance for my center-of-the-room headstand, but cautiously launched myself with my modified version that was easier on my still-healing back. I was happily upside down, looking at the soaring mountain against the clear, blue sky out our balcony’s patio door, when I realized my vision had totally cleared in the last minute or 2. When I came down after 5 minutes, there was still no headache and no distorted vision. I then propped myself up in my usual 10-minute counterpose, and still had clear vision, even though it was only a partial inversion.

Amazingly, that was the end of the headache and other symptoms that normally would have lingered much of the day. After all these years, I finally had a treatment for the symptoms of a condition not known to have any intervention! A part of me was anxious for another ocular migraine equivalent to descend upon my brain and yet, another part of me was in no hurry to test the reproducibility of my DIY treatment option.

MINI-SEASONS
The summer season in the Alps, like much of Italy, has up to a half dozen mini seasons within it that are driven by price. They start stair-stepping up in June, with a price increase of the standard rates every week or 2, depending on the location and the establishment.

The 3rd Back-Roads Touring Company e-bike group we spotted at the 5-star spa hotel in Selva (1 of 2).

These price increases are reflected in the look of the visitors on the streets and trails as well. The summer season begins with a homogeneous mix of recreational athletes and international tourists out and about. At the end of June, when the lodging price increases become sharper, the price point of the attire breaks away and climbs. In the middle of July, suddenly long flowing dresses with slits and plunging necklines started appearing, looking rather out of place. Then I started spotting spiffy, white casual shoes and sleek, elegant loafers on the men. Next, it was seeing my first dogs with bows on their heads and gold necklaces appearing on the bronzed chests of men and women. And inexplicably, by the end of the week, the number of people milling about with cigarettes in their mouths became a hazard on the sidewalk. No doubt, the arrival of the peak of high season in August would have its hallmarks too.

ON TO SELVA FROM SELVA
July drew to a close and Saturday, July 29, brought a major “change-over day” punctuating the shift to full-on high season. “Change-over day” is the day when one batch of tourists vacate their building at 9 am so their replacements can check-in at 4 pm for a minimum of a week. Like the preceding change over Saturdays, it came and went without a ripple for us this summer. We were doing what Europeans routinely do for their holidays, which is plant themselves in one place for all or part of the summer. It was lovely to anticipate another month of rehab and hiking in Selva without the considerable disruptions of relocating.

A few days earlier, we’d been brainstorming a new plan for me, which was to begin undertaking bigger hikes with statistics more similar to those of hiking between the rims of the Grand Canyon. Early in July, I began hoping it would be possible to hike there in October and I’d given myself until the end of the month to further recover before ramping up my exertion to the level needed on those epic hikes. My guess was spot-on, I was ready to step-up the intensity of my conditioning.

As the end of the last week of July approached, our considerable angst began to diminish. Our air purifier that was 3 hours driving time north of us on Friday, then 3 hours the south of us on Monday, finally arrived on Wednesday with only minor damage to its box. About the same time, our housing negotiations crisis appeared to be drawing to a close, and a tentative deal to resolve the UPS strike was announced. The hot weather flipped to unusually cold and stormy conditions, which was fine with us. Other uncertainties shaping our lives, like the ramifications of climate change, would be set aside so we could return our focus to our evolving summer agenda of pushing back on aging.