How I Decide Whether a Trip Is Worth the Energy

Honest questions after a stroke: heat, walking, who is coming, and the day after.

Before we go, I ask a few questions. How hot will it be, and is there a real way to get out of the heat? How much walking is required, and where can I sit? Who is coming, and does the day work for the slowest person in the group, not the most ambitious one? What does the day after look like, at home?

That's the whole method, and I use it for a long trip and for a day close to home.

A trip is not a separate personality I put on at the airport. If I try to walk all day, skip lunch, and treat rest like something I have to earn, I pay for it on the trip and when we get back. A full house cannot absorb a crashed day after a "successful" trip without someone else picking up the slack. So the pace had to become the plan.

On March 14, 2016, I had a massive stroke. My balance isn't what it was, and my body doesn't handle heat the way it used to. Fatigue is part of how I plan a day. I still go. I just have to be honest about the cost. I wrote about that slower life in After the Stroke, Life Had to Slow Down, and about the travel pace in The Pace I Travel Is the Pace I Live.

Heat is often the deciding vote, especially here. An Anthem summer, or a too-hot day trip that looked harmless on the calendar, can spend the energy I needed for the evening. I wrote about heat at home in Heat, Balance, and a Slower Day.

The day after is part of the trip. I ask, before we go, whether there's room for a quiet evening, food that doesn't require a project, leftovers or a simple pot, and no one expected to perform the next morning as if the trip did not happen. If a trip only works when you come home and pretend you are not tired, it is not our kind of trip. That's true of a long flight, and it's true of a Saturday that got away from us. I wrote more about coming home in The Day After We Get Home.

If the answers are decent, we go. The destination guides already have a home, at Travel at My Pace and Japan at My Pace. This page is just the questions I use to decide whether to leave in the first place.