You can bum around Europe in bifocals

At an airport a few months ago, I pulled a muscle in my lower back lifting the bag I’d been hoisting blithely for almost a decade.

Last fall in England, I drove around the same rotary four times because I couldn’t read the small print on the exit signs.

Sitting on a bus in Argentina a few years ago, I realized the waist of my blue jeans was digging into my stomach, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had begun storing fat around my middle.

Aggravating, such incidents, but isolated and meaningless -- or so I thought, even when I turned 50 in August. Of course, I didn’t believe it, never mind the birth date in my passport. Besides, I considered myself an iron woman traveler, impervious to denting, like the mistreated piece of luggage in the old Samsonite commercials.

If you remember that TV spot, you too could be an aging baby boomer, subject to the aches, pains, diminished stamina and general withering that almost inevitably pile up with the years past 50. If you’re a traveler, you can’t keep denying it because life on the road takes a particular toll. Someday, in some otherwise undistinguished hotel bathroom, you’ll be standing at the mirror, taking ibuprofen for your aching back. You’ll catch sight of yourself in the mirror and suddenly you’ll know you’re on the long bus ride down the mountain.

So is it compression stockings and cruises from here on out? Not at all. The key to happy travels as you get older is recognizing and dealing with increased challenges, I’ve found. Apart from serious medical conditions, these include common complaints travelers too often ignore:

* Fatigue. That’s my biggest problem. It hits me in midafternoon, when I suddenly would rather take a nap than see India’s Taj Mahal or any of the 3,000 miles of the Great Rift Valley from Syria to Mozambique. I e-mailed Dr. Lyle Kurtz, my physician in L.A., to ask him about it.

“Just being out of one’s normal routine is taxing,” he replied. “Unless you are exercising regularly, you will be more easily fatigued as a function of being older. When you are traveling, you are always on the go. At home there are plenty of times when you just loaf.

“I wonder if you are eating heavier, richer foods and drinking more wine, which we all know will make us want to take a good nap. People are machines, like cars, that need tuneups (exercise) and high-grade fuels (healthy food).”

Evelyn Hannon, 64, editor of the online travel magazine Journeywoman.com, told me she couldn’t walk around a city for as long as she used to. “I have to stop for coffee often, which gives me the chance to watch and meet people,” she said.

* Backache and other ill effects of diminished strength and flexibility. This has subtly changed the way I travel. I practice yoga chiefly to maintain agility; I hold the banister on steep flights of steps to keep from toppling over; I use elevators, moving sidewalks, luggage carts and porters; I test the driver’s seat in rental cars to make sure my lower back is adequately supported. Above all, I’m more careful about packing light and shouldering my bag.

“Bend at the knees and look up while lifting so you keep your back straight,” Kurtz said.

Perhaps the best way to avoid back strain is to choose the right bag. For Annette Zientek, 53, president of Internet travel gear company ChristineColumbus .com, that means a wheeled, lightweight, fiberglass-framed suitcase made by the Healthy Luggage that comes with the recommendation of the Arthritis Foundation in Atlanta.

“I’m still traveling with the same piece of Healthy Luggage I received as a sample nearly 10 years ago,” she said. “To avoid back pain, it’s the place to start -- along with packing lighter and good shoes.”

Of course, different people have different approaches. Tony Wheeler, 57, co-founder of the Lonely Planet guidebook series and an inveterate backpacker, told me, “When I start hauling around bags with little wheels, I think it’s all over.”

* Jet lag. Now this gets to Wheeler. “No question, I am older, stiffer, less happy to put up with discomfort,” he said. “I really have no interest in economy [class] on long-haul flights.”

But what to do if you can’t afford one of those plush seats at the front of the plane? I asked Sharon Wingler, 54, a Delta flight attendant for more than 30 years and creator of the Travel Alone and Love It Internet site.

“I drink at least 1.5 liters of water on each flight across the Atlantic, use facial spray and eye drops,” Wingler said in an e-mail. After a long-haul flight, she takes an over-the-counter sleeping pill to get through the first rough night and doesn’t plan anything too challenging for the day after the trip.

Together with increased vulnerability to germs, failing vision and forgetfulness, all these problems may be enough to stop any aging baby boomer. Better, though, to make adjustments and keep moving, as Rob Sangster, 58, author of “Traveler’s Tool Kit,” has found.

“Not so long ago,” he wrote me, “I rode overcrowded trains in India and covered my eyes in buses on switch-backing mountain roads rising into the Peruvian Andes. When the destination was worth it, no hotel was too grungy. Now, I like private space and turned-down sheets. I never thought it could happen to me, but comfort has become a consideration in travel.”

I never thought it could happen to me either, but I must say I like having porters carry my bag, hotels with elevators, the occasional upgrade to business class on long-haul flights. But excuse me now -- it’s time for my nap.

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at latimes.com/susanspano.