* Besides looking at the DOB stats on your driver’s license.

You rise shortly after dawn, drag your suitcases (thank God wheels are now attached) down to the docks, take a heaving two-hour ferry ride, followed by a one-hour taxi ride through ugly traffic to the airport, followed by three hours waiting in the lounge, followed by 4.5 hours in the air, followed by an hour to get off the plane and get out of the airport, followed by a half-hour cab ride — and you are exhausted. Destroyed. “Shattered”, as the Brits would say.

That’s one way you know you are old.

College kids, high school kids (if anyone in their right mind allows the latter to travel alone) can do all that and maybe another plane change, too, and still be peppy as puppies. Ready to eat another big meal and then do a lot of drinking and perhaps go to bed but sleep hardly at all.

As we age, the ability to do all those things and not be trashed erodes.

I suppose we lose them in different orders (a plane change is tough on some people), but I’d guess we lose them pretty much in the reverse order of how they were listed, above.

“Going to bed but hardly sleeping” might be first, followed by “the too much drinking” (or vice versa) and the plane change … and then at least one of the ferry-taxi-plane-taxi parlay.

If I could have dumped the ferry … or the plane ride … I might have been clear-headed when staggering through the door, after 15-plus hours of traveling from Hydra island to Abu Dhabi. But I couldn’t and I didn’t.

I think that would be fairly standard for anyone over 50, and certainly over 60.

This is a fairly modern problem. Fifty years ago, it was far worse, because planes were shakier and ferries were slower, etc. What now is seen as a modern itinerary might have been possible. Just.

But 100 years ago? You moved and slept. Moved and slept. People didn’t much mix conveyances. Because none of them moved quickly enough to allow for a second. Not often.

You and your mule, walking. You and your carriage, riding. Maybe down to a ship, which pitched way more than a modern ferry.

Anyway, the revolution in travel, which allows us to patch together 3-4-5 five forms of moving in a single day is a godsend. Until it isn’t.