I was at the BlogHer conference in New York when one of the panelists commented that “even” her own mother blogs. She called her mother “one of those elder bloggers.” Meaning, she said, “anyone over 50 who blogs.”

I pried my gnarled fingers off my Underwood, slammed down my Ensure and quaked, “Say, what, girlie?” That’s a joke. I would never say anything so ageist, but I did gulp and turned to my daughter to ask, “Might she be talking about moi?”

I am well over 50 and my daughter is well under and yet, blogging wise, she is the senior one. Someone might call her a hottie blogger. She probably wouldn’t object.

But elder blogger really pushed my buttons. Is Maya Angelou an elder poet? Is Annie Leibovitz an elder photographer. Is Madonna an elder rock star?

Not surprisingly, the blogging world is dominated by youngish people. A story in the New York Times said that 53 percent of bloggers are between the ages of 21 to 35. Only about 7 percent of bloggers are over 51. In the world of blogging the young are old hands, the old are newbies.

At the BlogHer conference there were more than 2,400 women bloggers and certainly the under-50 demo outnumbered the over-50. And over 60, like me.

It could be worse, I guess. They might have called us “geezer geeks.”

I asked Beth Blakely from the website Vibrant Nation, which is for women age 50 and over and has a number of regular bloggers ,what she thinks of the term. Beth says it can be helpful to identify a blogger by her subject just as you would any writer with a particular focus. But the general tag of elder blogger doesn’t work for her.

My friend and contemporary Michele blogs about food and wine and some might call her a foodie blogger. But elder blogger? Never. She colors her hair egglplant and hula dances. I can’t imagine she will ever be an elder anything.

The problem is the word. In some cultures “elder” is a sign of respect, as it was once in our own and might some day be again. But in our mainstream youth-happy world it creaks.

I will embrace my gray hair, my funky sore back and that I know most Beatles lyrics. But elder is a description I am not ready or brave enough to own. It makes me feel old. Blogging makes me feel like a player.

Pattie Heiser has the website 50 Fabulous and doesn’t consider herself an elder blogger. “It gives me hives to think of it.” She has the same problem with the word. “Our culture does not revere our elderly and to be so means that you will be disregarded and discarded.”

On the other side, Joan Price is fine with elder. Joan writes books about sex after 60 and blogs about it at NakedAtOurAge.com In her mid-60s, Joan calls herself a senior and considers her audience boomers, seniors and, yes, elders. She credits her late husband with putting the right spin on elder, as someone who had “the wisdom of a lifetime of experiences.”

Were elder to deliver such a strong, respectful vibe it would be something to aspire to. It would be a designation that you earned, not something automatically granted when you become a certain age, like Medicare and movie discounts.

Then, if someone called me an elder, meaning that I was experienced, wise and worldly, I would flaunt it like a new Pashmina.

But elder as in elder blogger? No, in the blogging world I’m pretty much a juvenile.

There were 64 worn wooden steps on the charming narrow circular stairs that climb to the fourth floor apartment we rented in Paris. Every day I said to myself, “Feet, don’t fail me now.”

I’m a walker. I dance. I do cardio. I’m in pretty good shape. On some vacations I get accused by my lagger companions of doing a forced march. I expected to walk equally strong on this two week trip to France, striding with purpose and vigor, like those chirpy leaders of tour groups stabbing their umbrellas in the air and urging all their chickens to keep up.

But this time my body was forced to do more strolling and stopping. My feet hurt. I grew blisters. I should have packed my trusty tennies, as I was reminded by my husband, the man who covered France in hiking boots. But who wants to take on Paris in tennies?

The stylish French sported complicated gladiator sandals and tall boots to go with flirty tunics over skinny pants and tights. Their legs looked good. Their feet seemed to work fine. They clicked along sidewalks and galloped up and down Metro stairs without wincing.

I wore Moleskin and Dora the Explorer bandaids from my granddaughter’s stash that I found in my purse.

Before the trip I shopped at a healthy shoe store in California for the ideal walking shoes. I asked for something that would be good for walking cobblestones as well as city streets and the clerk said “you mean our go-to-Europe shoes” and produced a pair of dusky green Mary Janes (Clark’s) that were in the dorky-but-hip category. I wore them for a week before I left, in order to break them in.

But by the second day on vacation they were not my friend. Yet I pushed on. We walked up Montmartre and back down. We walked through cheese markets and art stalls, through museums and churches. In Notre Dame I gratefully collapsed in a seat where I could prop my tootsies on one of the giant stone chiseled pillars.

French women use their feet and ride bicycles. I watched a Parisian peer in stylish dress and no helmet point her bicycle into the chaotic traffic of the Bastille round-about. And she did it in high heels.

I came home recognizing two things. I have a body that still works, albeit one that better keep going to dance exercise, yoga and lifting weights. Also, if I want to keep seeing the world I have to put up with some discomfort. No pain, no Seine.

But I ask my sister travelers, what do you put on your feet to trek the world. And still look fairly chic when it’s time for an aperitif?

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There are so many good reasons not to go to Europe this year. The ashy cloud out of Iceland is still hovering and who knows when another volcano might decide to erupt and mess up a two week vacation? It could rain in Monet’s garden. The baguette bakers might go on strike.

Besides, how can we indulge ourselves when the world is so volatile and the economy so insecure? We’re getting close to that fixed income part of life. Will we be spending money that we will one day wish we had?

Think how sad the dog gets when we leave. Think of all the email that will pile up. What if the house sitter forgets to water the tomatoes? What about our promise to be frugal and buy local?

There could be a terrorist on our plane. There could be one on the airporter getting us to San Francisco. There could be an angry, anti-American zealot lurking at the Marais café where we lounge with our au lait and croissant. There could be bomb-makers at the adorable inn in the charming Loire village with all the great castles.

Well, we’re going anyhow, calling it our “pensioners to Paris package.” Even though maybe we should be biking through Utah while our legs still work. Or spending two weeks working on a kibbutz or teaching English to kids in Malaysia.

The last time my husband and I went to France was during the Bush years when the French were still smarting over that dumb crack about French fries and embarrassed U.S. travelers sported maple leaf flags pretending to be Canadian. But now the French seem to be smitten with Obama and liking us again. And the dollar is no longer defenseless against the euro.

It still takes almost a day to get from our house to France and I look forward to that dazzling moment after flying all night when you push up the window shade and the sun is coming up over what must be Ireland and then England and then there’s the English Channel and a swath of green farmland and brown and white cows and stone farmhouses with blue shutters.

I’m still in love with foreign travel. I know people whose long careers had them airborne so much that once they retire they’re thrilled to hang out at home. Not me. I get giddy just thinking about going to another part of the world. We’re traveling with another couple and we’ve been playing at going to France since winter. If you only have two weeks to actually be there, you want to stretch it out with a long countdown. We have French radio streaming from our laptops, Paris weather on the Google map. I’m reading memoirs of France by Gertrude Stein, MFK Fisher and Julia Child.

The world has shrunk since those Americans discovered France as a second home. Travel was more exotic and distancing then. Now we are a global village with a world economy. We share airspace, cyberspace and each other’s bad days. Each of us is only a ripple away from another part of the world’s failed economy, earthquake, oil spills, violence, corruption, wars and retaliatory attacks.

We may be separated by culture and language – my French, as they say, (heh, heh) est pathetique – but we know each other. The storybook farmers we will photograph in the Dordogne worry about holding onto to their fields just like California farmers. The chic people we will ogle on the Right Bank likely fret over cutbacks at work and how to keep their apartment.

To them we will bring our tourist dollars, affection and empathy.