My Mother's Day, LeBootCamp style - Valerie Orsoni : Nutrition & Fitness expertValerie Orsoni : Nutrition & Fitness expert

Fitness / happiness / Motivation / 22 May 2018

My Mother’s Day, LeBootCamp style

364 days per year we celebrate our spouse, partner, kids, parents, dog, cat, or even turtle. But then, once a year, on one specific day we get our very now Mother’s Day, as if we were an endangered species!

The USA and France celebrate Mother’s Day about 2 weeks apart, which prompted me to check online only to find that there seems to be a Mother’s Day going on in some country every month of the year! Here American moms expect to receive flowers and go to brunch with their family (and maybe get a gift). Well, as you can guess this is as far as can be from my vision of what a perfect day with my super son Baptiste should be!

So when he asked me “Mom, it is your day, I will do what you want us to do. Tell me!” I answered “Let’s go on a super hike and get moving!”.

I gave ourselves a super challenge: hiking all the way from the South of the Mission district in San Francisco to the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the cute little city of Sausalito, about 11 miles total with nice elevation gains and losses.

mother's day valerie baptiste

My son, an expert in crypto-currencies (if you don’t know what it is fret not as you are far from being the only one), decided to start the day with a crash course in crypto-currencies, block chains and more. At noon, my brain was fried (and quite confused still even with the best of the instructors out there) and we set out on our hike.

We had not even walked 500 yards that Baptiste looked at me and said “I am hungry”. We stop for a quick Mexican lunch and I am thinking to myself “not sure we are going to make it to Sausalito if we stop all the time haha” but as my son puts it “what matters is the journey not the destination”.

Our stomach full we go back to our original goal of hiking to Sausalito and instead of gorging ourselves at the special Mom’s Brunch buffet we burn the calories. On our way we stop and shop. My son buys a cute dusty pink hoodie for me claiming that hoodies make you look younger and pink is in fashion. Who am I to say the contrary? The gravy on the potatoes for this stop? The salesman did not believe for one minute that I was my son’s mother!
After having walked 8 miles we arrive on the beautiful Marina and its mind-blowing views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
mother's day valerie baptiste As we make some progress towards our end goal we come across a very cute goose chick whose parents are teaching how to swim and walk. We are under this cute spell and stay there for so long that we don’t have enough time to cross the bridge any longer.

We replace the crossing with a hot tea and a Uber back home. As we are being driven to our home sweet home my son says “it is to early to end our day let’s go to the movies!”.

Off we go to admire Hemsworth’s hot body (part of my gift haha) in the latest installment of Avengers. And Baptiste insists that because it is Mother’s Day I can eat all the junk food I want. Not sure my body will love it but hell! Let’s do it! So I try a very strange caffeine free ginger and lemon soda (the only soda of the year!), a pizza and a huge pretzel with melter cheese. Yup! Well the thing is that we are not used to eating like this so after a few bites you are full, the belly starts inflating like a balloon and you feel that that’s enough!

mother's day valerie baptiste It is 10.30pm, it is dark and chilly but I want to walk back home (about 2 miles). Because this area is quite sketchy my son suggests we use one of the new electric scooters that have been slowly but surely invading the city. Lots of fun! We finish the day zooming through the empty streets, the wind in our hair (and beard). How to better cap a wonderful day full of fun, laughter, love and emotions.