Thursday, August 21, 2014

The best laid plans of mice and men......

   My brother-in–law lives in Pamplona Spain where he teaches English as a foreign language.  I never really knew any thing at all about the CAMINO DE SANTAIGO until Steve started to walk segments of it in his spair time.  I was quite taken with the pictures of the country side, buildings, churches and people that he emailed home  from his travels.  Steve who is Brittish thinks all Americans have money in their pocket and time on their hands suggested that I drop what ever it was that I was doing, fly over and accompany him on two or three trails.  I wasn't sure what it was that he was doing or trying to accomplish so I did a little research as to " The Way" and found all kinds of people and Youtube threads that perked my interest.  From the time we could walk with out assistance my Dad drug my brothers and I up one mountain and down the outher looking for large game to fortify the family's pantry with.   I am sure it was these safaris and forced marches that palled my desire to hike in the wilderness for no reason, but there was something that Steve was doing that caught my interest.
Those that know me well know that for most of my life I have tried without much measure of success to do something physical to stay fit.  The gang/ tribe ( and you all know who you are) I chased with got me into several hair raising, death defying, orphan causing, widow making, serious shit.  So often did we laugh in the face of death that the spilling of first blood became a badge of honor. I need to tell you that many times at the end of the trail we stood leaning against our bikes to support wobbly legs agreeing to only one fact, " hell that was stupid".  We ran so many marathons that once it was suggested that we should be the very last to start just to to see how many people we had passed at the end of the day.  So the 500 plus miles that the Camino presented didn't concern me......but something did.

To be continued.

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