06/29/07SALAMANCA

The night of the 27th I had dinner for the third or fourth time with the French couple and then the next morning we had breakfast together, they put on their backpacks and were off towards Leon. We will truly be out of sync now and I will not see them again. They have been walking the Camino for years going for about two to three weeks each year. They started in Le Puy and plan to walk the last stretch next year from León to Santiago. Nice people.
So they hit the trail and I went to the tourist office and waited for a bus to Palencia where I could catch a train to Salamanca. It was all nice and the train was interesting as it was a local train which stopped about every 10 minutes. I got to watch a lot of people doing their thing.
I was so glad to see Mary and there she was on the platform waiting. Her hair has grown so long I hardly recognized her at first but I couldn´t miss that smile a 100 miles away. We went to the hotel to get rid of the backpack and had lunch where she knew the waiters which was fun. She finished school today and after telling me consistantly how she was the slowest student in her classes it turned out that in fact she wasn´t if her grades were any indication of her ability and achievement. What a non surprise for me!!
I have not decided when I am going back to the Camino but it will be some time after the 4th when Betsy arrives. I will go over my Camino distance and lodging book and do some serious kilometer counting to see exactly how many days I should take to get there. Now that I am not too worried about a few long days I think that everything will work out OK so I believe the chances of everything going according to plan has increased to 40%.

06/27/07 FRÓMISTA

So it seemed that the dog had gotten a fox tail sticker in his paw and was having a hard time of it. The German and the limping dog went to the train station to try that mode of transportation. This is the first time that I have seen someone with a dog and since the logistics would be a nightmare I can understand why. Went through Burgos to a little town on the other side called Tardajos and stayed at another lousy place. I had been thinking hard about my back and those who know me well may wonder that I was able to do the thinking and still walk without wandering off the edge of a cliff or trip in a pot hole and break something, but anyway I was able to trace back to when I first started having trouble with my back and it was in Scottsdale when I started using the treking poles seriously. This got me thinking about maybe trying walking without them if the going wasn`t too hard and I did that which turned out to be a good thing. Yesterday my back didn´t hurt much after I stopped and the only problem I had was that I had to sit around all afternoon as usual doing nothing. I just can´t go down to the cafes and sit there telling the same story or lie all afternoon so I have been going a little crazy each day. So, this morning I talked with a Basque woman and her husband at breakfast and they said that they had walked 40 km. the day before. Although they are younger I though what the hell, I am going to have to change something or I am going to quit the Camino from afternoon bordom. So, I took off this morning and walked 34 km. with out a lot of trouble as of now. This leaves me with a new lease on the Camino!
Tomorrow I am going to take a bus down to Salamanca and visit Mary for a few days before she takes off with Betsy, my sister for a road trip. I, needless to say, am very excited about seeing her. When I come back to the camino I will start putting the km. behind me and have less time to lay around in the afternoon.
This morning in the town of Castrogeriz I saw something of note. As I was walking by the main church, a car drove up, three women got out and put on the backpacks from the trunk, the backpacks all decked out even with the conch shell, stood in front of the church and took each others picture, then took their backpacks off put them in the trunk, got in the car and drove away. Everyone has to do their own Camino I guess!!
Today going out of Castrogeriz the path took us up a very steep incline to the top of the hill which was narrow but flat. Then we came to the other side which was very steep and certainly showed me where the rain in Spain mainly falls. It was plain to see that there was a lot of plain there and I was going to have to walk across it all. Which I did as I am now in Frómista.
The French couple with which I have had dinner a number of times are in the room next to me at the pension where I am staying. It is interesting how people cross each others paths even though we are all going our own speed and our own distances.

06/25/06 TARDAJOS

On the 21st I made it to Santo Domingo de la Calzada and But, came by the partial ruins of an 8th century monostary which was really interesting. It seems that these really old churches etc. in this area looked more like Greek/Roman temples than what we think of as a church. Or, from what little I have seen it seems that way to me. The next day was Belorado where I had a really nice place to stay. I ran into the French couple that I had had dinner with a couple of times before and we ate together again. There was also a Swiss guy from Geneva who could speak a little English and another French speaker who could speak virtually no English. How I believe a myth was born. The French speaker with virtually no English asked me if I had met the man from USA, San Francisco who was 82 years old? I thought about it and asked him if the guy had a bad limp on the left side. Well, yes. Then I asked him if his name was Gordon? Well he thought maybe so. This sure sounded like Gordon who I had met just this side of the Pyrenees and who is 72 years old. I know this because we did a little age comparison stuff when we stayed at the same hotel. When one doesn't speak the languages to well, those mistakes happen.
Eighty two--- Seventy two it is only a 1 and a 0 different.
The next day on to Villafranca Montes de Oca where I stayed in one of the worst places I have had the bad luck to encounter. It was just so drab and down trodden looking along with the fact that the owner's children worked there and they were just as badly behaved and surley as any teen ager who didn't want to do the job can be. Very depressing place. Basically it was a truck stop and had big trucks coming in and going out until very late at night. Gointg out fo there the following morning it was up hill, down hill, up hill, d... until San Juan de Ortega where a bunch of Germans and Austrians were drinking coffee at a restaurant. They were not walking together but just all ended up there and had stayed at the same places much of the time. Then a South Korean showed up walking alone along with the rest of us. Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to ask her 'WHY'? That night I stayed at Atapuerca in a lovely little Hostel attached to an Albergue. On the 25th I got starterd by 6 am as there was a long ways to Burgos and I wanted to be there before 1pm so that I could get a stamp for my pilgrim's passport at the cathedral before 1pm. I made it in time as I had a map of Burgos and realized that I could take a bus from the outskirts to the center of town and did just that with a couple from Italy. On the way out fo town I ran into a German speaker with a dog who was having trouble because his dog was lame and he was trying to go on a train. I have just been kicked off the computer.

06/21/07 SANATO DOMINGO DE LA CALZADA

Yesterday I made 2 mistakes. My side excursion was to Ventora not Borgota and the word for pilgrims in Spanish is Peregrinos.
Today was a 22.5 km walk (according to one book) over rolling countryside. It is quite beautiful with sping flowers on the sides of the trail and amber fields of grain in the background. Last night I had dinner with a French couple who I have seen at a number of stops over the last four or five days. Theu were at the pilgrim church service last Sunday. We didn't have a lot of language in common, they could do a little bit of English, Spanish, German and lots of French; I could do a little bit of Spanish, some German and lots of English. Made for an interesting conversation. Anyway we agreed on one thing, they didn´t like the Gîtes (There I finally figured out how to do the little hat!) and Albergues any better than I do. I also walked for a while with two 35 to 40ish women from either Denmark or Sweden today for a while. They have been on the road for 6 weeks and had started in Le Puy. After a bit of talk, they put it in gear and just walked away from me at an amazing rate. Youth and lots of walking does that for you. Which reminds me of the Dutch woman of 60 years who had started in Holland and when I met her in France she had already walked 1700 km. Two German women from Wurzberg had hooked up with her but unfortunately the Dutch woman walked those two German women into the ground with three 30 km days. One thing one must know here is what you are capable of. One must walk their own Camino at their own pace or things can get rough. I am of the 20 to 24 km range kind of guy!

06/20/07 NÁJERA

Yesterday the walk was 22.5 km to Navarrete and a hotel just outside of town. This was the nicest place I have stayed in since the beginning of this journey. Wow, now I know how the middle class lives! It was a good walk through the town of Logroño where I bought a Herald Tribune newspaper and retired into a cafe to drink coffee and read the paper. What a wonderful relaxing treat even if the news has not changed a whole heck of a lot in the last month. Then the Camino went through a huge sports park where people were walking, running and holding many camps for little kids. Fun to watch. It is very interesting here in that people seem to keep an eye out for the Pelegreños (Pilgrims). On the way out of town from Viana I came to a cross road in the early morning just after sunrise and a woman was stopped there with her car and was getting a baby out of the car. Naturally I was looking at the baby but pretty soon someone started to whistle at me louder and louder until I stopped and looked back. In English the person, looking out of his front window, told me that I had just walked past a turn off for the Camino. Very nice!
Today was a short day so I took a little excursion to Borgota to look at the church etc. There I noticed something interesting. In the middle ages in this and many other areas they tended to build their churches on higher ground and had their steeples pointing up to the spiritual heavens, the hightest structure around. Now, if there is any higher hill around or if not for that matter, the highest structure reaching up to heaven is,..., The cell phone tower! How times change.
I realized something else today, if everything goes according to plan (30% chance of it happening I would think), I have walked more than 1/2 of the days I am going to walk. Today was the 27th walking day and by my reckoning I have 26 days ahead of me if I can finish it and go on to Finnisterra. Boy, that sure sounds like a long time to me and my back right now! But, on the Camino hope springs anew every morning.

06/18/07 VIANA 2

So, I am in the city library fo Viana where the internet is free and I was told at the tourist office would be open some time around 3, a little before, a little after, who knows!
So: by the time I got to Puente-la-Reina my back was killing me, I drank the beer, took a nap and ran into the New Zealanders. They were nice, but had no idea what was going on except that the America's cup which they said New Zealand was winning was taking a break during that time. Along with them there was a German who had moved to the states in the 1960s and had done quite well for himself which he made sure everyone around him knew about. The next morning my back was pretty good but by the time I had walked the 22.5 km to Estalla I really was in misery and was thinking that if it was going to be that bad then the walking had lost its shine for sure. I did some work on my backpack and made it so I could pull the shoulder straps closer together in the front of my chest and change their position on the muscles on top of my shoulders. This back problem is an old one from when I played football in high school and had a rib popped out. Up to this day the rib and the ensuing muscle cramps are still a problem. Sometimes more, sometimes less: now seems to be more presumably due to the extra weight and pressure on it.
When I got up about 6:30 the next day I could see that it had been raining and during the time that I packed the backpack it started to really pour. Out the window I could look up the street which went up fairly steeply and then at the end of the block turned into pedestrian stairs. The water was coming down those stairs like rapids in a river and flowing down the street to a small lake around a rather large drain grate. Wow, this did not look good! It was Sunday morning but after the rain had abated a little I found a place where I could get some coffee and a little bread for breakfast. During that time I remembered the first rule I had learned in France. DON'T WALK IN THE CAMINO MUD IF YOU CAN IN ANY WAY AVOID IT! So, I looked at the map and saw that a road went directly to the next stop at Los Arcos. Now that there are new freeways these older national roads are not used much except to travel back and forth tbetween the little villages. So, on the edge of the road off I went and it was quite wonderful. The bicyclists, who are going with traffic in contrast to me who walked facing traffic would drive by and shout 'Buen Camino' and the drivers would honk and/or wave. There was very little traffic and I hardly got wet at all. And the fiddling with the backpack was able to keep me from jumping out of my skin from back cramps. This is not the first time that I had thought that I had fixed this back pain/cramp problem with the backpack and as I sit here my back is hurting quite a lot so we will see.
Last night I went to a mass for the pilgrims at the local huge wonderful church. As I know little about the dogma it was very interesting and seemed by the tempo quite like the Episcapalian service. The priest was quite charming and looked like he really liked talking and interacting with us all. There were lots of people from many lands I can assure you. This walk today was pretty good and the back, if not perfect, was bearable. I am getting now to parts of Spain where one can see long distances, but I notice that there is another mountain range in the distance. I fear that means up and down again. The 'up' is easier than the 'down' for me as the right knee rebels on the down slope.
Poor Mary is feeling pretty lonely there in Salamanca. All work and very little play can not be that much fun for her. She has been doing some of my reservation work, calling and finding me a place to stay, as I still am trying to stay in hotels and the like when I can. It seems to work out better for me. I really appreciate her work as often it is impossible for me to get someone to do it for me where I happen to be and when the person at the hotel starts chattering at me I have no idea what is going on and don't know if I have a reservation or not.

06-18-07 VIANA

We will see how much I can write in less than 9 minutes when this thing turns off. The first two days out of Pomplona were the worst of the trip. First they marched us up to a ridge where there are a lot of wind mills, which I like a lot, but then the down side was very steep. I went to Puente-la-Reina where my back really hurt. Thus I drank 1.5 liters to sooth my nerves and the nerve endings which worked but didn't do a lot other than that for Met two from New Zealand who were on their boat in the Azores and were on the the mainland watching the American cup which was having a few days off so they decided to do some of the Camino. It was nice to talk English for a while. Saw them the next day and they were suffering as they were not in shape at all. Each day i have been putting in about 20 km. The next day was another day of up and down and my back hurt so much that I was wondering if I could go on much longer. I stayed that night in Estalla and it rained like crazy. I have run out of time. I will come back to this.

06/14/07 PAMPLONA #3

Well I did buy some walking shoes, this time regular short treking shoes not hiking boots as I think the going will be better than it was in France. I ask myself how long I will carry the old boots with me; well certainly long enough for me to feel real sure of these new shoes. Hate the weight though. In my mind I worry about the kilogram kilometers. They add up!
Anyway, to polotics, I have had a number of interesting discussions, but up at Orisson a guy which I took for German asked me what I thought of Bush et al. I expressed my views and then he was quiet as is the usual reaction. Then I asked him what he tought of Merkel (the German chancelor). He then started in on a diatride of how the whole world hates the USA now etc. etc. After a few moments I told him that he was not answering my question about Merkel and then he understood what I had asked and laugh, laugh no he was not German rather Austrian. Ha, Ha. Very interesting to hear such from a man who would be living in either the National Social greater Germany with possibly one of Goebel´s children at the helm or living in the greater Austrial workers paradise if it had not been for the Americans. Particularly for a guy from a country which has never really faced up to their part in the jewish holocost etc. as far as I know. But there you go. The opposite reaction which I liked a whole lot better was from a French man. In the same basic type of conversation he told me that America and France were friends and had been for a long time. Friends disagree sometimes but that doesn´t end the friendship. During the build up to the Iraq war when the talk was at its worst between the USA and France his daughter, who is at the university, got on the anti USA bandwagon. He told me that he took her on a little trip down to Normany. There at the memorial he told her something like,`Look at this and never forget what America has done for us. Your grandparents were right on the edge of the invasion and to this day they get all misty eyed when that time is brought up and they think of all those young men.´ All of us who have been to Normandy know how moving that cemetary is. So, just like humans, you get more than one opinion from different people.

The rain has stopped and I am on my way back to the hotel via the bus. Then tomorrow it is off to the races again with the new shoes. I have hotel reservations through Monday so I am a happy guy. Especially since the weather forcast is for dry clear weather!! Lord only knows when I will find a computer again that is hooked up to the internet and that I can use.

06/13/06 PAMPLOMA-2

I must admit that I was really excited the next morning as I walked towards the start of the Napoleon route over the Pyrenees. This route is the same which Napoleon took which in those days was fairly well traveled already by shepherds and pilgrims. Well, it was steep and fortunately I had a reservation at the Orisson Gite which is 7.9 km up the mountain. Well, again, it was STEEP, like doing two or more Camelbacks one after the other with a backpack on. Fortunately it was cool. A bunch of Italians with little backpacks came out of a church and started with me but soon disappeared into the distance. I came across two germans from Hamburg, one happy as a clam about ready to break into a yodel while the other was sitting on the ground just down and out. They had just started and I have to say that anyone who started their first day going up the Pyrenees has my total admiration. Well, I sort of question their sanity, but they like I had no real understanding of the task here. Anyway by 1:30 to 2 most everyone who was staying at Orisson was there and it was 'the sound of music, or Heidi' in real living color! Farm houses down in the valleys white dots of sheep moving around, mist wafting around the peaks. Quite something. A real hard thunder storm cleared the air to perfection. Good dinner and I went to bed in a lower bunk which is really quite important to me as I am continually trying to hydrate myself day and night so I have to pee at least 3 times a night and sometimes more often. Climbing down to do that is not a pleasant experience! Next morning a good breakfast and then for the Spanish border. The weather was absolutely clear as a bell and the scenery was great. I passed the down and out German who had learned his pace and was slowly making it up the grade which was very steep but not as bad as the day before even though it was lots longer. (I am actually at this moment listening in the background to 'The dawning of the age of Aquarius'! I think that I am in a time warp.) When I got to the Roland´s spring close to the top and just a few meters from the Spanish border there was the German´s friend on the verge of yodeling. THEN TO SPAIN!!!, up a little more and then DOWN; DOWN at an increadable steep angle. Very hard on the knees, especially the right one. Then past Roncesvalles to Burguete. (For THE BOOK GROUP: I stayed in Hotel Burguete where, I learned at breakfast, Earnest Hemingway wrote much of 'The sun also rises´. They have kept the downstairs just like it was when he was there and described it in the book. I have not done this yet, but if you go to www.hotelburguete.com you might be able to see it.) The next day, June 12 I ran into a Gordon Lindsay from Walnut Creek east of Berkely hobbling along. Boy did he look rough! He asked me if I was going to stay at the Gite, now called a 'Albergue', the same but much larger with more beds in one room and I fear no more toilets. I told him NO, I was staying at the hotel-restaurant Akerreta, just past Larrasoaña. Oh, did he want to stay there also so I wipped out the cell phone which he did not have and we got him in. I took off and after drinking a liter of cold water was about to go back and take his pack for him but he hobbled up to the door looking really rough. He is, I think, a little older than I and started just at the Pyrenees. He stayed also the day before me at Orisson but collapsed on the down grade and had to lay down in the middle of the path. The next person who came along called someone and by the time the people got there to help him he had been able to get up and try to go on, but the helpers took his pack, put him on a stretcher and got him down to the Albergue in Roncesvalles. He took a rest day and is hobbling along. He says his wife worries too much and his daughter thinks that he is crazy. But, like me, he thinks it is now or never so he presses on. We were able to talk a fair amount that evening and that was really nice. I have found the isolation really hard to deal with and it brings to focus how the isolation I felt when I first went to Germany in 1960 and during the time I was there, as I never really got so that I could have a truly probing intellectual discussion in German, affected me actually for all the years since then. The next day on to Pamplona where Mary had found a hotel for me for two nights; finally after 20 days of walking I am taking a rest day. I have the problem of my boots wearing quickly and I can´t make up my mind whether to try to buy some new walking shoes, or not. I would still have to carry the boots which are heavy for insurance and I am not sure I want the extra weight. But on the other hand my right foot might start hurting badly, it has started to hurt ocassionally already, and I really don´t want that since generally I am holding up fairly well.
I have learned that I am not cut out to sleep in the same room with many people. That might have been OK when I was 21-22 and we slept with 5 in the room but at 68 it has absolutely NO appeal. So I am trying to plan the trip so I can stay in hotels, and the like where I can have a room to myself. I don´t want to have to walk down the hall to the bathroom but that is Ok if necessary. So, I am off to look at shoes. If I have the energy I will post a little blog about people and politics before I hit the road again tomorrow morning.

06/13/06 PAMPLOMA

As you can see, I am in Spain. I have not had access to a computer in ages obviously, but I will try to recreate what has happened since Navarrenx. Axel took a rest day in Navarrenx to wait for his wife so I took off alone. It rained off and on to Boholeguia which is close to Aroue. There was a gite(the 'i' is supposed to have a ^ over it, but anyway a gite is a communal sleeping arrangement usually with bunk beds and depending on the size of the room many or few beds. I don´t like them!)for 13 people and was run by the perfect momma. This was on a farm and she loved doing this during the season. she seemed to like me and put me in the only single room in the place, BLESS THAT WOMAN! so I was a happy camper. She provided enough calories at dinner for everyone to walk all the way to the ocean and then did the same in the morning along with putting out a platter so we could make ourselves a sandwich for lunch. What a wonderful person! The next day was on to Gaineko Extea close to Ostabat. This was a long one in hot weather. I didn´t take any of the short cuts and ended up going up the equivalent of Camelback with a pack on to look at a little chapel that was built in the beginning of the 19th century. God I was beat especially since I had to go down again. When I got to Ostabat I was really thirsty even though I had already drunk 2 1/2 liters of water so I went into a bar and asked for water. The woman filled up a flask for me and just left. I drank the whole thing and left one euro then went out the door. While trying to find my way out of town I ran into Benoit (from the past) and I asked him how he got past me without me seeing him. He told me that he and almost everyone else took the short cuts. Well, it was good training for the Pyrenees. Benoit was waiting for a replacement part for his backpack which broke under way. The company was shipping a replacement to this little village for him. I got to my Gite and having learned from the night before I asked if they had a single room that I could have (for more money of course) and they did. There was a large (13) group there who walk with just water and lunch on their backs and have a van take every thing to the next stopping place. This is Basque country and I think that this gite makes it´s real money from these tours so at the dinner the husband put on a sing along show during the whole time. Really the first that I have seen since I have been on the road. By this time I was running with the same group most of the time even though everyone walks alone we all end up at the same places as there aren´t many options. The next morning I walked to St. Jean le Vieux which is just 4 km short of the starting place for the crossing of the Pyrenees. Stayed at Hotel-Bar Mendy. Saw the French foreign legoner and his wife´s friend for the last time on the road there. Story: Remember the three people way back there who almost couldn´t sleep in the Gite because of the nurses? Well that was the French Foreign legoner, his wife and his wife´s friend. Since we got things strainghtened out they liked Axel and me. for the next week + we/I would run into them almost every day. Well, it seems that the wife´s friend told the wife that she wanted to learn about the Camino but was concerned to do it alone the first time. So, the wife said something like,´well my husband knows it well and he will go with you.´. Good idea. So they drove to the first Gite, stayed overnight and then the wife provided them a nice lunch at the same place Axel and I stopped to eat our bread and sausage. By the time they got to the Pyrenees where they stopped, they hated each other. Every time he would talk she would role her eyes and every time he had a chance he would tell Axel, in french, that she was a wimp and complained the whole time. It really was interesting to watch. Axel, no shrinking violet he, asked her outright if they were lovers, but she made it very clear she was the friend of the wife only!!! The French f. legoner fought in Algeria and Vietnam for 17 year and then has been on pension for 34 years. I saw him without his shirt on and I can see why he is on pension. His upper chest looks like someone used it for a pin cushon. Anyway, they both looked happy when they shook hands shortly before they got on a bus or train out of there!!!

Part 2 and the French health care system

You may remember that I strained my left hamstring way back in the beginning walking in the rain and mud. By the time I am writing about I had a huge bruise on the back of my left leg which went from above my shorts hem to below my knee. So, before dinner, which we made, I was walking around like normal. During dinner everyone was talking in French so I had completely tuned out and was eating when suddenly I notice that everyone was talking and then looking at me, and then talked some more and then looked at me, etc. Axel explained that these were a bunch of nurses (the women who didn't have reservations and wouldn't leave)and they were VERY worried about my leg, and thought that I ought to see a doctor! I tried to talk them out of it as I bruise very easily now but they kept right on it and in a while they had both Axel and me worried. A. and I went out to talk it over but the next thing I knew one of the nurses who spoke a little English told me that it was out of my hands; they had decided that I needed to see a doctor and had called the mayor of the district. The mayor showed up and it was decided that he would take me to the doctor, NO, can't do that because of liability concerns, so they call the paramedics. This is out in the boonies and the paramedics were eating their Sqturday evening meal drinking a little wine and needless to say took their time showing up. When they came they started towards me with a portable EKG machine and that is where I said NO, NO!! So they put A. and me in the ambulance to take me to the doctor. Axel was the only one who could translate. We got to the doctor who was just a delightful guy and he said what I already knew which was that I had ripped a muscle or tendon a little and due to the medication I take there was a huge bruise. If it didn't hurt too much, he said that I should walk! Then the dr. got us into his car and took us on a tour of the area while taking us back to the Gite. He explained the facts to the nurses, which finally shut them up and it only cost me 63.50 Euros which wasn't all that bad considering that I never made a single phone call or consented to any of this. Anyway, the mayor was still there and told us that he made 150,000 liters of red wine each year which got Axel in action and he bought a bunch wholesale to be sent home to Norway. So, I can say with some expertise that the French medical system is doing fine and Dr. Monet is one really nice guy.

06/06/07 NAVARRENX

Since I have seen a computer the last time I have been to Miramont-Sensacq where I learned that all is not what one sees and one may find out about the French medical system without trying when I stayed in a city Gite there, then to Arzacq-Arraziguet where the nurses from the previous stop were talking at dinner at the gite with about 20 people, then on to Pomps where the German who loved to stay in the Gites made us dinner and considering that he had very little to work with, provided us with a great meal before the German bicycle girls showed up,then on to Maslacq which was a very nice quiet hotel demi-pension, and now in a very old hotel in Navarrenx.
The story back at Miramont-... was that we showed up at the gite first and there was a sign which said that the people who ran it were not there and there was a list of the people who had reservations, and there was no room except for the people who had reserved there. We had reserved and staked out our territory. A little later 2 guys showed up, they also were on the list and they went to the other room and staked out their territory. There were three bunk beds in each room. Then four women showed up and asked us to move so they could all be in our room. We said NO. They went to the other two guys and the next thing we know the guys are in our room. These women were not on the list as we found out later. So we were sitting out in front of the gite sipping some wine when 3 other people showed up. They were on the list and had reservations. However the women were not going to leave and they made that very clear. Just as things began to get dicie, Axel, who I was walking with said that with a little cooperation maybe somehthing could be done. I went up and tried to pick the lock to the upstairs but couldn't do it so I started through the drawers of the desk looking for keys. Finally the keys were found and the upstairs was opened. Problem solved. Oh, forgot to tell you, the place had been fumigated for bed bugs and we couldn't sleep in our sleeping bags and our backpacks had to be in special fumigation sacks. Then the fun really began!, which I will put in the follozing blog.

An aside

Dusty attached a comment onto my EAUZE posting and if you want to see where I am at any time click on the comment box at the bottom and read it and he will tell you how to find the places!

06/01/07 AIRE-SUR-L'ADOUR

With the rain comes some interesting observations. Most of the slugs are orange here. They have industrial strength 18 to 20 inch long earth worms. The weather has been iffy but no real serious rain for a number of days now. On the 30th I walked to Nogaro which was my 2nd 20+ kilometer day in a row and I have been having trouble with my upper back. The next day on the way to a little place called Duburry I spent the whole time adjusting all the different parts of my pack and I think, hope, that some of the problem has been solved. We will see. Last night I slept in a dorm room with a German middle school principle - no spell checker- and two of his female teachers, all about ready to retire soon. Very interesting as this is the first time I have done this. And me who has to go to the bathroom about 4 times a night. Well, at least I was in the bottom bunk!
Tonight I am in AIRE-SUR-L'ADOUR after a fairly short walk today It rained off and on but it was mostly just showers and the parts of the trail which are mud were not too slippery. Nice little place, I have counted 4 pharmacies so there are at least 10,000 people being served here. I have a room in a demi-pension hotel tonight! A room all to myself, what small pleasures there are in this life! Dinner served at 7:30 pm. Breakfast at 7:30. I doesn't get much better than that.
By the way, I think I have this figured out a little. You get up in the morning, dress and eat. You walk, you hurt, you eat a little lunch on the road, you go to your sleeping place, you shower, you wash some clothes, you rub the parts that hurt if you can reach them, maybe you take a nap, you worry about where you sleep later, you eat, you sleep, you etc. Life ain't so complicated!