PopWars

Brandon, from the Friendly Home, spotted us on the deck at O’Loughlin’s. He knew exactly why we were there, the anniversary of our first date, the Kentucky Derby. We must have shared that information with him during one of our visits. It has been almost a year since my mom passed but Mary Dixon is still there, along with Sandy, Nancy and June.

Last night’s art opening was a smashing success. If my father had been able to make it he would have been beaming. Everyone else was, while admiring his watercolors.

Our walking partner in Spain, my cousin, Maureen, made her triumphant entry into Santiago de Compostela this afternoon. We’ve been back well over a week and she has completed the Camino. We are so proud of her and eager to join the club.

You can always tell if someone in the neighborhood is playing horseshoes. All that metal on metal makes it a noisy sport. I don’t know if it is a sport really, more like a pastime. By the end of a good summer I have a hard time telling my shoes from my opponent’s. They get pretty beat up. And then over the winter the bare metal rusts so I have to take steel wool to them each spring before giving them a new coat of Rustoleum.

This afternoon my neighbor, Rick, asked if the shoes were dry yet. I checked and they were. We always play best out of three, three games to 21,and I managed to squeak out a victory in the third game. This will be a good summer.

My father gave me his old bike for my birthday and then he took this picture of me. The bike had the strangest kickstand I had ever seen. You picked the back wheel up and and swung this triangle stand down to the ground. I was big into baseball cards back then. It’s my birthday today and I spent it sorting out my holy cards. I brought back a bunch of new ones, many related to churches and saints connected to the Camino, and I wove them into my collection.

There was nothing to eat in our house so we walked up to Wegmans with our backpacks and took the long way home with about thirty five pounds of fresh food. Peggi is making a cake and we plan to have a few friends over.

My cousin, Maureen, is continuing on to Santiago without us and she emails each day with an update. She said a little Russian woman latched on to her today but she continued on when Maureen stopped. And each day we hear how beautiful the trail is and how great the food is. We’re counting the days until October when we can finish it.

I’m missing Spain already and we’re still in the air.

The first time I saw “Far From The Madding Crowd” was in the Ridge Theater in Webster, a Saturday afternoon matinee. I fell asleep but I remember liking Julie Christie. We watched the remake on the plane and I fell asleep again. The story was so predictable and I wasn’t buying the beautiful people doing farming thing at all. Just like on the way over, the person in front of us was watching the Billie Jean King movie and I found myself more attracted to that.

The new Bladerunner was the second part of our double feature. I couldn’t give a hoot about the story but it was beautiful to watch. The grey cities, the drones and space ships, the ruins, the artfully composed shots and camera movement and then an Elvis impersonator and Frank Sinatra under glass. I fell asleep again, a few times, and never got to the end of a really long movie.

An accordion player in Plaza Santa Ana is working his way through “My Way” as I write this. I just finished jamming all the stuff we accumulated in Madrid, Torrons, holy cards, art books and dried fruit for the plane, into my backpack. The thing was just over ten pounds total when we left Rochester, maybe eleven with the last minute addition of a sketchbook. I’m pushing twenty now.

We’re waiting for the Real Madrid/Bayern München match to start and I’m thinking about all the things we accumulate. You become acutely aware of your belongings when you carry them on your back for twenty miles a day. You also get a real taste of the stress that is put on your feet, your knees and your back when you start carrying an ten extra pounds.

There is a satisfying purity to the minimal lifestyle. I already leaned that way but have gained a deeper appreciation of it now. And I am in awe of the beauty of this country after walking halfway across it. Entering towns through Roman walls, stopping at statues and monuments, you begin to feel the impact of history. Following this ancient pilgrimage route with others you get a fuller understanding of the power of legend and faith. Peggi and I need to be back in Rochester for a month of weekly MargaretExplosion gigs so we will continue our Camino in October.

If you would like jump to the second half of our adventures click here (Camino Part 2.)

Our friend, Jeff, texted us asking “are you wearing down or feeling stronger?” I texted back, “stronger.” I lucked out. I didn’t get any blisters but I think my feet have grown because the fronts of my toes hit the front of my shoes with every step. Peggi has blisters that she has been able to manage with Compeed and Maureen has a variety shin, feet and knee issues. You don’t complain on the Camino. Anyone who looks at you in your pilgrim gear can tell at a glance just how you’re doing. It isn’t supposed to be easy. Otherwise everyone would be doing it.

We check the headlines online and we’ve bought a few newspapers, mostly El País, but we’re finding it is pretty easy to let go of the news cycle. We see prostitutes are still dogging the president. And I haven’t been to Facebook since we left. I can’t even remember my password, but I don’t miss that format. It is surprisingly easy to live out of a knapsack.

Peggi and I have to be back in Rochester for the Wednesday’s in May Margaret Explosion gigs and the opening of Leo Dodd’s show on May 4th. So we have to push the “Pause ”button on our Camino. The band is off in October so we plan to return to Leon, walk out of town and continue on to Santiago then. Maureen, my cousin and our traveling partner, is continuing on without us. We didn’t know if we would like this Camino thing and we were prepared to bail and head back to Madrid. But I can’t wait to get back to Leon and pick up where we left off.

Total luck that we would be in León for Castilla y León Day, the anniversary of the Battle of Villalar, in which Castilian rebels called Comuneros were dealt a crushing defeat by the royalist forces of King Charles I in the Revolt of the Comuneros on April 23, 1521. It coincides with Saint George’s Day and this whole area celebrates with a day off, parades and feasting.

We ran into the couple from Tasmania the other night, the ones we met three weeks ago at the Spain/French border. They’re doing this portion (Burgos to Leon) of the Camino on bikes. It looks like cheating to us but we didn’t say as much. And we saw a few familiar pilgrams, fellow Camino travelers, here in León. This is a perfectly livable city. It is 75 degrees today and we just had the best salad of our lives. Of course it was augmented with Jamón Ibérico, atún, walnuts, raisins, white asparagus, anchovies and drenched in olive oil.

There is a Gaudí building here, something he built for a fabric merchant and there’s a church on every block in the city center where the Roman walls surround us. We had coffee in a café called “Converso” where the sugar packets had a quote from Juan Manuel Serrat that read:
“De vez en cuando la vida
Toma conmigo café
Y es tan bonita que da gusto verla …”

A couple from Cairo, an oil guy and his wife, were leaving the hotel in Mansilla de Las Mulas at the same time we were, somewhere around seven. They were doing the Camino too, or at least part of it, and they wanted a cup of coffee before hitting the road, just like us. There was not much open on a Sunday morning but we found a place where it looked like the same scene had played out there everyday for the last century. Regulars at the bar and others stopping for a cup, tostada and conversation. A woman came in with the day’s papers and set the stack on the bar, one copy of four different newspapers (one devoted to sports), copies that patrons would share throughout the day.

The Cario couple had their coffee outside on the patio because the woman smoked. They left the same time as we did and the guy informed us that we had a 200 meter climb ahead of us before we reached Leon. That’s nothing really but he said we had been spoiled by the flat trail the last few days.

We walked through the old Roman wall, across the river, and out of town. We passed through Villamoros (village of the Moors) and climbed some hills that led into the woods before our dramatic decent into Leon. An outdoor mass was taking place in front of the Cathedral in front of a statue of Santiago. So why did Spain adapt Santiago as their patron Saint? There is another facet to this story, the Santiago Matamoros legend.

The apostle Jamesa appears as a miraculous figure at the legendary Battle of Clavijo, helping the Christians conquer the Muslim Moors. The story was invented centuries after the alleged battle took place but it provided one of the strongest ideological icons in the Spanish national identity.

Teresa of Ávila, the mystic, was a worthy contender for patron saint but the Santiaguistas won the debate. Santiago Matamoros or Saint James the Moor-slayer it is. Onward.

This was our second day on the alternate Camino. We followed an original Roman road, the largest stretch of Roman road left in Spain, built in 100 BC to haul gold and other riches from Galicia back to Rome. It was incredibly quiet and rural with very few pilgrims.

We left at sunrise, too early for coffee, and walked eleven miles before stopping in the tiny town of Reliegos for our first cup. The place was called the Elvis Bar and reminded us of the Bug Jar. It was painted bright blue and they let customers write on the walls. They were playing early rock and roll.

We rejoined the mainstream Camino in Reliegos and walked on to Mansilla de Las Mulas where we stopped for a second cup, one served in a small glass with no handle, just as we like it. We found a hotel and had an early dinner before strolling around the town. Most of the original stone wall that surrounded the city is still intact. Tomorrow we reach Leon.

We walked right by the hotel we were looking for last night in Terradillos de los Templarios. It was at the very beginning of the town and we walked through it before realizing we had missed it. Leaving this morning was just as tricky. We got up earlier than we had before. We set the alarm at six and got on the road at 6:30 in total darkness. Peggi had the flashlight on her phone on. We were unable to get out of the hotel the way we came in. A big metal gate was closed and I coildn’t get it open. We finally found an exit and watched the sun come up behind us as we made some headway before the 70 degree sun set in. We have had a variety of weather. Snow, cold, wind, rain and now full sun.

As we approached our first town we saw a sign enocouraging us to stop at the 2nd bar because it was cooler. The tendency for Pilgram’s is to stop at the first place after the long haul. We took our chances and stopped at the second place. It was indeed an oasis with gypsy music and great coffee.

We came to a fork in the Camino after Sahagun, an alternate Camino option on an old Roman road, a few kilometers longer but prettier. No question, the road less traveled. Calzadilla de Los Hermanillos, the town where we stopped and Casa el Cura, the hotel we are staying in is paradise. A natural spring, the town’s water supply, is out back. The hotel is a former priest’s house. The proprietor told us the priest lived here with a woman and a little girl. She said “In Spain everyone calls the priest “father” except the sons and daughters. They call the priest “uncle.”