Back in the Saddle

I see that the last time I tried to get back into the saddle of blogging was in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.  Surely, I was not that busy, but perhaps there wasn't anything exciting going on either.   Not that there is excitement now, but at least there is activity.

My friend Suzanne, who will be 80 in 2024, has either purposely or inadvertently pulled a reverse psychology move on me.  (I'm leaning towards 'purposely' because she is a smart one.)  She invited me to once again walk the Portugal route of the El Camino de Santiago.  However, she said that even if I don't accompany her, she is going alone.  That of course put me in a real bind.  The bind was not my concern that if something happened to her that I would feel guilty, although it did enter my mind for a fleeting second.  The bind was that if she completed the over 200 mile walk successfully, I would be so mad at myself for letting her best me!  And I am six years younger!

Let me put this in perspective.  I take a high intensity interval spin class twice a week, a regular spin class once a week and two yoga classes weekly. Suzanne walks and rides her ebike and plans on having knee surgery this fall.  And she is six years older!  How could I back out?  

Suzanne told me that 'most' of the days would be about 10 miles and a 'few' might get up to 16.  She did not count on the fact that I lived in Europe for ten years and know how to calculate kilometers into miles!  She has a Ph.D. from Duke University and I am sure she can do the calculations herself, but chose not to.  Anyway, I looked up the trip, calculated the kms to miles, and discovered that she had underrepresented the 15-to-16-mile days and overrepresented the 10-mile-days.  I should have known her calculations were always impacted by her intentions: I have walked with her at the beach when she would exclaim that we had walked 4 miles to the end of the island, but when I looked it up on Google maps it was only 3.25 miles.  Perhaps this is a third way to calculate distance:  kms, miles, Suzanne-miles.

As you can probably guess I had to say yes for my pride would not let me say anything else.  So, in late April or early May 2024 Suzanne and I will fly to Porto, Portugal for a 12 day walk to Galicia, Spain to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.  Not wanting you to think that we are crazy, we will not be walking with all of our belongings and staying in whatever hostels we can find.  No, we will be staying in hotels and our luggage will be transferred to the next hotel each day.  But we WILL be walking the entire route.