Taxi Don Miguel... llame 666.666.666

Whew. I am halfway done with the trek. Today I crossed from the province of Asturias in the province of Galicia. After seven days of walking, I´m about 170 km from my starting point (Oviedo) and about 160 km from my hopeful destination (Santiago de Compostela). I wake each morning at 6:30 and try to start walking by 8:00 am. The sun doesn´t rise here until just after 9:00, but I´ve been blessed with a close to full moon this past week, so I´ve walked the first hour each day by moonlight. My standard pace is about 4 km per hour and the average daily distance is 24 km, so I tend to arrive in the next town between 2-4 in the afternoon, which is perfect because that is when the Spanish eat their big meal of the day. I refuel with the "menú del día" - a brilliant concept where you get bread, a drink, two courses, and dessert for a fixed price. Yesterday, for example, I paid 7.50 € for unlimited bread and red wine, a first course of pasta with squid, second course of fried cheesey ham patty things with french fries, and super savory cheese cake. That´s a little better than the typical menú del día, but not by much. Other than walking and eating, I stretch, write, and sleep. Rinse and repeat. Oh, and I am completely and totally alone. I have not seen one other pilgrim, and the log books in the albergues (3 € donation suggested hostels for pilgrims walking the Camino) tell me that I might be the second person in January to walk this particular route.

Each albergue has a bulletin board where they post important notices like, "throw any your trash", "leave the albergue as you´d like to find it¨, etc. And often there is an advertisement or two on the bulletin board. What is by far the most popular advertisement on the bulletin boards? Taxis. I do not consider myself a devout Christian, but I grew up in church so I know the story. The taxi cab company calling card on the bulletin board is definitely the devil in the wilderness. Every day, usually more than once, a voice in my head reminds me that no one would know if I just called Taxi Don Miguel and took a day off. That´s the thing about walking alone (aside from the loneliness) is that I´m the only person who will ever really know whether or not I walked to Santiago. I could wake up, call the taxi, ride to the next town, find the person who stamps my official pilgrim credential, sleep in the albergue, and wake up the next morning to repeat the farce.

Last night I slept in a town with two churches. And two church bells. I think that the albergue was between the churches. Or inside them. Very close to them. Why I wonder do the bells ring all night? When I wake up in the middle of the night, I often glance at my watch or clock. I don´t know why I do this exactly, but if I wake up I like to know what time it is. Perhaps in this town (Grandas de Salime if you´d like to Google map it), when people wake up in the middle of the night and want to know what time it is, they wait for the church bells. I think it´s more likely that the Catholic Church of Spain is in the pocket of the Spanish pharmaceutical industry, and the 24 hour bell ringing is an incredibly effective way to promote the sale of sleep aid medication. My only evidence for this assertion is that the two bells are not synchronized. So at 4 am, for example, instead of hearing four rings, you hear 1... 2... 3... 4... beat 1... 2... 3... 4... How hard would it be to synchronize those bells?

Many Spanish restaurants have the afternoon television news on during lunchtime. A few days ago I saw a broadcast of the Academy Award Nomation show. The nomination show. This appalled me, and you´ll never guess why. I haven´t seen or heard anything, not one word about my father´s recent achievement - recipient of the first annual Ben Franklin Award for scholarship in American history. The Ben Franklin. So apparently the world cares more about people who have a 20% chance of receiving an award for two hours of entertainment than a person who has actually received an award for a lifetime of academice achievement. Well, congratulations Dad. If my blog wins a pulitzer, you can have it.

I like being silly and prefer writing silly things to serious things. But the Camino is not silly. It is serious and pretty hard. So I think I´ll end this entry with an excerpt from my journal. This is from my first day of walking. (Things have gotten a lot better.) I don´t use punctuation in my journal writing so hopefully you can figure this out.

Where was I? oh yes here in the albergue San Juan not sure what to do next want to shower but waiting for the water to hopefully heat up want to sleep but don´t want to get into my sleeping bag this filthy want to do yoga but it´s so ridiculously cold in here want to eat but I don´t really have much other than the donuts fruit and granola type stuff which is the same stuff I´ve been eating all day and I´m taking it slowly with the water because I forgot to ask whether or not it´s potable and I just noticed - really great timing - that my Sweet Water chlorine drops expired in July of 2004 or two months after I graduated from college so those won´t be of much use so I cried for a while until I realized how little toilet paper there is here and decided that it would be prudent to use toilet paper for, well, the things you use toilet paper for also it wasn´t a very satisfying cry on account of the shortage of tears due to dehydration I suppose my crying must´ve looked and sounded more like a cross between dry heaving and laughing so hard that it doesn´t make a sound just causes the body to convulse

To end on an upbeat note, the weather has been exceptional - sunny and warm every single day. In a season where it snows up here in the mountains, I have been unbelievably fortunate so far. I need to go because it´s getting dark and I have another 1.5 km to walk to the albergue tonight. I miss you all!