Our final shakedown was to arrange our packs, poles, shoes, and umbrella in a large duffel bag and check it all onto a flight headed for Sacramento.
Normally, we don’t check luggage when flying and travel with only carry-ons. However, TSA doesn’t permit trekking poles to be carried onto a flight, and since they are a must have for our walk across Spain, we were forced to check a bag.
The shakedown was a success…the duffel made it to Sacramento and back to Indiana and in one piece. Some wear, but one piece.
With the final shakedown is complete and successful, we are ready for the journey to begin.
We’ve been busy training for our Camino de Santiago trip. Every morning (almost), we get up, grab breakfast, coffee and tea and head out into our neighborhood carrying our full Camino packs and gear. The shakedowns are mostly done at this point, but conditioning is still needed for for the 562 miles (900km) to come. At this point, though, we are both bored out of our minds! The same routes, the same streets, the same sidewalks and paths. We’re over it!
Earlier this week, I told Kara I am ready for these walks to “count”. I want to be on the actual trail making actual progress toward Santiago rather than waiting for our tracking app to tell us we’ve hit our mileage goal for the day. I want to be practicing my Spanish with albergue hosts and restaurant staff. I just want to start already. We’re in the dog days of summer and training is all we can do. Our plane doesn’t leave for a few more weeks, so we keep walking and walking and walking. We’re gutting it out, but every day is “leg day” and it it has stopped being fun.
We are as ready as we can be at this point. We know the Pyrenees mountains the first couple days will kick our butts. But in glacier-flattened Indiana, the only hill training we can do is a set of stairs near an overpass by our house (we desperately miss the mountains of California). We plan to take it slow over the Pyrenees. There’s no need to go too fast too soon. Our plan is to push through the first two days and ask our bodies for forgiveness later.
We’re less than a month away from our start date. It can’t come soon enough.
“When Plan “A” fails, remember there are 25 more letters.” – Unknown
Those who know me know I am a planner, thinking of all contingencies and creating checklists. This has served me well in both my working and personal lives. Rex is a planner too but doesn’t tend to get bogged down in the minutiae (he leaves this to me). My goal as we head into retirement is to let go of some of the micro-planning tendencies to give room to a new “the universe will provide” mindset. If anything, it will be an interesting experiment to see if it is possible.
Yesterday as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I saw a cry for help on one of the Camino De Santiago Facebook groups I follow. The poster mentioned the bus route from Pamplona to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (SJPP) that Rex and I were planning to take is being suspended effective September 5th. We were planning to take this bus on September 6th to our starting point.
After a second, mild panic rose within me. “OH SHIT!” We have to find a new way to get from Madrid to SJPP.
I had promised myself (and Rex, so there’s no backsies) I wouldn’t over-plan the trip and make too many reservations. We both agreed the climb over the Pyrenees needed to have beds confirmed in advance, so we had our first two nights lodging reserved, but nothing else. We were going to “go with the flow” and figure things out as we went along.
New research began immediately. What alternate routes were there to get to the start? This cancelled bus kicked off a chain reaction of changes. Since we had already booked our stay in Madrid, SJPP, Orisson and Roncesvalles, we were searching for other transport methods into SJPP for our original planned Camino start. But after over an hour of research, we realized we had to come at this problem a different way. We decided our best course of action was to throw our original dates out the window and book the trip two days earlier so we could catch the final bus to SJPP on September 4th instead of September 6.
Now the worry begins as we anxiously await responses back from the hostels confirming if they can switch our dates.
Fingers crossed Plan B works out and we can continue to focus on our very long pre-journey checklist.
05 Sep 2022 Update: After several days of sleepless stressed sleep, finally all hostels aligned and were able to reschedule our stays. What a relief! Plan B worked!!!
