Day 9: Hola, Hola, Hola, Hola, Hola, Hola, Hola...

June 19, 2015

Sometimes fun trumps distance.

I was the last one out of the alberge this morning. I guess I'm not in the grove like the rest of the people on The Camino, though if I was a walker I would want to get out early to beat the heat. As a cyclist with water everywhere (in comparison to the United States, for example, were you might have to carry a gallon to get you through the day) there is nothing too extreme.

It was fairly easy swimming against the salmon. There were plenty at almost every turn and if I wasn't sure I just waited a few minutes for someone with a backpack to ask where they came from. The only problem is all I did was say "Hola, Hola, Hola, Hola...". You get the idea.

Every now and Then I would get a, "You are going the wrong way!"

"Yeah, Yeah, I know." I yell back.

The infrastructure is definitely in place to handle all the people, walkers and cyclists, with towns, alberges, restaurants, bars, stores and so forth every 5 or so miles on average.

Truth is, I didn't ride far at all. Far short of my goal of Burgos. I kind of lollygagged until about 3pm. I was just leaving a little town called Castrojeriz and I decided to start getting serious about putting in some miles, it was then I saw Brooke outside a little hotel, only I didn't know her name yet of course. We started talking about this and that, and she asked me about bike touring and so on and so forth and I said, "you know the Alberge in town is already full, you might want to check out a room here." Which she did, and for only $37 got a badass single room. Then Kelly, another hiker, came up and they both got a single room.

By then we had been yammering a while and Brooke said, "you should get a room here too, we can all go out to dinner."

I was sorely tempted. The place was air conditioned and the rooms nice, but I really had places to go and miles left under my wheels.

"At least let me buy you a drink," she said. Which I couldn't refuse, of course, and ordered a Coke.

An hour, and zero miles, later I decided I better get a move on.

"There is a really cool alberge outside of town in the ruins of an old monastery," she said. "It has no electricity or hot water and is really cool. One of the volunteers is a woman from California."

And 2 or so miles out of town there it was, and it WAS really cool. It was in a place called San Anton, if you want to look it up. Quite and peaceful. I stopped for a little while and chatted with Jim from Scotland, the other volunteer, and almost no further to Burgos than I was 2 hours ago, and much earlier than I had planned to stop, I stopped and called it a day.

I did my laundry using water from a little pipe running into a drainage ditch, then sat around with the other hikers shooting the shit, while even more hikers filtered in a few at a time, some with that 1000 mile stare most touring cyclists know well if you have toured for any lenght of time. Dehydrated, hot and grumpy, with that look of, "who's stupid idea was this anyway, I could have gone to a beach San Diego, Instead I am humping this stupid pack up and down these impossible hills in the hot sun, and I wish those idiots would stop talking to me and being so damn cheerful. I am not in the mood for cheerful...." But if you give them a little time they come around and eventually become people again. I've been there.

Anyway, Roxanne, the California volunteer showed up a while later. She is from Sacramento and teaches at American River College, just a stone's throw from my college. So we yammered while she made dinner for the lot of us, then we all sat around for another hour or two eating and yammering, until, by the end, it was like we were all friends.

All in a place with only one outlet via an extension cord (one person at a time can charge their device), no wifi, no hot water for showers and no lighting that is not solar. How could this all happen in the 20th century!? Fun without creature comforts? How odd!

I didn't ride very far but who cares. It was a fun day and what bike touring is all about.

Tomorrow I'm going to but my nose to the grindstone, probably.

Here are pics of my day. I will add pics of the alberge tomorrow.

Most of my ride was on dirt roads so it took a lot more effort than normal

Lots of people walking The Camino. This was an interesting group.

Here is the same cyclist close up. Innovative way to create shade. Not sure how it would work in the wind in Kansas?

Today's ride: 22 miles (35 km)
Total: 312 miles (502 km)

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