Okay. Break out the camomile tea. Reading pilgrims describing their exploits years after they walked a
Camino, then reading that they are not competitive simply does not ring true. I suspect that a friendly game of Monopoly with these folks would leave you feeling like Shaquille O’Neal had dragged you around a basketball court for an hour! Take their advice with a grain of salt. We are proud of our accomplishment. A little braggadocio has been earned. Do not spoil it by denying it!
Health and safety ARE important. Preserve them when you should. My brother’s college roommate, a retired “Time” magazine writer, “blew out” his knee on the way to Roncesvalles and spent most of the next month on taxis, trains, and buses instead of walking the
Camino. Was his experience ruined? He has a movie treatment in the works on Rogelio Maynulet,
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?sect ... icle=28133 who he interviewed for a week as Roger walked the Camino to sort out the strange twist his life had taken. The writer is now married to a German woman he met on the pilgrimage.
The Camino provides.
Occasionally a discussion thread morphs beyond my comprehension. I am hearing that the first day out of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port is among the proudest days on a poster’s
Camino even as that poster counsels taking two days. It is almost as if the writer wants to keep the proud moment to himself. Unless you are saying that you were a fool for doing it in one day, and regret it beyond all measure, perhaps you should stop trying to talk others out of it. It is a tough 25 km, but it is only 25 km. Shirley MacLaine did it, for goodness sake. Prepare the new pilgrim for the rigor, and describe where you found the inner strength to marshal on, in order that he can find that strength as well.