Day 22 or The Gros Opa Shuffle

Notes on Day 22, March 17, Sahagun to El Burgo Ranero



It is as Rachel feared. I am stuck in a Spanish backwater. I knocked out my 18km by noon today. It is now 7:30pm and I have been sitting in the one bar in this piece of a town since 1:00pm. I know some of you (particularly Angela) are saying, ¨sitting in a bar for six and a half hours? I don´t exactly see a problem here,¨ but this bar blows chunky and this town does too. There is no internet here so I can´t even catch up on my woefully behind blogging. And there is nothing to see here in this place because this town is fugly. I mean really fugly.

This is the consequence of having looked at the map last night and deciding to save myself 4km by taking the Senda (the ¨developed¨ pilgrim trail) rather than the Calzada Romana (the continuation of the Roman road I was on the day before yesterday). I would have preferred the isolated charm of the Roman road, but I sold out and took the Senda, which landed me in this one mule town (well, 90% of these towns we pass through are pretty much one mule towns, but as I said, this one is fugly).

So I am sitting in the smoke filled bar feeling my lungs asphyxiate with every inhale and watching Spanish soaps on TV with very swarthy looking male actors and very flawlessly waxed buxom actresses. The Spanish soaps are almost entertaining. Almost. It is probably a good thing that I can´t understand a word those wretched, love sick, fabulously coiffed senoritas are saying because I´d probably ralph. As it is I can just marvel at the intensity of their tearless sobbing. I myself was so wretched that at one point I walked to the one mercado (it´s too close by to take my mule), to buy a new notebook so I could at least sit and ¨blog¨ the old fashioned way. I mean really, these days it is just rude not to provide internet.

But the good news is that I must be getting some fabulous back because a really fossilized old Spanish man at the bar bought my Fanta and sent over a little slice of bread with some jamon on it for me and then winked at me. Hey, at least I am turning heads again, even if they are solidly grey ones. Cheeky old perv.

Speaking of old men... In my family we called my Grandfather ¨Opa,¨ which is German for Grandpa. When his first great grandchild was born he became ¨Gros Opa.¨ Toward the end of his life he developed this distinct shuffle. His short legs spread wide, his knees bowed outward, his feet scooting along barely leaving the ground, with a slight limp on the left side (the result of a gimpy knee). My brother and I have decreed that my dad, who is now an Opa, definitely has the ¨Gros Opa Shuffle¨ too. And I have discovered, after three weeks of incessant trudging on my wee feet, I do too. The Camino did it to me. I shuffled into this backwater today marvelling at how, at 33, I walk like my grandfather did at 83.

Earlier in the albergue a Spanish woman saw me nursing my feet and promptly sat down on the ground in front of me, grabbed my leg, and commenced to massaging my calf using rosemary infused olive oil. ¨Ees good for de salad, but also for de legs.¨ Um. Ok. But I wasn´t going to quibble over being rubbed with salad oil; the massage felt wonderful, especially since I have been babying a pulled calf muscle for the last few days. And it turns out that she is a homeopathic physician anyway and not just some wacky person whose elevator is not servicing the top floor and likes to give complete strangers calf massages with salad dressing.

It was actually very kind of her. She asked me if I stretched everyday, before and after hiking. I said no and that I knew I should. I felt guilty like when the dental hygienist asks you if you´ve been flossing and you have to tell the truth because they can tell anyway. ¨Jou still have over 300km to go to Santiago,¨ she said warningly, like a mother. I nodded with my head down and vowed to stretch from then on.

But things looked up after Ana massaged me. The chicken I ate for dinner in the one restaurant was fall off the bone tender and homey and cozy compared to the icky drizzle outside. The bottle of red wine was made right there in this shithole backwater, amazingly, and wasn´t half bad. I sat at my table and tried to swill my wine in my glass like blue-eyed Italian Eddie taught me to do the night we went bar hoping in Logrono. His wine a perfect whirlpool of magenta in his glass. Mine only sloshed sloppily up the sides of the glass, just like it was doing now. Maybe I should practice this before I drink a half a bottle of wine.