Tralelogue 45, Spain: My Feet F!!! N!!! Hurt

MY!!!!!!!!!

FEET!!!!!!!

F!

N!

HUUUURRRTTT!!!!!!!,

but besides that I'm damn near estatic... high on life, in the groove, flowing, aligned with my divine design...you know, happy.  That's what hiking in a Spanish speaking country with a completeable goal every day does for me. An upcoming job interview with Adventures by Disney has magnified it a hair or two as well. 

It will be a week tomorrow that my feet hit the Camino, so it seems a good time to send an update. Truth is, I'm a bit laid up for the day and confined to my bunk with an operated-on blister on my pinkie toe.  It's my own doing.  I tried to pull a Pop and do an unsterile field dressing on it and the damn thing got infected. The Spaniards I was sharing a room with gasped when they saw me suck on a safety pin to sterilize it and then puncture the watery sack on my foot. "!Estas loca!" they shouted offering up a lighter to heat the needle a little too late.  

I can tell you exactly where I got the idea to shortcut hygiene.  When my brothers and I were out hunting and fishing with Pop and we got wounded, he would open up his pocket knife, wipe the blade on his pants and dig out the fish hook barb, b.b. or whatever with nary a drop of disinfectant. We never got gangrene or lost an appendage to amputation. 

Back to blisters. I've since learned that standard blister procedure here in Spain is to sew a piece of thread into the bubble and leave it there until the dead skin sloughs off. As I write, I have a piece of white string strung through the most tenderest part of my pinkie toe thanks to an angel in my path.  Early afternoon  today I hobbled into the healing hands of Dona Carmen who not only doctored my toe, but set my little attitude straight while she was at it. You would be embarrassed for me if you saw what a whimpy, whiney, wailing baby I was while she had my foot on the operating table, i.e in her lap. But ,dang,what do you expect? The Compeed I put on the blister as a bandage had become one with the half-alive dead skin covering the raw flesh and when she started into pulling, and eventually cutting, that off, it smarted, but good. She was very patient with my wincing and whaa whaa-ing, until she busted out a syringe big enough to administer a lethal injection to a full grown beaver and I went hysterical. I started cursing and squirming and damn near flipped over the kitchen chair I was sitting in.

"You know" she says, "there is a whole lot worse suffering in the world than this. Have you thought about that? This is but a silly blister. You are not really suffering. I understand your discomfort, but it's not cancer"

She was right and I apologized profusely for the cursing and the show I had put on that had the whole hostel's attention.  

Anyway, I'm using my toe-sew operation as an excuse to stay inmobile and write this t-logue, which is sure to give me a big fat blister on my thumb from typing it out on my iphone. I hope Dona Carmen is an early riser. 

It will take until Christmas for me to tell all the tales that have accumulated on the Camino this first week, but we will start at the very beginning anyway. 

Day 0:  Inthe Pamplona bus station Cafe I spot at a neighboring  table a woman I assume to be a fellow pilgrim, cluing in on 1. a backpack 1/2 her size in the chair across from her and 2. she was reading what looked to be the same guide book I have. I wrote in my journal that she looked tired and worried and I wondered if I was giving off the same vib. About that time an older gentleman, also with a backpack, asks her in English if she is doing the Camino. Affirmative. He asks me the same question and invites me to join them. 

 Fast forward 4 hours. My new friends, Bridget from Minnesota and Hue from Canada, and I have arrived in St Jean Port de Pie, France and need a place to spend the night. At the pilgrams' office, the man who registers Bridget and me recommends a house right next door where we can share a double room for $24.  Perfect, we think...wrongly.

Interjection of lesson #1:  much to my surprise French is absolutely nothing like Spanish. When I go to Brazil I get by just fine because Portuguese and Spanish are so similar. No go with fran-cee.  The only thing I understood of what Madame Fruitcake, (as Bridget and I later dubbed the landlady of the house) was trying to tell us in our orientation to HER space was via mimes and her palatable unwelcoming attitude. 

I should have known she was too high strung when I took my boots off  and placed them under the bench in the foyer as instructed with about an inch of them sticking out and she takes her foot and pushes them forward until the heels are exactly plum with the edge of the seat...and then shoots me a look of, you inconsiderate slob, were you raised in a barn.?

Once in the room where we were to sleep, I set my pack on the floor and that SETS HER totally off. She yanks it up by the hiking poles I have stuffed in a side pocket as if it was a toddler dressed in Sunday best found sitting in a mud puddle. She slams him, I mean it, in a nearby chair to think about his/its transgression. It's not just any chair he/it has been sentenced to, which is precisely why I choose the floor when my first instinct was to set my pack some place off the ground...like that chair. Obviously an antique, the intricate carvings and red velvet says to me that some royal ass has likely rested there somewhere along the line. 

My thought is, "what is wrong with you lady? Do you know where that pack has been? Have you any idea of the grime on its behind? It's ten times dirtier than this floor. " 

Whatever. It's her furniture. 

She does not let go of the poles and now shakes them as if this toddler pack has talked back to her and she is going to teach him/it a lesson. Mind you, all of this is narrated in a nonstop flurry of loud French neither Bridget nor I can make heads nor tails of. 

She gives up on getting the poles out, points down at the floor and mimics a mad cross country skier hell-bent-for-leather on seriously flat land.  The fervor in her French says to me she is not making small talk about hobbies. She stops that motion, presses her palms together and places them under her tilted head. When she points at her watch, wags her finger in our faces and does the skiers' jig again I get it. 

"Wee! wee! Don't stomp our poles in the morning!" I shout excitedly as if it were the tie breaking point in a million dollar game of charades. Madame Fruitcake is not amused. Bridget thinks it's funny. 

The madame performed several other hilariously anal acts before and after our do's and don'ts orientation,  but I'm skipping the story to our departure the next morning before the blister on my thumb pops and blurs the screen. 

I come downstairs for breakfast before 7, as instructed, and without even a "Bon Jour" Madame goes ballistic. What this time, I wonder, trying to figure out why she is beating on her back and then mine when I know it ain't no pep talk for the road she is delivering. She points back upstairs, pats her back, wags her finger, then blocks the entrance to the kitchen with a Mr. Clean stance. 

I get it. No pack, no breakfast. She doesn't want me to go back to my room before I leave. "But I want to brush my teeth after I eat," I protest, baring my pearly whites and mocking a brush. The teeth, honestly, were of secondary importance. What I really wanted was to have a nice relaxed poo before heading off to climb a mountain for 8 hours in a cool rain with 100+ strangers. 

She could give a rat's patooty about what I want.  I went for my pack and didn't poop for the next 3 days. The end, until I regain thumb flexibility. 

My  phone interview with Adventures By Disney is on Oct 2 @ 12pm EST.   Put it on your calendar to send good vibs that they will love me as much as the world does Mickey. 

Much love and buen camino, g