Traveling with Joe

I have noticed that only a modest percentage of my Blog visits are viewing the videos.  When asked, I've been told that some people prefer to read about my experience.  Ok, here it is, put on your seatbelt. Also, I don't want to talk about it.  I need time to process this.

Thanks,

Joe Jeter, Nov 1, 2014




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Right now I am high.  (gasp from the audience)

But wait, my eyes are clear, my heart is not pounding, my mouth is not dry; high?

This is the feeling you can only get when everything and I mean EVERYTHING comes together to create a perfect moment.

Let me explain.

The forecast for today was rain.  Pounding rain.  Last night it rained so hard that people could not sleep.

Today It did not rain a drop.

Today I practically ran almost 17 miles.

I finished the walk today in just over 4 hours.

Go out and walk 17 miles and tell me how long it takes.  The second group just got here and I've been here for almost 2 hours.  I was ON FIRE.

High?  Yes, high.  My endorphins are going through the roof, I feel absolutely amazing, I'm staying in a 300 year old palace that has been converted into a hotel, I'm drinking a cold beer and I feel so good that it should be illegal.  In fact, if the Republicans ever felt this way they would no doubt try to outlaw it.

I didn't start out the day this way.  I meditated before I left my room because I had only slept 5 hours.  Breakfast was the usual schlep of bread, bread and more bread, but I put on my pack, picked my up my poles and headed out around 8am.  Right away I met a Spanish girl that was looking for the Camino.  We helped each other find the almost hidden markers and then hit the accelerator.  She was very fit so our pace was brisk.  I also think that we were puling each other along.  We walked and talked, both in English and Spanish for an hour and then I stopped at our check point and wished her well.

In that hour I had discovered that she was a CrossFitter and loved it.  She was only on the trail for a few days and tomorrow she is going to do a 40km day so she can get to Santiago to meet her husband (she is not married but calls her boyfriend her husband).  I told her that Tim, "my husband", worked for CrossFit.  That led to a lively discussion and the hour flew by.  But I had paid attention and I knew that she wanted to walk alone.  We had enjoyed our hour together but it was time to separate so I let her go.

About an hour later I passed her.  It was very cordial. She greeted me with "Mi Amigo" and as I flew by her she gave me the almost mandatory "Buen Camino"; I gave her the standard reply  'Igualmente".  I think she had set the pace to high for the hour we were together and was paying for it.  I did not see her again.  In fact, after about 2 hours I had passed everybody on the trail and was virtually alone.  It was an amazing feeling.

I've learned to use my poles as a form of propulsion in addition to an aide to stay balanced.  When my legs get tired I plant my poles and pull myself along.  Even when my legs aren't tired, if you plant your poles and use your upper body its like having 4 legs.  That motion adds a significant amount of speed to your walk and sometimes my feet barely touched the ground.  It almost feels like you are flying, especially when you are going downhill.  Think about that for a second.  Imagine feeling like you are flying.  Yes, high.

I called Lu, our Guide around 12:30 to advise her that there was a barricade across the trail.  When I told her where I was she let out a "Holy Shit".  I guess my pace today set some kind of record but I really wasn't out to kick the Australian Rugby Player's ass like I've done before on this trip; it simply felt really good.  And now I am freshly showered, shaved, in clean clothes, have taken photos of the grounds and building, and was holding a beer when the van drove up with the Aussie.  He was so pissed he wouldn't even look at me.

Thank you God, that too was such a good feeling.  Fucking homophobe asshole.  He got his ass kicked by a Gay guy and he looks confused.  I honestly think it never occurred to him that it could happen.  Frankly I am glad I was the Gay guy to show him that he should not prejudge people.  I was slow at the beginning of this trip because the last several years of my life have kicked the crap out of me.  But now, 4 weeks in, the old "me" has resurfaced and he's strong and healthy and nothing hurts.  I'm going to repeat that.  Nothing hurts.  I haven't even seen anything stronger than an Ibuprofen in weeks and nothing hurts.  That is a miracle.  I'm not just saying that.  That's another thing that bears repeating.  That IS a miracle.

Now when people ask me about the Camino I think I finally have the answer.  I think I just got my life back.

This trip has been hard.  If you've watched the videos you would have gotten the best picture of that but I think I've probably said it in writing a 100 times.  I'll say it again.  This is HARD.  My knees threatened to hijack my experience only a few days in.  Miraculously they suddenly came back and I haven't felt so much as a twitch since then.  The muscles in my Back have tried to spasm a few times but I have some giant Lidocaine patches and that has been enough to stop them from spiraling out of control.  I honestly cannot remember when I felt this good.

I am not recommending that everybody go out and walk 400+ miles to see what it does for them.  This experience included so much more than that.  We are walking through ancient lands, passing millennia old landmarks, and the energy from the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people that have swarmed back and forth through this part of Spain is palpable.

Yank yourself out of everything you know including your partner, your home, your car, your food; take every single thing that makes up your existence, and put it on hold for 40 days.  Add to that pounding freezing rain, mud, heat, flies, muscle aches, days that seemed to go on forever, bad, food, more bad food, even more bad food, tiny beds, more tiny beds, even more tiny beds, waking up too early, going to bed too early, not knowing anybody, really not wanting to know anybody, counting down the days by the hour, trails so steep you almost have to crawl up and down them, needing to go to the bathroom and being on an open plain with absolutely no privacy and more Pilgrims than you have ever seen, spending entire days without speaking to a single person, talking to yourself until you have become your own best friend or, maybe, discovering you don't even like yourself, and I wish I could go on and complete this paragraph but it would stretch out to the horizon.

This has been hard.

I have cried more in the last (almost) 40 days than I have cried in years. There has been laughter.  Not enough but it was like discovering an old friend when it did happen.  Experiencing homophobia for the first time in ages.  Feeling the probably adolescent joy of  finding the one thing that the Group's Homophobe simply could not tolerate; having his ass kicked on the trail, and then kicking it; repeatedly.  But most importantly, peeling off layer after layer after layer of varnished pain and hurt and bullshit and leaving it on the side of the trail.

There is a ritual that they do on the Camino where you bring a rock from home and you leave it by a cross at the highest point on the trail.  There has been a monument of one kind or another in that exact location for over 2,500 years.  Chew on that for a bit.  2, 500 years.  There had not been, to our knowledge, a single modern day man on our continent except the native Americans and for thousands of years civilization after civilization had been trekking back and forth over massive distances before our ancestor's ancestors were even born.

Without going back, I'm pretty sure I talked about this and/or showed you pictures.  I had a rock.  I wrote a message on that rock and I placed it carefully on the mound so it could watch the sunrise every day, and then I flew down the other side of the hill.  It is an eerie coincidence that by leaving the rock you are supposed to be leaving all your burdens behind, and all of a sudden I was a flying machine.  While Pilgrim after Pilgrim gingerly picked their way down unbelievably rocky and steep trails, I was jumping from rock to rock like a mountain goat.  That was another day when I started to feel my engine sputtering back into life.

If you've never been down so low that you watch ants walk over you then most of this probably sounds like rubbish.  Maybe nobody, or most people didn't know I felt that way.  Tim knew.  To his credit, and I will always love him for this, he almost never let it out but when you spend 6 years with somebody and travel around the world with them repeatedly, you know.  I knew.  When I asked him if I could do this trip he almost said yes too quickly.  LOL.  Don't worry Tim, we both knew this was a long time coming.

I do have a little bit of fear that when I get home I will fall back into my old ways but then I think about the two 76 year old women on this trip. They get up every day, walk the entire distance, seldom complain, and now that the trip is almost over, they are planning their next big adventure.  I am in awe of these two women.  So, if these two very senior citizens can do this and still be ready for more then I guess it's reasonable to assume that maybe, just maybe, this will not just be a temporary patch.

I guess that will be up to me.

Now, on a lighter note.

Here is where I am as I write this Blog entry.

Our 300 year old Home, now a hotel.  I am in love. The house used to be twice as big.  If you look closely you can see the ragged edges on the right hand side of the picture.  It is finished magnificently.  

The View.

The Grounds.  How old do you think that wall is?

Pieces of the old construction.  

People were a lot shorter back then.  I REALLY wanted to go see where this went.