A friend since third grade, my buddy Mike turns 52 today. I doubt he wants to see a reminder of that milestone shouted loudly on a blog, but what's a blog for, if not for being obnoxious? Around when we both turned 50, Mike proposed walking one of the nine paths of the Camino de Santiago for our 60th birthday. I've half-jokingly told people (long before I had the stroke) that I'll be dead by 60, but a walk on the Camino is something to live for. Mike says he's been walking for some time; I rather harshly suggested that he get to a point where he's walking two hours a day, five days a week, but as I'm discovering through my own recovery, you don't actually need to go that hard. Currently, I'm walking about 80 minutes a day, three times a week on weekdays, and doing long walks (around 4 hours) on weekends. So I apologize to Mike and hereby soften my standard.
Mike's a history buff and a whiskey lover, so I've sent him the appropriate Amazon gifts.
Happy Birthday, vieille branche!
80 min a day is very respectable. Tell us more about the Camino de Santiago...
ReplyDeleteThe two major discoveries I made in researching the Camino are (1) it's not one path, but nine; and (2) St. James (the Santiago in question) did not himself walk these paths—his ashes were carried by different people.
ReplyDeleteMike and I still haven't selected a path; the so-called French Way is the most popular, at around 800 kilometers, but I think Mike is leaning toward the English Way, which is significantly shorter. The Camino Ingles actually has two possible starting points, with paths that converge. The starting point that qualifies you for a Camino stamp starts in the city of Ferrol, and it's about 115-120 km to Santiago de Compostela from there. If we're ambitious and do thirty-some kilometers a day, we can do the walk in four days. If we go more slowly, I give it 5-6 days. That's fairly brief, but Mike's purpose in doing the walk isn't linked to distance; he's Catholic, so for him this is at least partly a religious experience. For me, it's purely a way to celebrate turning 60, so I'm fine with whatever path we decide on, long or short.