Sunday, February 10, 2013

Day 27, Santiago!, part 1

It's raining.

Boots are dry enough. Mark left early. I hope we see him in Santiago. We got ready fast. Spaniards are still sleeping. I wonder how the game was.

This was a nice walk, one of the prettier ones despite the rain. I didn't put my hood up today because I wanted to see everything.

We stopped for a quick breakfast. Quick wasn't so quick. Someone ordered an extra coffee and got on wifi.

"C'mon, we can't be late for mass! Did I really say that?" Left the cafe at 10, with 9.6 km to go. Our past history would indicate that we'd never make it, but today was special. JH said, "if we miss mass, I'm gonna kick someone's ass!"

5 km to go, I don't even feel my feet touching the ground. Yena, who has been dragging all morning, blows by us. I draft off of her. The stone markers that kind of annoyed me before, seemed to help today. 4.124 one said. Then, I swear only 6 minutes later, another said 3.229, making me feel like Flash Gordon.

Then, there were no more. I still felt like I was flying but I had no sense of distance remaining. We expected to see the cathedral and thought perhaps we'd gone off course (at nearly 9kph it's difficult to make tight turns) in the city streets but people were pointing or nodding the right direction. They were getting out of our way too. Perhaps they've been hit by a Peregrino traveling at Mach 1.

The clock was striking 12 when we arrived. We sat, shivering, through a 40 minute mass. We spotted 10 or 11 other peregrinos from other routes and Mark.

We'd made it!





1 comment: