Ahhh… the rains come. Today is a messy day and while I will have to deal with any rain on the Camino, not today. My “waterproof” boots turned out not to be so, as I discovered. With only eight days to go, there is no getting new ones. So, out came the can of Scotch Guard. I laid down several nice coats both inside and out plus I did my baseball cap, my back pack and for good measure my old North Face Gore-Tex jacket with hood. I bought rain gear but this jacket has always been comfortable and I just like it, so it is going with me. At this point I’ve been doing 6 miles with the back pack for over a week, now and it’s easy-peasy, other than the knee, so I think that I should give the knee a bit of a break. Know thy body!
One of the suggestions that I found on a forum is that everything going into the backpack should be laid out well in advance and scrutinized for necessity. I will need to do this: On my first trip to Europe back in the early 80’s, I packed everything I possibly thought that I would need into this HUGE suitcase-and instantly regretted it once I hit the Rome airport. Now I pack for a 10-day vacation with only an overhead bag as my travel mantra is now “half the stash, twice the cash”-except for electronics, which seem to be my Waterloo. This trip it will only be my Samsung S-II with an extended battery (music, calls and GPS) plus my Xoom for email, books, web surfing etc., and I know, that’s probably too much as it is. For communication I looked into cellular plans but with free wifi generally offered all along the route, I’ll use Skype and Vonage-and this is nice: Vonage offers free wifi calling between all Vonage subscribers, which means that I can call my home and office as long as I have wifi access anywhere in the world. Not bad. Now I will be just enough in touch when needed.