You CAN be too well prepared... so buy duct tape!

Two days before departure, I realize I have worn out the heels of my hiking boots! Can you imagine? I have hiked less than 40% of my upcoming 820 km trek, and I have just been told by my shoemaker that my boots will not last this hike. Furthermore, it is too late (timewise), for him to try to fix them. OMG, I press the panic button. I do that instinctively and then calm down later. It happens every time.

Many frantic messages, emails and calls back and forth to my wonderful daughter and son-in-law, have resulted in their obtaining a refund on my boots for me from a well-known outdoor store in Edmonton (MEC). That is wonderful!  It means that on my way to the airport tomorrow morning, I have to stop and buy a roll of the most expensive duct tape I can find.  When my boots really start to fall apart, I will duct tape them, find the nearest outdoor sporting goods store in whichever Spanish city I am closest to, and buy myself another pair of hiking boots. I am already overloaded in my backpack. Il n'en est pas question de charroyer une autre paire de bottines dans mon sac avant d'en avoir besoin.

ALL of which means that I will end up doing what I tried to avoid by breaking in my new boots and hiking  all over the North Shore IN THE FIRST PLACE; I WILL be breaking in a new pair of hiking boots somewhere on The Camino. Which is a no-no! So, I may be looking at blisters and aching feet after all, I guess.  Oh w-e-l-l, as we say in French; L'homme propose et Dieu dispose.  In other words, the best laid plans of mice and (wo)men... are all for naught. Hey, in the grand scheme of things... this is just the beginning of my adventures.

Un gros merci pour vos souhaits si nombreux, de "Buen Camino", "Bonne Route", "Safe Travels".

336 kilometres later - 336 kilomètres plus tard....

PLEASE NOTE/VEUILLEZ NOTER

I have temporarily changed the heading of my blog to My Camino, for the duration of my trek. :)

W--e--l--l--, I wrapped up my last training hike with a bang this morning. I hiked up the JR hill ten times (461 total metre elevation), in 20 degree heat at  8:00 in the morning, at 71% humidity. I didn't realize I had so much determination.

Did I say with a BANG? S-H-A-B-A-M!!!!  They blew up one of the smokestakes in Darlington (the former Power Plant) just as I was beginning my second climb.  Let's just say it shook my world, and was a fitting end to my training, don't you think?

I must say that I kind of feel like a bride, on her big day! When I actually set out on this adventure of hiking El Camino de Santiago, I will have something old (my clothing) something new (expensive wool socks from my mother), something borrowed (backpack, sleeping bag), and something blue (a beautiful blue ring (BLING!) given to me for good luck, by a woman at a garage sale, when she heard about my upcoming trip).  So sweet of her. No groom in sight, and that's alright!

For my last week of my training, I started packing THE backpack for my trip, so I took only my little one on my treks. What did I put in it, to give me 15 lbs on my back? A bag of flour and a bag of sugar, to start. You know, they travel well!

J'avoue que je ne me suis jamais promenée dans une pluie battante. Pourquoi faire ça au moins d'être obligé de le faire? Je me dis que je ferai face à ça sur El Camino même, si l'occasion se présente. Je n'aurai pas de choix, n'est-ce pas?

Pendant ma mise en forme, moi et Vimy, on a parcouru plus de 335 kilomètres de routes, de chemins de travers, de ruelles, de chemin de fer, et d'allées de la Côte Nord du Nouveau Brunswick. J'ai eu mes petites aventures, bien sûr!

Un matin, à Pointe Verte, un vieux bonhomme à velo m'a saluée avec un "Bonjour Monsieur!" Quoi? Je portais un pantalon de yoga Lululemon, avec un frison sur chaque jambe! Sans doute, quelqu'un qui a besoin de meilleures lunettes.

While out trekking these six weeks, I have been stared at, smiled at, tooted at, waved at, barked at, yelled at, and given the "THUMBS UP" sign by a group of bikers. Turns out the biker gang was my brother Pierre and my sister-in-law, out on an excursion with their friends. It is always wonderful to be encouraged by family, over randoms, don't you think?  :)

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, I was even catcalled! This happened back in "the colonies", so to speak.  That might explain it. I don't think they see too many women on those back roads.  Maybe someone in that group of men forgot to put their glasses on that day! Or, obviously someone was as blind as the gent who mistook ME for a man.

In all my travels, I only found 37 cents on the roads!  No jewellery, no money, no nothing of any importance or significance, other than garbage.  So I won't have a treasure in my pocket, that I can say I found while I was out hiking the North Shore of our beautiful province. Dommage!

However, memories of incredible vistas, beautiful sunshine, big fluffy cumulous clouds, winds that caressed my face, showers that cooled me off, the soothing, ever changing waters of my Belle Baie, the marvelous sights and sounds all around me of another a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y  perfect summer day, day after day... THOSE are the real treasures that I found while hiking.   

PRICELESS!

PS: Thank you for sharing my journey as I prepared for my big adventure.

NB: Merci d'avoir partagé ma préparation vers ma grande aventure. 

Joanne

HAVING HIKED 290 kilomètres - Ce que j'ai appris/what I learned.

Don't hike up a mountain wearing shorts and no belt! The incline, plus the weight of your backpack, makes your shorts slip constantly. I felt like a skateboarder, with my shorts constantly half way down my backside! Thank goodness my undies matched my shorts.

My left shoulder is lower and smaller than my right. No matter how much I tug at the straps of my backpack, the right won't hitch up any higher. So give it up!

Don't take off your 16-21 pound backpack when you stop for a snack, water or rest. You won't want to put it back on, because it will feel that much heavier all over again. Enlève-le juste si tu es au repos quelques heures! De plus, si tu es seul, tu peux t'éreinter en essayant de le remettre.

Bois de l'eau, bois de l'eau, bois de l'eau!

Sacre ton déodorisant à la poubelle! Tu vas puer, et ton sac à dos va puer.  Rien ne peut empêcher ça. Moins de poids sur le dos. :)

I learned that the marvelous app "Runkeeper" couldn't register my steps when I was climbing Mount Sugarloaf, because my pace was way too slow.  The app kept pausing me! I gave up and turned it off. I knew it took me an hour to go up a 25 degree incline with 16 pounds on my back, for 281 metres. Whew! Rough slogging.

I met a woman on my way down from Mount Sugarloaf who was obviously having a very hard time. I heard her exclaim loudly, in total frustration ..."I am NEVER, EVER doing this again!" As I was passing by, I patted her arm and offered words of encouragement.  There is a great sense of accomplishment when you push yourself to your limits, physically and mentally.  The reward was a stupendous view at the top of Sugarloaf. I hope she made it and DIDN'T give up. The view takes your breath away.

 

COUNTDOWN - COMPTE À REBOURS - 17 days-17 jours-17 días

Quelle est une journée parfaite? Une randonnée de 13 kilomètres, tôt le matin avant que le soleil ne sorte de pleine force.  Un après-midi à faire des choses sur la liste interminable de "choses à faire". Tondre le gazon pendant que le soleil se cache, et trempe en nage, aller se mettre les fesses à l'eau sur une grosse pierre dans la belle Baie, déguster une bonne bière, et regarder et écouter tout ce qui se passe autour de toi. I am blessed!


I have been brushing up on my Spanish an hour a day; fed up with Duolingo though.  Too much repetition. Oh wait! Isn't that how you learn a language?  Boring cognates as well, words that you already know what they mean, because they are so close to the French or English language. Hello? Realidad, situación, biblioteca,
piscina, comprender... Did you know you already know 50% of another latin based language because of the one language you have?


Speaking of languages, unfortunately, I will not be translating everything I write in English, into French, or vice versa. I would love to have a bilingual blog but economies of time just do not allow it. Writing my blog on my Iphone is excrutiatingly painful compared to doing it on my laptop. I may translate the odd headline but "c'est tout". So don't skip paragraphs if you are bilingual. Continuez à lire. Ça sera du neuf. Merci à tous de votre compréhension.

My impetus for doing The Camino?

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time she is a flying.
That same flower which blooms today,
Tomorrow will be dying".

 Robert Herrick.

CAMINO COUNTDOWN- DOG ENCOUNTERS OF THE CLOSE KIND!

Twice last week I had to step out into traffic and pretend I was a traffic cop, because some cute dog came running out to meet Vimy, and had no problem running right across the road toward us.  There is no way a dog was going to get killed in front of me, not on my watch.  Me, rather than the dog, I figured. I could live with that! Thankfully, all vehicles had plenty of time to stop.

When you hike with a dog, you can't help but have encounters, which leads to my highlight of the week, and my lowlight of the week. 

My LOWLIGHT: I had just passed a house where the German Shepherd tied up outside had been barking at Vimy constantly, straining at his leash, as we passed.  I had reached the far side of this property and was ready to turn around when the owner dashes out and yells at me "Can you get going where you are going!" WHAT A ..... candidate for "charm school". Definitely lacking in the social graces, I would say. Well, if he had said that to me thirty seconds earlier, I would have nodded and left Vimy's big "bomb" on his front lawn.  As it was, I had just stooped to pick it up.  Too bad!  So I  replied oh so calmly and loudly, "I am just picking up my dog's poop off your lawn."  It takes all kinds to make a world, doesn't it?

My HIGHLIGHT: I was alternating walking and jogging on a back road, when Vimy ran to make friends with a Black Lab. I stopped to chat for a few minutes with the young girl outside, eleven year old Olivia.  Then I resumed my run and the next thing I knew, she was biking beside me. We exchanged more pleasantries about ourselves.  When she asked me where I lived, I said I was really "homeless" at the moment, but staying in a friend's cottage until I leave on a hiking trip to Spain. Olivia didn't respond right away,  as she gave this information some thought.  Then she said, "I am sure if I asked my mother, she would let you stay with us".  Spoken straight from the heart of a child, bless her.

Another Camino tidbit, for those of you who might be thinking of doing this trek, pilgrimage, hike, or craziness, as my former 90 year old neighbour Lucy, calls it;

I have read on a Forum that you should never, ever put your backpack on a bed in a hostel (albergue). BEDBUGS will invade your backpack.  Ah... seems to me you shouldn't put your body on that bed either then?

CAMINO COUNTDOWN - 27 days to departure/départ en 27 jours

I have found a new love. It is hiking! Je suis mordue de ...la randonnée pédestre.  I absolutely love it!

Since I last blogged, I have added another 50 kilometres and hiked every step of the way from Durham Centre to Charlo, and back. Not all at once though!  I have hiked all the backroads around and taken two days to run, instead of hike. I now carry my full sized backpack, with 19 pounds of STUFF  in it. All of which I tell myself I will need on The Camino, but some of which will surely stay behind when I do my last packing purge.

I have seen beauty and decay all around me. Panoramic views of la belle Baie, the scenic mountains of the Gaspé, the mother duck with her newborn goslings who waddled right across my path, the chickens who scooted up the road to get away from my curious Vimy, the cutie in the convertible who stopped to ask me where I was headed... and then there is the ubiquitous Tim Horton's coffee cup in the ditch, the constant litter of beer and pop cans, numerous  abandoned and caved in houses- where families once lived, but everyone has "gone" away, never to come back. Amidst these contrasts, I have found pure and simple joy in putting one foot in front of the other, with Vimy leading the way.

Being out in the great outdoors, at all times and in all kinds of weather, I have made a few observations. People who litter in the backroads, will throw out more trash on the right hand side of the road, which leads me to believe they are getting rid of it before they hit the main drag, where, heaven forbid, they should be seen littering (or drinking in a vehicle!). The further north I trek though, the more pop cans and energy drink cans I see.  "Bible Belt" country methinks? Bud is still number one though! 

J'ai appris que l'appli "RunKeeper" est tout simplement merveilleux comme outil.  Je n'ai plus besoin de me servir de mon cerveau pour mes calculs de distance, etc. L'appli fait tout ça et me le dit. La technologie ne cesse de m'émerveiller.

J'ai réussi à ramasser cinq gros sacs de bouteilles recyclables pendant mes randonnées. Étant éco-consciente, je ne peux pas m'empêcher d'en ramasser, et je les mets dans le bac réservé au Radiothon des Roses,  au centre de recyclage. Un bon oeuvre mène à un autre bon oeuvre, non?

Camino Tidbit: Over 270,000 pilgrims (pelegrinos) hiked The Camino last year; less than 3% were Canadian. I guess I will stick out like a sore thumb with my Canadian and Acadian flags, the latter of which will be on my facecloth hanging off my backpack to dry. :)

CAMINO COUNTDOWN CONTINUES-COMPTE À REBOURS CONTINUE

Well, I have hiked all over the rolling hills of the North Shore and even across the Baie to Mont St. Joseph in the Gaspé, since July 7th. I did take a break this past weekend for a big family birthday party blowout. In 11 days I have hiked over 100 km.  Only one little blister. Thank you to my favourite son-in-law who lent me his expert advice and help on choosing the right hiking boots and socks. He was right!! Un gros merci à ma fille aussi pour l'emprunt de son sac à dos. J'ai réussi à porter 14 livres sur mon dos, sans m'écrouler par terre.  J'ai même pu faire un petit besoin dans le bois, sans l'enlever et sans tomber sur dos!

From my hikes I have made a few observations. Firstly, the beer of choice in this area is Bud and Bud Light. I know because I have made a point of picking up some cans on my way home. That is my way of being "eco friendly", one small gesture at a time.

Secondly, the lottery tickets of choice are the pop-opens, because someone loves to buy them and chuck the losers out the window of their car. They are all over the main drag. I should have them all picked up by the time I leave in mid-August.  Another "eco friendly gesture" on my part.

I have hiked as early as 6:30 in the morning, and as late as 2:30 in the afternoon on a hot day. NO dawn or dusk for me; I am not into meeting any bears or moose, BOTH of which have been spotted on these roads. Je suis une grosse peureuse!

Vimy (my faithful dog and companion on ALL my hikes) has been spooked more than once by fake lawn deer; I have seen the cutest little front garden full of gnomes of every size and shape; I have been surprised by a "deluxe outhouse" on a front lawn (for show only!) and had a senior citizen in a purple pantsuit (so sixties!) whiz by me on her bicycle, with a perfectly coiffed head of hair!  I had spotted her leaving a hairdressing salon two minutes earlier.

However, the highlight of my travels was stopping to chat with the mother of an old school friend of mine. She was stepping out of her house at 8:00 am, dressed perfectly from head to toe, including hat and pearls, and carrying a milk pail. She was on her way to get fresh milk at her son's farm behind her house. Did I mention she is 90 years old? 

Jane, you are an inspiration to us all!