To my good fortune, he owns an auto-shop. I had been making my way from Pamplona with a dead battery and found myself pushing my Suzuki GS500E downhill and dumping the clutch more than I would like to admit. It was a dubious trip under the North´s characteristically overcast, sporatically wet skies. Jaime seemed occupied in his shop. Nonetheless, he saw to my mechanical woes, handed me the keys to his bike--one with a set of cojones that dwarfed my 500cc motor--and insisted I take it for a spin to see the city while he finished his workday.
We later met at his family´s house that evening. His mother, the quintessential model of maternity, spoke Spanish to me loud and slow. She immediately wanted to feed me dinner. As we grew acquainted, Jaime sauntered in and out of the dining room triggering her motherly complaints over his academic shortcomings as a youth and his fixation with motorcylces and sports in place of what she fancied more recommendable. He eventually told her, ´´Callaté un poquito´´ and she dropped it. I was starting to see the dynamic of their relationship.
The following morning I made tracks for the cathedral to find where I could pick up credenciales de peregrino, a thin paper booklet that would serve as a passport on my trip in and out of the cheap albergues along the way. After Jaime´s mother dished out another two solid meals and we both took a siesta in the living room, I prepared my backpack. I was lent the mountain bike, gloves, biking shorts and a helmet. They expressed their sadness to see me go so soon and told me they would be there when I returned. I left with my bag strapped to my back and a vague understanding of the way to Santiago de Compostela.
My first night´s stay was in Santillana del Mar before leaving Cantabria and entering Asturias. My first noted mistake was the inescapable sight of other bicyclists tugging their possessions along in saddlebags mounted on racks above the fenders of their rear tires. My naive brio for the days ahead was hamstrung at first sight. I knew I was to be yoked like a mule plowing the miles to come. Cantabria´s notorious upward slopes suddenly felt all the more steep and its downhill coasting all too brief although lush with greenery and beauty.
The second day had a tendon in my left knee feeling like a sun-baked, brittle rubberband flirting with the idea of a clean snap. I had slept in what felt like some Netherworld state of consciousness devoid of any and all brain activity, completely off the radar. I was in Llanes, Asturias. I still had not met other cyclists, but had grown to know some other foot pilgrims in our bunk bed hungry room. One middle-aged man only spoke French--perhaps a manifestation of France´s nationalistic sentiment. He was friendly and must have known I did not understand him, but it did not seem to stop him from continuing to speak to me.
On the third day, my right knee felt like it was about to be defunct, too. Maybe the overcompensation was to blame or the overpacked backpack. I knew I packed too much a little too late. I would have named my first-born child after the person who would have given me a rack and saddlebags for the mountainbike. In time, the hours bled into one another and the echoes of past football coaches´ grim words of perseverence ringed in my head. I was in pain, not injured.
Jaime told me at any point I could call him and he would retrieve me if something were to happen. My pride kept that offer in its proper place: back in Santander. I could have always sent him a hate text cursing him for turning such an inexperienced cyclist loose and unequipped for the mountainous coast of Northern Spain. However, the old ´´Don´t look a gift horse in the mouth´´ adage seemed quite fitting in the greater scope of reality.
Somewhere in the uphill treachery of one of Asturias´s mountains, I met an Andalusian father and son. Peddling and grunting in our lowest of low gears, we eventually reached the summit while acquainting ourselves in shortened, hoarse breathes. I lost them for the day on the race to the bottom. Maybe I am a bit too romantically-minded, but I felt the spike of adrenal perculation and the physical taxes paid for its respective stimulation had bonded us in its shared moments anyways. Besides, I didn´t want to interfere with their father/son time and I also did not want to waste my momentum waiting on them at the bottom.
If there is one reason for cycling the Camino del Norte, it would be for the downhill thrills. The brisk wind envelops the fatigued body and rises to an intimidating howl while the once captivating surroundings turn into apparitions crowding the periphery, darting by and whispering warnings of what may lie around the next blind turn, whether it be an automobile made of grave, unforgiving steel or a wall of pilgrims on foot waiting for an unbeknownst explosion from behind, slinging limbs, bed rolls, hiking sticks and dreams of arriving to Santiago into the sky. These were my favorite moments.
Life in albergues is a lot like what I would expect it to be like living in a commune, except I knew these people were not going to a job the following morning. Most got to moving around 6am, generally in a silent, respectful shuffle, casting beams of LED light while gathering personal items. Only once did I see blatant disrespect when a gaggle of Spanish twenty-somethings drunkenly came to bed around midnight and flicked a firecracker out a window nearby the heads of a retired Sicilian couple as they slept. The moment it escaped the window, it lit up the night and the Sicilians, as to be expected, belted out a slew of Italian curse words in perfect, almost poetic, synchronization. They were a couple that was undoubtedly one soul dwelling in two bodies.
The pilgrims met along the way are, in my opinion, what punctuate the passing of the time, especially when cycling alone with only music, podcasts and aching knees for company.
Conversations with strangers are enriched by the knowledge that one very well may never see the other again. I heard stories of divorce and heartache; unemployment and toil; and faith and hope.
On the chance occasion of seeing these people once more, it is as though an act of Providence was involved and calls for the proper rejoiceful reunion. However, the isolated encounters were just as memorable.
While being bound for Ribadeo one afternoon, another cyclist rolled up to my side greeting me with a ´´Venga!´´ as his broad grin dispelled any secret of the old Spanish man only having three teeth left in his head. He must have been in his seventies. He rode with me to the next town speaking in his gravel-like voice of how he would never quit riding and how much his pueblo had taken such a fall from glory. ´´Te dejo,´´ he told me as he turned to make his way back to town, undoubtedly to talk with the next passerby.
Arriving in a new town along the northern coast every night made getting out of bed in the morning worthwhile. A sense of stagnation does not follow far behind pilgrims. There were always cathedrals reaching high above, watching over the people below. There were always locals filling the streets and public places, eating, congregating and letting their children run about like wild, unbridled mavericks with soccer balls. And then there were always those nubile Spanish girls, with coats of almond tans telling of warm summers and languid afternoons.
Before arriving in Ribadeo, I was reunited with the Andalusian father and son. It was becoming a common occurence. They saved me a lot of time riding when I was turned around to a bridge we both had thought was strictly for highway motorists only. Apparently, they were advised after riding an unnecessary length in hopes of circumnavigating the obstructive bay.
We shared our second to last day together traversing rocky trails, farm roads, and stone-paved towns in places where time seemed to have forgotten. I saw them again three miles before arriving in Santiago at a roadside cafe. We spoke briefly above the verge of El Camino Frances crossing with our route and its flood of pilgrims, then I peddled away never to see them again.
I stood and watched everything with an affectless expression on my face to the point of the old man hobbling off, cane in hand. I rode away regretting that I did not have the foresight to snap a picture of the whole debacle.
My last albergue stay before Santiago was in an unexpected, enchanting location. There is a monastery known as El Monasterio de Santa Maria de Sobrado in the small town of Sobrado dos Monxes. It was founded in 952. In the cathedral the air was moist and little light eeked in. The nave was lined with an arcade of columns covered in algae facing an altar with the same recent fate. Above the vault hung the overgrowth of plants distending downward from their sunnier vantage point. Antonio, another cyclist I had met in Galicia, and I ran our hands along its walls and spoke of the secrets they bore underneath. We later attended a 7pm service to participate in the monks´ singing of hymns before eating together in the comedor. Tomorrow we would arrive in Santiago.
On my final day riding, a bearing on the rear wheel decided to throw its hands up and tell me to take its job and shove it. I felt like a dethroned king. I had been singing and peddling with gusto. I pushed the bike for three miles to Arzua where I thought I could find a bike shop. Along the way, Antonio had seen me and stopped to try and lend a hand. It was useless. Without a bearing, I was stuck pushing and cursing. When I arrived in Arzua, for reasons still obscure to me, it had been miraculously restored. I peddled reluctantly, but happily. I tried to catch up with Antonio and enter Santiago with him, but it was no use. Uncertainty still gnaws at my understanding of what exactly took place with the bearing.
Finally, I made it to Santiago. I was reunited with Oli, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed German man with a face darkened by the sun. We had met three days ago and I think I won his good favor when I congratulated him for the outcome of Germany´s World Cup title. Oli had left Berlin three months ago to walk to Finesterre, what he termed as the end of the world. He walked like a well-oiled machine.
I had not been able to lose him on the bike. He always arrived at the next albergue a few hours later. Something told me he was the kind of guy not to be messed with. He had camped and lived off 20 euros a week through Germany and France.
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In the pilgrim´s Mass the next day a man turned his shoulder and locked eyes with me from rows ahead in the congregation. It was Oli. He smiled at me as though we shared some exquisite secret only him and I would ever benefit from. We had made it and no one could take it away from us. We later shared lunch, stories and said our goodbyes. He still had to walk to the end of the world.
Now I am back in Santander. I have been here for a week in Jaime´s family´s house. His mother insists on feeding me massive American breakfasts and Jaime and I ride our motorcycles about town meeting up with his friends and eating pinchos in the evenings. I still have not met a cold northerner.
I do miss my daily routine on El Camino. I miss waking up early and seeing the early morning light illuminate the green mountains of Asturias to my left and being hit with salt air from the Atlantic to my right. I miss walking about the new towns, proud of the peril my legs had endured, content with the pain, striding in vainglory as though a wake of sacked cities burned behind me.
It is not till returning to a more comfortable life, not till seeing my sacked cities crawl by from behind the glass of an eastbound bus, not till I have felt a bit of the listlessness of a sailboat at sea with no mast that I can finally understand what they meant when they say sometimes it is better to travel than to arrive.
