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Camino de Santiago – Day 2 – San Martin del Camino to Astorga

Today we left San Martin del Camino before sunrise. We only had to use our headlamp for a few minutes after we left town. After that, it quickly lightened up and we were on our way.

The day went by so fast! We left at 7:13am. By 10:13, we had 13.65km under our belts. That’s just over 4.5km an hour. I can live with that. Not a hare, but not a tortoise.

Before we get that far, though… it’s TIP TIME!

Do not leave Hospital de Órbigo without stopping for a cafe con leche and some sustenance!! There is nothing after that (as of this writing) for quite some time. We thought we would wait a few more minutes and find something up ahead. We did NOT. I believe we were more than 15km in before we reached something. It was not a typical Camino stop.

This Repsol gas station was an absolute oasis in the desert for us! If you don’t stop in Hospital de Órbigo, you will have this option. You have to cross a busy highway, but it will be well worth your Frogger adventure!

Inside, at the back corner, there is a tiny cafeteria. The cafe con leche was great, as were the sandwiches and donuts. The Camino provides!

Now… let’s go back to Hospital de Órbigo for a second. Because I need to mention the incredible bridge there.

This stone bridge was built in the 13th century. It’s about 200 meters long, with twenty arches.

Don Suero de Quiñones, IT IS SAID, fell in love with a maiden in the 15th century. She did not feel the same way(this begs the question… are all men creeps?). He donned an iron collar as a kind of display of his unrequited love. (Cue Bryan Ferry’s SLAVE TO LOVE here, if you must.)

Then, as I suppose he wasn’t getting the reaction from his fair maiden that he expected, he decided to have jousting competitions on the bridge. This was in the early to mid 1400s. He gave himself the goal of winning 300 lances. He didn’t get these lances. Not even with the help of friends. There was something about him being a nuisance holding up traffic on the bridge and what not. So they stopped the nonsense and sent him on his way to Santiago de Compostela. Ah, another pilgrimage story.

Michael crossing the bridge in Hospital de Orbigo.

This story was the creative spark Cervantes used to write his epic Don Quixote. Look for the knights choker in Santiago de Compostela. You may find it in the museum.

If you believe this story of- actually what is it? The first stalker story? Definitely not a love story–a love crazed knight, I have a doozy to tell you about a hanged boy who lived and two cooked chickens that got up and danced. Also a Camino de Santiago story. 😉

The famous thirsty pilgrim fountain just before Astorga.

Here’s the last insult before arriving in Astorga. A necessary one, but an insult all the same. This stair contraption takes pilgrims up over the train tracks. It is a long slog filled with elevations and declines. So. Much. Fun.

We arrived at our albergue, the gorgeous Albergue Só Por Hoje, at 1:07pm. Seven minutes after check in! Yes! I highly recommend this albergue. It is now one of my favourite! We had the Pilgrim Meal here and it was delicious! The room was beautiful and the owner, Patricia, walked the Camino. This was immediately apparent when I entered the Camino. Everything about the albergue was pure perfection. So much thought put into it… the attention to detail was flawless. And… she wrote a book about her own journey.

Tomorrow we head to Foncebadón! I love this little oasis. Tiny and ancient and beautiful. It’s a nice place to rest prior to our journey to Cruz de Ferro.

Today we visited the Gaudi Palace. Last time we went through Astorga we did not go inside. Big mistake. It’s stunning. Second chances are pure perfection.

This was a great birthday!

GO TO THE PALACE… you’ll love it!

That’s all for today. Except for today’s Camino step count…

Tomorrow, we head to Foncebadón! Buen Camino!

Click here to jump to DAY 3 – Astorga to Foncebadon!

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While you’re here, I wrote a novel set on the Camino Frances route. You can check it out at Amazon here: THE CAMINO CLUB

How Long is Now?

We all know how soon is now. But how long is it?

Now. What an insane concept. Now. It’s a word that’s over before it exits your mouth and you stumble onto a new now.

Why am I thinking of now now?

It started with a few perfectly placed words in a novel by Christopher Isherwood. I reread his novel A Single Man this week because it was the anniversary of his January 4th death. He died 39 years ago, back in 1986. Yes, you read that right…1986 was 39 years ago.

I’ve been obsessed, ever since reading those words, about the concept of NOW. Is that a writer thing? Hearing a certain word that you’ve heard possibly a hundred thousand times over the course of your life…but suddenly it smacks you differently and you just can’t seem to let it go? Does this happen to non-writers? This obsession with simple everyday words?

A photo to break up the monotony of my ranty post, because I haven’t shared any of our November trip to Thailand…we had many nows on this fabulous trip.

I started thinking, at first, about the way he described NOW being over…and how each now has an exact moment in time before it vanishes…or some such thing. I’m completely paraphrasing, but only because my mind left the page the very second I began to obsess about the concept of NOW and its relationship to time and how it is impossible to pin down because the moment it arrives it has already left.

See…I can’t stop.

Anyway, when Isherwood wrote those thoughts about NOW…he was in one. A now. He was right there, right then. And then that moment was gone. He witnessed a lot of NOWs but then he was gone, never again to be a part of a now.

But is that true when you create works and leave them behind? Did I breathe life back into the man when I began to reread his novel. Was he alive in my nows as I read? Certainly he was alive as he wrote the words I was reading. Did his essence spring momentarily back to life as I read those words?

A coworker whom I worked with for over 36 years passed away yesterday (or rather through the night the day before—unless of course it was after midnight). He was a little troll of a man…a nuisance and a weirdo. But a strong unstoppable troll…like the kind that could snap your neck without breaking a sweat.

The relationship with coworkers is so bizarre, isn’t it? There were times over the years when I had stopped listening to the words coming out of his mouth and I simply wished he would stop talking and walk away. Literally…a mantra would run through my thoughts drowning out his words. Please go away, please go away…STOP TALKING.

He was a bit of a redneck. He was loud and uneducated. Just a pain in the ass.

But he was also there every day. We talked all the time. Every day. I saw him more than I’ve seen many many people I would have cared to see more often. The thing about annoyances is that they grow on you. You build a history together. You carry these moments, these nows that nobody else but the two of you have.

And then a now comes when they are gone. Forever. And it’s a moment, this now…this now where you realize that all of humanity will share this now…this moment of HERE NOT HERE. It doesn’t matter if we’re rich or paupers, if we’re famous or obscure, if we’re liked or hated. We will all have our final NOW. And at that instant when we leave, we will never again have another now. Now will cease to exist, even as a concept.

I miss him already, this coworker who drove me batty. Everything is weird, isn’t it?

Thank you, Christoper Isherwood, for making me obsess about a stupid meaningless word.

Morrissey drawled, “When you say, “It’s gonna happen now” well, when exactly do you mean?”

I don’t think he ever asks the question HOW SOON IS NOW in the song???? Does he? I can no longer recall. Anyway…now is now. And now it’s over.

We beat on…

Stay tuned tomorrow, when I obsess over the word trinket. What exactly does it mean?

Meanwhile, please consider keeping me alive in the now(s) in which you read my new novel:

Pick up your copy of I WILL TELL THE NIGHT today! KINDLE or PAPERBACK!

Now That My Novel is Put to Bed, Time to Focus on My RETELLING!

On January 1, 2021, The Great Gatsby entered the US public domain.

Why is this information pertinent to me? I’ve always held this novel up as the measuring worm with which to measure all other novels against. I know, I know…it has its issues. I am not going to hold a novel published on April 10th, 1925 up to today’s societal standards. There are too many problematic novels to count. Times change.

I have always been a great lover of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. It is one of the shortest novels ever written and it contains in its pages an entire enchanted world. I love it unapologetically.

Why am I talking about it today? Why am I defending it?

My beat up copy of the book I’ve been obsessed with for decades, **THE GREAT GATSBY**.

Because I FINALLY finished all the last minute edits on my 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon novel, I WILL TELL THE NIGHT. It is sitting in the hopper over at Amazon waiting for this coming Tuesday. It will drop at that time and be in the world for readers to scrutinize.

With that novel off my to-do list (F_I_N_A_L_L_Y!!!! They really do haunt you!), I am now free to explore my 2024 Muskoka Novel Marathon novel. I’ve done everything I can with I Will Tell the Night. It was time to release it, come what may. I really hope my readers like it.

On to my pastiche to The Great Gatsby. I don’t dare call it a re-telling, though it sort of is. It’s more a pastiche of the great American novel.

This telling of the cad/lover/loser/glamorous Gatsby is set in Toronto. There is no East and West Egg. There is a downtown condo that looks out across the water onto Toronto Island. There is a light at a house on that island that my ‘Gatsby’ is mesmerized with. Antoine Bouchard is the name of my Gatsby. He’s a newly rich man sitting in his ivory tower, obsessed with a light coming from a house on the island…as well as the man inside that house.

The story is–you guessed it–an LGBTQ+ retelling of The Great Gatsby. It follows Bouchard, by way of my narrator Marcus, through his broken relationship with the high society man he loved when he himself was a pauper…to the loss of that relationship and his own eventual rise to riches and his desire to rekindle the relationship even though the man has moved on and married an equal.

The novel shifts a little between Toronto’s Gay Village and Toronto Island, though not as much as I originally intended. The working title is ON THE ISLAND AND IN THE VILLAGE, though that might have to eventually change. I lost sight of the village a bit in my story.

I’m getting excited about this story as I re-read it, edit it and work on its ending. I think I may have something here…though I’m nervous about it standing up to its influencer. I’m not trying to re-write this great book, of course. But I am attempting to touch on its atmosphere and mood…and loosely retrace its steps with a queer eye.

While I sit in the cave and work on this one, don’t forget to PREORDER I WILL TELL THE NIGHT! It comes out Tuesday. Pre-orders ALWAYS help!

I WILL TELL THE NIGHT Amazon USA

I WILL TELL THE NIGHT Amazon Canada