Back 13 Days

Date	31Aug 2026
Total All Caminos:	2450 miles
Total Lodging:	$ 935
Total Airplane(s) / Trvl Insrnc:	$ 1580 / $ 199
Total Transportation  (Deb & I) :	$ 357
Total Food:	$ 1038

Post-Camino Crash

This may be the worst camino crash that I have had since I started walking the Camino de Santiago in 2014.

All the things in life that gave me pleasure before my service at Ribadiso still give me pleasure. But those activities do not bring fulfillment. Waking up is a drag when my day is more completing a set of self-improvement checklists than doing something for someone else. 

Case in point: Being a US Coast Guard Auxiliary Search and Rescue Crewman is both exciting and tranquil. Most times I am simply enjoying being on the waters of Lake Ontario and Irondequoit Bay, under blue skies with white clouds forming on the horizon. It settles the soul. These days with the high price of gas and fewer boaters out, few and far between are the times when we come across a boater in distress. So I enjoy my time on patrol, but it has become "me" time.

The Spanish and German studies, writing and memoirs classes, the physical exercise (yoga, running, tap dancing, and generic physical therapy) seem inwardly directed. They are important to feel physically well and maintain long-term health, as well as being superb mental exercises to ward off "senior brain-fog". 

If I were to be a left-winger, I'd want to see our potential for equality, art, and cooperation uplifted in our actions, but would end up bitterly disappointed in how actual individuals fail to live up to that potential. I don't like having to deal in my life with human greed, selfishness, and systemic oppression. Think rare earths out of China, clothes out of Viet-Nam or chemical-laced produce out of  Mexico / Central America.

I would enjoy to be around in a thousand years to see the glory that the human race achieves, but am stuck despising all our wars caused by modern human behavior, territorial desires, consumerism, and pollution.

If I were to be a right-winger, I'd love the idea of human civilization, tradition, and order, but recoil at the chaotic reality of everyday people. I'd know that we are capable of greatness through discipline, culture, and structure, but would have to deal with the unruly, uneducated, ill-informed mob which is undisciplined and easily led down the angry path. In these times, I can't trust the average person to make the right choices.

I think I'm a libertarian. We have such capacity for freedom and innovation, but people screw it up when they form into crowds, governments and conformist groups; all of which tend to take the individual and insist that they mold, form and shape themselves according to the mob's passions. I'd rather be left alone to act on my own.

But back to the routine that I found so fullfilling. Ribadiso was so wonderful (despite the 12-hour work days) because of the payback in smiles, thanks and good humor from the pilgrims. Some stood in a line for up to two hours outside of the door to the hostel just to put their feet up at the Albergue de Ribadiso de Baixo. 

The feeling of "appreciation" started with offering them a cup of cold water and a snack while they - the pilgrim - waited in the registration line. Perhaps there is no great service in pointing out the showers, but after a hard day on the path, the pilgrims appreciated having someone simplify the steps to getting to the bunk bed to rest.

I expected folks to be "Thanks for the info, but I just want to lay down." That certainly happened, but many others smiled, listened, nodded, and looked where I pointed, as I gave them the story on the campus, and many laughed with me at my jokes. 

I have been involved for a while in important community activities that more often deal with folks who are in trouble or in a bad mood. It's important work, but all that negativity can get a person down. 

What makes it hard internally is that I really have nothing to complain about in my life - big-picture so to speak. I'm not starving, nor ill, nor destitute, nor addicted, nor spiritually bankrutpt.

But I am without purpose - or meaningful purpose - or perhaps, I should say, without a purpose that selfishly brings me back a reward that at the end of the day and makes me feel useful. Yesterday, I had a sense of that again. I went for a hike with the club of which I am President. I saw folks get together for a common purpose and enjoy each other's company. I forgot what being President meant by getting caught up in settling people's inter-personal conflicts, and pushing paper and minding statistics.

I had lost the "people" touch in favor of procedures and policies, which pleases no one because it's not relevant to their desire: a good time in the fresh air, walking thru a woods and enjoying the company of fellow hikers.