Walking the Camino de Santiago
My beautiful bride of 17 years was taken to the emergency room at midnight of Easter Sunday. She was physically weak and having trouble with her memory. At Tacoma General Hospital, they ran every test you could imagine. They even sent a sample of her spinal fluid to the Mayo Clinic. On May 5, we received the final diagnosis from […]
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Date: 30 August 2023 Place: Madrid Ever get woken up from a dead sleep to hear “…doctor, emt, on the plane please come to aisle…” and realize you need to get up out of your seat because the person next to you has also sprung to life and must answer the call? That was new. We got to Madrid! It […]
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Today Becky and I headed to Spain! Date: 29 August 2023 Place: in transit And the “oh sh*t” moment today was realizing at 9:07 that my 9:05 pickup was for September 29. Not August. But Uber and God had me covered and I was in an Über in 5 minutes. While in the terminal I cancelled the outbound shuttle and […]
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The cats have cottoned to the impending departure. Date: 27 August 2023 Place: Pistachio House They are not pleased. They go from super needy to clingy to aloof to emo. I am tackling the things that are on my to-do list that are just sort of… if you have the time: Roast coffee so i don’t have to when I […]
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Today is repacking day… Date: 26 August 2023 Place: Pistachio House I am going to serve as an hospitalera for the first time since my pre-pandemic training by the delightful Daniel De Kay and marvelous Martha Crites (yes, the author). Speaking of the quinceña (15 days of service)… I will be serving with the amazing Becky Rush-Peet who I met […]
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In which Thom is off to France and Francine begins her countdown. Date: 15 August 2023 Place: Pistachio House It is the feast of the Assumption. Today I bid Thom au revoir et bon chemin as I dropped him off at the airport after holy Mass. Then I went on a search for some boba tea and some Daiso shopping […]
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Yesterday, amid a drenching rain, the Puerta Santa, or Holy Doors, of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela were closed. These doors are open only during the Jacobean Holy Year or a Jubilee Year declared by the Pope. So what is a Jacobean Holy Year? Simply, it’s any year when the Feast of Saint James, 25 July, occurs on a […]
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Near the beginning of our virtual Camino, February 2020 Yesterday my beautiful bride Francine and I finished walking our virtual Camino from Lourdes to Santiago, a distance of roughly 957km. You’ve heard of staycations? This was a staymino. It took us just over a year. At least I got one thing accomplished during lockdown! We mostly walked around our neighbourhood […]
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This was the last photo I took that day. I was miserably ill and missing Francine. All attempts to contact her failed due to having basically zero signal strength. Viola gave me something for my cold, which helped tremendously. Tomorrow was a much better day all around. This photo will feature as the cover of the upcoming issue of La […]
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After lunching on pinchos in Redecilla del Camino, we continued on our way into the Meseta. It has been said that this weeks-long stretch of the Camino will break your brain, and I certainly felt it that afternoon. The crazy headwind started up again, which is always a morale-sapper. In addition, I was fighting a cold and terribly missing Francine. […]
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