I just spent long hours in various airports and airplanes these last few days and my thoughts drifted to the Camino as usual. I’m looking around at all these travelers coming and going. Are they that much different from pilgrims on the Camino? What was it about the Camino that brought us together so? There certainly wasn’t that much togetherness at the airport just people coming and going.

One lady that sat next to me on the plane for six hours and we never exchanged a word or a gesture, six hours. I was busy somewhat reading a book. She on the other hand had a laptop, an iPad and a cell phone which she rotated working on the whole time and filled every single second. If some people get sucked up into cyberland never to return she will be one. So as to togetherness, proximity doesn’t necessarily mean much.

At the other end of the scale we did make some togetherness progress with folks that got caught up in the series of snafus that turned our one day trip into a two day trip. It started out because the crew for the first plane that we were supposed to catch were a half hour late and that threw a monkey wrench in to the whole works. So, other flyers that had this unexpected domino effect problem got together to a certain extent. So, shared difficulty seems to bring people together and sharing information to overcome the situation is even better.

This leads me to tell you of this one guy that we ran into the most. Let’s call him Joe. Joe was in my very first impression of the Hardford airport and the guy irritated me from the get-go. We both stepped out of our respective cars at exactly the same time at the curb of the arrival area. The temperature is 10 degrees with a 20 mph wind howling through and he let’s out this scream when it hit him. With me melodrama is irritating, especially from a guy. No Buen Joe.

But remember on the Camino that we all irratated each other at one time or another. And we learned to put up with that when we discovered how we needed each other. And we could actually look forward to being iratated by someone that we knew we would grow to appreciate. And this guy really irratated me and I kept running into him over and over again. And in the end I grew to like him just because. OK Joe, you’re in.

Just interesting how this chemistry works. The Camino is engineered to make togetherness happen big time. OK, I’m going to post this before it gets away. Togetherness love, Felipe.