Kelly came over for dilly dally and dinner.  Then we watched the 1961 El Cid with Charelton Heston and Sophia Loren.  One big Spanish history lesson.   I saw a Sophia quote the other day where she said that, “Everything she had she owed to spaghetti.”   I’m thinking on that one.

So, Kelly says to me me that it’s all my fault.  Well, that the walk was my idea and I invited him to go along.  And now he thinks about it everyday and can’t get rid of it.  You know how Kelly is, saying this sort of half in fun but even so ….  Very true Kel.

We are walking in a few minutes so I am going to give you the lean and mean version this AM as time is short.  Wiley is coming as well as Ross, a young man who has been afflicted/ blessed with blindness.  He is a rare fellow.  I enjoy his company.

Then there is a wonderful new friend that is out on the Meseta as we speak.  I have been communicating with her via phone messaging.  I am jealous.  I want to spend the day with her.  I am trying to imagine that big empty place in November.  Bigger and emptier than August when we could bearly see another pilgrim.  Yea.

OK, big and empty is a good place to leave you.  Perhaps we can fill it with our positive energy, good spirits, prayers, thoughts, wishes, hopes, hoops, yells, hollers, memories.  Excellent.

Love to you, Felipe.

Flan
1 14oz can of sweetened condensed milk
same measurement (measure in the empty condensed milk can) of milk (I use 2% but you can use anything)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

On the metal pan, melt about 2 tablespoons of sugar, stirring constantly so it doesn’t burn, until it’s golden caramel. Set aside

Blend mix in blender for about 1 min, until it gets a little foamy. Pour over caramel.
350 degree oven for 1 hr. Let it cool and put in refrigerator. I like flan a little cold.

Yup, got it in the oven with 25 minutes to go.  I have been making this recipe in eight little ramekins so I had to experiment with the time.  I am down to forty minutes to forty five minutes, still playing with it.

The beauty of the sunset is an indication of how beautiful the day was.  See, it doesn’t always rain here, just most of the time.  I find myself staring at beautiful things lately.  Staring maybe isn’t the right word.  But just trying to soak in as much as possible.  More has got to be better, right?

OK, I am going to save this for Sunday morning.  Awesomely awesome guys!  Love, Felipe.

I was grouchy yesterday and it had to due with me being locked out of my own blog site.  Finally, at 2345 I was able to get in to post Sherif’s thoughts on blisters.  I didn’t want a day to go by without a thought going out to you.

So, hopefully, things will run smoothly now.  The spam is gone which is huge and other things are happening.  THE BLOG CONTINUES!!

Right now the sun is out and I am going to get out there and get somethings done.  This  will be a shorty.  Let it be enough to say that I am totally happy being here with you and doing what we do.  I get grouchy when I think that it will be otherwise.  Love you, Felipe.

Blisters.. Ampollas if I didn’t miss the right Spanish translation

After a long busy week, I headed north to Alexandria for a break. Sitting on the hammock in my friends’ garden, my eyes caught a scar on the back of my feet. I bent to see what it was. Simply a scar left from the blisters that hit my feet during the Camino. I did not see it well recently.

Wow, am recalling memories here! Memories of night blister-treatment circles, arranged by pilgrims with some interesting music and bottles of wine, while everyone is treating their feet to stand up for another long walk next morning.

We used to sit and share medical tools and tips. Some would suggest using Compeed plastic plasters, others suggested normal plasters, and some even suggested just leaving them alone. Wear 2 socks, no just one wool sock, ok don’t take a shower in the morning to keep them dry, put Vaseline, put benzoyl …aaaaah what should I really do ???

It was a very confusing experience cause all what you want was to wake up and walk the next morning, but the precious thing about it was how you got to understand your body and what it needed more than ever. You totally disregard all what you read and what you were told, and create a personal way of comforting yourself according to how you studied your body by midway.

Just recalling the tons of posts about wearing a hiking shoes or hiking boots and some suggested athletic ones, at the end I used my sandals most of the way.

The blisters experience, taught me how to tolerate some pains to achieve a goal, starting from too much complaining, that many of you would remember me always complaining from my blisters, into believing that they became another credential that a pilgrim would receive aside from the ones stamped on the camino passport! I bet there were real stamps that cannot be faked.

Today I wish these scars would never leave my feet as they carry a lot of memories. Today I am wondering how many pilgrims are looking at their feet and remembering the good days through these scars, although many ladies worked on removing them in Santiago before going back home, but they have all their right and our blessing ….Buen Camino 🙂

Sherif, Cairo.

 

Well , there is a close up of the strange veggie.  It’s been sitting in water on our table for a few days now and I am totally fascinated by it.  Notice how the big cone shapes are laid out in spirals and lines of the cones are orientated in two different patterns, both spirals.  And then on those cones the smaller cones that cover those are laid out in this interlocking pattern of intersecting spirals.  So cool.  And then on these little cones the same thing occurs in miniature.  And maybe on and on.

This is the same interlocking pattern that is in the layout of the sunflower seeds on the sunflowers in Spain that we walked endless kilometers through.  Look at the pics.  And this is the pattern that is used on some of the great old cobble stone streets in the cities there.  Remember?  I’ll have to look through my photo album for that.  Kelly was always taking pics of the walking surfaces.    Last Sunday we had Will and Jasper  (www.greenmanfarm.com) over for dilly dally and din din and Will put a name on that phenononym, calling it an interference pattern.  Well, we will just have to Google that.

So, recently, I in a post I was describing Rebecca’s tapas as rugged.  That was just a word that shot out of my brain on first glimpse.  It was because she had some delectable goodies on the plate but some were standing up giving it this great 3-D look.  My tapas are always very lounge -y.  Like the little slices of cheese and the olives are having a little dilly dally of their own after a long day in the frig.  Very relaxed but maybe slightly giddy just because they enjoy each other’s company.  I’ll have to Google “lounge-y tapas”.

OK, since I like to do things in threes, I’ll have to mention some good Camino reading that I was doing last evening.  There is some great stuff on this blog:  aviatrixKim.wordpress.com  .  Two things that I looked at that were really good were: 8 Ways to be a Kinder, Gentler Pilgrim and  you Might Be Pilgrim If: .  Yea.

And final note that Ken my awesome Apple guy and general all around good guy (has wooden bead rosary hanging out of his pocket) stopped the flow of spam into this site.  It is a miracle!  I was getting over two hundred a day and worse than that some  were getting to be like old friends.

OK, you lounge-y tapa characters, I love you immensely, shoot me a comment once in a while.  I might be able to find them now that the spam is gone!  You’re the best, Felipe.

 

Yea, I have to admit that my personal Camino has been a little rough lately.  And I know that is the way it is and I need to be present, keep walking and it will flatten out again.  Right, that is the way it is set up, that nothing lasts forever.  Laura says that we need Patience (always capitalized now).  I have to quit kicking the Coke machine looking for faster results.  So look back to October 23rd to see the post about the Coke machine appearing out of the fog if you have forgotten.

So, yesterday, my stars were really lined up I guess, and a great day appeared out of nowhere.  The trail flattened out for the time being and I had a great time with great people.  Yea, the old great people thing again.   We need to hold each other close as it is amazing how much good influence we can exert on each other.

So, it started out with a Skype with Gracie in London.  It was a short one because I needed to run off to Seattle for my big chemo treatment day.  She is such a Sweetheart and never fails to get me going.  Then at the hospital my doctor, the receptionists, the schedulers and the bevy of great nurses never fail to give me the chuckles.  So, I got about five hours in a comfy chair while the strange chemicals go coursing into my 175 pounds.  But I always bring stuff to do and drink coffee and take advantage of the time to work on the blog or work on a book or try to flag down a nurse that has computer savvy to get some free advice.  Then I get done at 4:30 and jet out of their to beat the worst of the afternoon rush.

So far so good, right?  So I get to the ferry and I get to cut into the line because I have a pass from the hospital (special depensation).  And who do I run into but my old hunting buddy John who is incredibly talented as a writer, song writer, musician and other stuff.  He is our resident fisherman poet who I never get to spend enough time with.  So I got a half an hour to do just that.  And he starts telling me about his latest song that he wrote about Ebola.  Only John could pull something like this off tastefully. So that was great checking in with him.

So, I make it home and Rebecca has whittled out some great looking tapas which I characterized as rugged and she laughed.  She laughs a lot.  And she brought this strange new veggie home see pic.  I’m calling it Intergalatic Broccoli. It has the most amazing geometry based on the spiral.  And some try to tell us that there is no God.

So we have venison in mushroom sauce by Rebecca and a glass of red and the phone rings and it’s another of my favorite people who like John the fisherman poet, is  Stephen the cowboy chef.  So, he says, ” Lucky, I just made this deer liver pate and I’m bringing it over so you can check it out.  Are you going to be there?”  Man, my stars are members of the Indiana University Marching Band.

So, no coincidences right?  It’s all in the plan, right?  Just have to be Patient and let things unfold, right?  Something that we learned on the Way of St James, right?  Hold me close, love, Felipe (aka Lucky).

 

 

A pic Kelly took and I can’t remember where it was but a church yard.  I stared at these artifacts for a long time.  Together, a baptismal vessel and a sarcophagus, bot

h chiseled out of stone.  The real thing.  Nice little tableau of life, well the beginning and end anyway.  And what about the in-between?  After we acknowledge God, love Him and your neighbor, is it possible to have too much fun?  Really?  Well, let’s just say that we on our section of the Camino tried our best!

(I just want to say that the sarcophagus though plain and looking oh so final had a loving feature that I observed.  You can’t really see it because of the angle of the sun but  the area where the head goes is raised in a little pillow so the occupant will be comfortable resting there.   Sweet don’t you think? )

There are points where a casual observer would think that we were having too much fun. How about a few things that I could come up in a minute: the sunflowers, the swallows, the Eagles, the roses.  The picnics.  The free wine fountain, the tapas, the wine with every meal. (The waiter would bring you wine almost automatically but you had to ask for water.). This lead to the evening when we were actually louder than the Italians.   The nuns smiling, the priests blessing you continually, the s

ky blue and the wheat golden. Excellent company to pass the kilometers. We did laugh a lot when we weren’t crying. Sunrises, sunsets, clouds to shade us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, I am having way too much fun writing this.  And I am sitting in the comfy chair at Swedish Hospital getting my chemo treatment.  Love you all immensely, Felipe.

 

 

 

 

I have been fighting  the good fight against spam for months now and maybe I will get on top of it with some help.  My password is somehow all screwed up and I can’t get to anywhere that can change the situation for me.  But hopefully I will be able to get my Apple guy to untangle the mess that I have made.

So yesterday I looked through almost 300 comments that have stacked up over the months to check if any of the spam had gotten in there.  And I scanned through and discovered all these great comment that people had written and for whatever reason I hadn’t read them.  And therefore I haven’t replied to these great comments.  So I am sorry for that because it might have sent the wrong message.

Just want to say that since I have this iPad, home computer and cell phone it doesn’t mean by a long shot that I know what I am doing.  In other words I know enough to be dangerous.  Please forgive my ineptitude as it may at times send the wrong message.

OK enough of that.  To totally change the subject, we had Will and Jasper Forrester over yesterday for dilly dally and dinner.  Very fun.  So Will, a wonderful artist,  had done a portrait of me for a show which is a collection of Vashon mentors (old guys).  The drawing is very cool with me in my Camino cap and sunglasses and in the background is a map of the northern Spain.  Very cool.  Thank you Will for including me.

Alright, have to go walk in the rain.  Love you guys, Phil.

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine: if a

Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,

as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor

of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans

death diminishes me, because I am in-

volved in Mankinde; And therefore

never send to know for

                                        whom the bell tolls; It

tolls for thee.

JOHN DONNE

Somewhere east of Burgos is a monument at the top of a mountain marked 1937 or 1939 for men killed in the fighting there during the Spanish Civil War.  Maybe more of a hill than a mountain but the important thing is the monument and what it stands for.  I was waiting to run across some such rememberance along the trail.  I had read Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” twice by then and roughly I knew of the story of the war.

And near the monument are three or four picnic tables were Kelly and I had some food and rest.  While sitting there I noticed a wooden fence with a gate close by so I walked over to investigate.  Inside the fenced area is an area about fifty meters by four meters that is bordered by rocks and beyond a interpretive display.  So I continued in to see the display.

What was going on was that it was a gravesite or actually a former site.  The information described the project done in the early 1980’s of digging up the 104 bodies that were there and running DNA tests on them to identify the remains.  So the bodies were IDed and returned to the families in their home towns.  All the little and big towns that you had just walked through or were going to shortly had someone or more.  The project took place shortly after the death of Franco, the Fascist leader of Spain that died in 1979 when finally the country returned to normalcy.

So last week I started to read the Hemingway book to get me in the mood for this topic. Just wanted to include it somewhere as it was a part of our walk and this is the appropriate day.  Not exactly cheery but a story of reconciliation which is a good thing. Love, Felipe.

 

OK, just have a few moments this morning before I have to jet off.  Rebecca is back from here trip to the East Coast to see Osian, the new Grandboy.  Have a few thoughts to share:

So, the Good is that Rebecca is back so that I don’t have to wander around unsupervised, Gracie is doing her homework, Sherif  and Cherry are sending great material to supplement the blog and we are thinking of each other.  Yea.  The Camino goes on, right?!!

The Bad is all the spam that is coming into the blogsite.  Fortunately, I have an appointment with Ken my Apple guy on Monday.  I just have to keep from getting over run till then.  It seems so easy to fix but somehow my password is all screwed up and I can never….  Well, Ken knows.  I’m counting on you buddy.

That leaves the Ugly which is this blog.  Well, not really really ugly but it needs some different things happening.  The TGIF is terrific.  Sherif # 2 introduced us to poetry.  I think that is poetry of some loose form.  Nice.  And I think that we are going to do, are you ready for this, Spanish recipes.  Not just any, but ones that I have proven good ones.  I think that we will start with Alida’s flan recipe which I have made twice now.  So, yea.  That’s my proposed solution to the Ugly.

Also, also, also I just realized that this post right here is number 200 since we started out back in May or June, can’t remember offhand, it’s been so long.  That is something to celebrate!  I’ll raise my coffee cup to that,”Salud!”.   Love, Felipe.