The Memphis Pilgrims

We have a confession. We told a little white lie in the last post. We told y’all we were going to take 2 days to get to Finisterre (trans. “end of the world”), but we had already booked our accommodation in Finisterre for last night. Confidence is key. The plan was to get there last night, so we would have a night to watch the sunset at the end of the world. And the Memphis Pilgrims execute their plans. So against our better judgement, we headed out yesterday morning for our 90 km half road, half mountain biking trek. We only brought the essentials, which included the clothes we were wearing, tooth paste and toothbrushes, phone chargers, and phones. My computer did not make the cut, which is why we did not post yesterday. Alex though believed his crocs were a necessity, so he strapped them on the end of his bike. What a sight that was. At one point during the ride, we were passed by a guy in a biking suit and biking shoes who looked like this wasn’t his first rodeo. I was ou...

We have arrived, St. James.  To the land of Milk and Honey.  The Promised Land.  The Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.  The Big Dawg.  The Grande Perro.  The Walk of St. James, Sant Yago.  The Santiago de Compestella.  We have arrived. We have arrived. There were times on this trip when I thought Santiago was not a real place.  These times included about all of the days.  But it is most definitely real.  Today, we walked a pure 20 kilometers.  It was one of our easiest days, and it was needed.  Our albergue (our final albergue) was a great one to end on.  It had good showers and good beds, which is really all you care about.  Yes, there was one last symphony, and we both luckily had our ear plugs to block out some of the beautiful, natural music. Last night’s dinner was one of my favorites.  We ordered veal, fries, and salad, and when they served our food, they also br...

Chomp, chomp. We were the hungry hippos today. We continuously took small bites at our long road meter by meter. We have had a joke along the Camino that Santiago has a lot of friends that protect him from your Memphis Pilgrims. The meters have done a good job defending Santiago. We aren’t gonna lie. It’s been a tough and testing month, but Santiago seems to be running short on friends now with only 20,000 “friends” left. Last night as Alex and I were preparing to lay down to sleep, we see our French friend in our same albergue. He always brightens our day because when we see him on the walk, he always yells in excitement and exclaims something in French. We started yelling back eventually and giving him thumbs up. This time though when he sees us he doesn’t yell, but instead, he walks over and gives each of us one of his cookies. It sealed our friendship. We may never see this man again, and we don’t even speak the same language, but he is our friend for a lifetime. Today’s w...

Last night, we treated ourselves to one last private accommodation before we (hopefully) arrive to the Promised Land.  The place had a stellar view, but they very much overcharged us for laundry.  But it was worth the beauty sleep before our joy walk of 28 kilometers to Melide, Spain.  Melide is 53 kilometers from Santiago.  53 fat ones.  53.  That seems minuscule compared to the monster 800 we had to do 26 days ago. Today's walk consisted of going through lots of shaded trails by trees, and walking through several small towns, and walking past several cattle ranches.  Those don't smell great, as the cattle do not quite know how to use toilets.  However, we did get to see a shepherd herding his cattle with his dogs, and that was just a cool sight to see. At breakfast, we talked to a guy from Austin, Texas, and he said "Oh y'all are those Nashville guys" when we told him we were from Tennessee.  It kind of sounded like peopl...

Clean. That’s something we haven’t been in a while. We have embraced the meaning of Camino clean. I have 2 pairs of clothes, and we do laundry every 4th or 5th day because many of the albegues do not have washing machines and because we are lazy. Mostly because we are lazy actually. So if you do the math, there is more days than clean pairs of clothes. Compared to some of our Camino counterparts, we are “clean”, which says a lot. We have grown to like this nomadic style of cleanliness. It’s all we know now. Yesterday night, when we were sitting down to enjoy our pilgrim meal, our old friend Claus came up to say hello. We were caught off guard because we had not seen him in over a week and did not expect to see him again. He even noticed Alex growing out his beard. We didn’t know whether seeing him or him noticing Alex’s beard was the greater Camino miracle. During dinner, we sat next to two English brothers from Liverpool. One was on the search for some Camino love while his b...

Buenos dias, Americanos y buenos tardes, Espania.  Day 25 is officially in the books as we had a cool 23 kilometer joy walk from Triacastella to Barbadelo.  Last night, we treated ourselves to a private accommodation, and it was well worth it because we also received a complimentary breakfast and slept-in to 7.  Felt like one of those crazy college kids sleeping in so late.  But overall, phenomenal service, Casa David. Bravo. On our morning walk, we ran into a man named Paul from Florida.  As we started talking, he shared with us that a few years ago he completed the last 100 kilometers starting in Saria and he thought it was pretty easy, so he wanted to do the whole thing.  The following year, he started from St. Jean, and said “this isn’t so damn easy”, and he had to throw the flag because he blew out his knee.  So he has done the Camino in a couple of legs, and he is on his final leg today finishing in Saria. We got to talking, and I told h...

They’ve gone as low as they can go. We think that the Meseta may have hired another pilgrim to slip us something in our food last night because we woke up in the clouds.  There was literally zero visibility past 20 yards to start our walk. It was a cool experience for the first 20 or 30 minutes, but then we kinda wanted to have some views besides just blank white all around us. The rest of the walk stayed in the clouds until virtually the very end. We aren’t complaining though because it made for a cooler day without the sun. The actual walk started uphill again and finally plateaued for a while until the final steep descent into Triacastela. Along the walk we entered the beautiful region of Galicia. It is our last region of the trip, and it is also where the holy grail Santiago resides. An unnerving Galician trend that we noticed today was the incredible number of free-roaming chickens. I don’t know if Galicia means “roaming chickens” in Spanish, but it might as well. Ale...

Que dias mas explendida!  Today, we took a bus from Villafranca to Laguna.  It was quite nice to give ourselves a break, and to experience the modern way of traveling. Come on.  If you read that and believed me, you might as well unsubscribe.  I am offended and so is St. James.  The Memphis Pilgrims do not take buses.  We do what we do best: walk.  It’s what we do. It’s what we know. Our alburgue last night was hot.  We opened the front door of it to try to release some of the heat.  Naturally, I was the closest to the front door, but I was willing to sacrifice myself if a wild boar came bustling into our room just to get the room down a few degrees.  I even walked outside to the porch of the albergue in my boxers to try to cool down.  Fortunately, I was interrupting the albergue master and his wife eating a watermelon together.  I apologized and they laughed.  A good moment. This morning, the Memphis Pilgrims...

“We have to stop the Memphis Pilgrims.” These were the words muttered by my Spanish bunk mate as Alex and I slowly drifted into sleep. She tried to smoke us out of our albergue room by closing all the windows that we had intentionally left open to let the cool air in. It almost worked as Alex and I both woke up this morning in sweat drenched clothes. It definitely wasn’t pretty, but we got out of our top bunks and stayed with our plan. Wow, we are into week 4 now. It seems like just yesterday we were getting kicked out of our first ever albergue for sleeping in too late. Today’s walk was pleasant and very sunny, which also means very hot. Thankfully, we completed the 24 km to Villafranca before the heat reached its peak. Along the walk today, we passed a tree that had some small red things growing that I took to be cherries. In my boy scout days, they told me “if it’s red, you’re dead.” Despite this, I decided to take one for the Camino team and try one out. My thinking here m...

Que tal, Americanos.  Day 21 is in the books.  We walked 27 kilometers from Foncebadon to Ponfereda.  We have made a cover of Rihana’s song “Umbrella” by changing “Umbrella” to “Ponfereda.”  Just Camino things. Today’s hike was very pretty, and it was a lot of uphill and downhill as we hit the highest point on the Camino and went down from there.  Two kilometers into the hike we got to finally see Crux de Ferro (Iron Cross), probably the most famous landmark of the Camino.  It was a very cool experience as I was able to place my rock from Memphis on the base of the cross as it represented the burdens I bring to the cross.   Also, a lot of Koreans were hogging the cross for pictures, so we couldn’t get a great picture.  Downhill is not particularly enjoyable as it hurts the knees and forces us to go slowly in order to avoid injury.  So today we took a lot of breaks. In the town before Ponfereda, we ate a delicious lunch where a...

Do pre-schoolers get taught letters or numbers first and does the order determine whether they turn out English or Math inclined? Do we too often confine ginger ale to an airplane drink? These are the types of questions you consider after over a week of the Meseta. Yes, we are out of it now, but the Meseta has taught our minds to roam. Last night, Astorga provided everything we needed. We have been continuously reminded from various strangers that “the Camino will provide.” We would always give each other a look afterwards like we had just talked to a crazy person, but Astorga showed us the meaning of this peculiar motto. Coming into town, we needed three things: an ATM, a tobacco store for cigars, and a tech store because I decided to leave my phone charger in Sahugun, and we were definitely not walking back. We found all three briskly and got to our private accommodation around 1. It was shaping into a spectacular day. We picked our cigars like you would expect two...

Today marks the end of an era.  Today, we say goodbye to our old friend, Death, and say hello to our new life.  We caught up with our old friend, and after a while, we finally realized why he was an "old" friend.  He is just a stick in the mud and has a morbid personality.  It was time for us to say goodbye.  And I think he was ready to let us go.  He had done the work he needed to do on us. The Meseta was all about reflection - not necessarily about deep philosophical things or extreme religious thoughts or talking about your life all the time.  It's just all about reflection.  You can think about anything, about whatever you want.  Just let your mind wander.  Sometimes I think about what I'm going to say in the blog, sometimes random memories like me trying to zip-line across my neighbor's yard and nearly breaking my leg because of my friend's incompetency.  These are my favorite because then I start laughing on the...

This is a monster post so strap in. The meseta has thrown a lot at us. But we had never seen anything like this before. Our albergue tried to keep pilgrims from doing the only thing we know: walking. This morning as we attempted to head out into the streets of Leon, we were stopped in our steps at a locked albergue door. We tried to open it any way we could, and even our Korean friend who did not seem to trust our attempts started trying the door right after us. Of course, he had no more success than us. We then heard that the only exit to the albergue would be unlocked at 6:30. It was currently 5:45. There was no thought to sit idle for 45 minutes. We immediately searched for an escape from this prison-like alburgue.  A high-end hotel is next to the albergue, and so we squeezed through a nook in the fence to get to the hotel’s back patio. Then we walked inside to escape from the front. The albergue had considered this route.  It too was locked. We then spot the h...

"If you are going to skip a day of the Camino, today is the day to skip."  This is the opening sentence of our guidebook about today's hike.  I was appalled that it even suggested skipping a day of the trek.  Can you just wake up one day during life and say "yeah I want to skip this stage of my life?"  No.  You cannot.  And I can wholeheartedly assure you that your Memphis Pilgrims did not skip today. Yes, it was on a highway for some parts.  No, it was not "beautiful" in a conventional sense.  Yes, it was comparable to Hacks Cross.  So we were not "looking forward" to today, but we still found the beauty in it.  We still found that we would put one step in front of the other to walk 24 kilometers from Reliegos to Leon, our fourth major city (population 135,000) before the Grande Perro (Santiago de Compestella). Last night, we called ten private accommodations to get a reservation in Leon,  When we would ask for a rese...

Back to back nights with the Snuggle Squad. We wish these albergue love birds would get a private accommodation. Today, we timed our walk just about perfectly. We woke up at 5 and paused our walk to look for a good breakfast in a small town that we were walking through. The café we entered seemed to have nobody inside, and at this point, we are pretty hungry and kind of desperate because it did not look like anything was open, and the next town wasn’t for another 17 km. We headed to what looked like a small market. It was locked of course, but a very small man with a dog walked up to us, and I think said that he was the owner, and he was just opening up. We ordered 2 ham sandwiches but instead got a gigantic loaf of bread with ham on the side. Decided to make that our mid-day snack and headed back to the café. Now, it was finally open. And as we stepped in the café, it started raining pretty heavily. We ate a great breakfast and waited for it to calm down and headed out again. ...

The Meseta.  It's hot.  It's flat.  And it's hot. But we're over halfway to the land of milk and honey.  We're over halfway to the Big Dawg.  The Grande Perro.  We're over halfway to the one and only Santiago de Compestella. In the words of iconic American hero Thomas the Tank Engine, "I think I can." Today, we hiked 24 kilometers.  This seems like a piece of cake if you look at our track record.  But this was not an easy 24.  The majority of the hike was by a highway.  We have those in America.  They have them in Spain too.  The Spanish and Americans must have coordinated because they are identical.  And they are not prettier in Spain.  We had planned to go 28 kilometers today but due to exhaustion and the hot sun we decided to stop 4 kilometers shorter in a town called Sahugun, Spain.  It's a pretty big town and is kind of cool. It's not that we are not grinding.  We are.  D...

We’re half-way there hence the title.  We might just do this thing. We tried something new out this morning by trying to wake up at 5:30 this morning instead of our normal 6. Actually, we have tried to do it before, but this was the first successful attempt. Walking in the cool of the morning is much more pleasant than the 2 pm afternoon Spanish sun. Today we got to experience both because we had a long day ahead of us. We had a dilemma, as there was not a town between the 18 km and 35 km marks. That is the longest gap we have seen so far. Our feet told us not to do it today, but we still tried to make the long jump. On this long gap around 2 o clock, we met a Korean man who was wearing black pants and a dark long sleeve shirt. We asked him if he needed water, and he responded by trying to give us some out of his shot sized water bottle. We took a little break after slowly passing him and looked back, and our new friend was nowhere to be found. Alex thought he had passed out. ...

People have been asking me “Alex, what goes through your head on a day-to-day basis,” and the answer is simple.  In order to keep each foot going in front of the other, I imagine my man Marc “Big Spain” Gasol at Santiago greeting us with a sign saying “Memphis Pilgrims, you did it!”  I expect our entrance to Santiago to be nothing short of this. Today, we greeted Death with open arms.  We have officially entered the second stage of the Camino de Santiago: Death.  The first stage was life – it had many ups and downs (definitely some downs).  The second stage is death – it’s really called the Meseta because it is so flat and mundane.  The weak skip it, but the Memphis pilgrims greet Death like an old friend.  The third stage is re-birth.  I guess this part is where we become much better people?  Haven’t figured it out completely. We walked 34 kilometers to Fromista and plan on walking 35 tomorrow.  The flat terrain makes it easy t...

We didn’t forget about y’all. We just had bad Wifi. Get ready for our double feature today capturing both yesterday and today. Here is yesterday’s… This morning, it was difficult to leave the comfort of our private accommodation beds. What got us out of them was the moment when we remembered what day it is. It’s Memphis Monday. And we are the Memphis Pilgrims. Monday is our Super Bowl. Were we going to sleep in on gameday? I think you know the answer to this leading question. If the Memphis Pilgrims don’t do one thing, that thing is sleeping in on Monday. Monday is not only when we grind but when the entire city of Memphis grinds. We heard the satanic lure of our private accommodation, and you better believe it was very tempting. But this lure was just the Camino trying to hinder us. It knew the Memphis Pilgrim storm was taking form and building momentum. Today’s hike was pretty long. We left Burgos around 7:30 and arrived in the small town of Hontanas a little before 3. We me...

Instead of a symphony of snorers, we got to hear a rock band (my guess is post Beatles pre-Nirvana).  There were some guys in the background that were the bass and drums (a couple were off-beat, but I’m not knit-picky).  And then the lead guy, probably comparable to Jimi Hendrix, went off.  The crowd went wild.  I was just glad that I didn’t get arrested because paying 10 euros for this concert was a steal. Today’s walk began with a few hills – more than normal.  It was very pretty.  We set off around 6:50 and were planning on getting breakfast at the next town over which was only a mere 2.5 kilometers away.  However, today is the sabbath and that restaurant that we walked 100 meters out of the way for was in fact closed.  Disappointed, we walked to the next town which was around 6 kilometers away (about an hour and a half away).  It appeared that all of the other pilgrims ran into a similar issue because everyone was at this one café....

“I died in 1942 as a fighter pilot in World War II.” This is part of a conversation that Alex and I overheard last night. We have been exposed to many different walks of life these past 10 days. People from all walks of life come together on the Camino and share their own beliefs on the Way and that has been cool to see. Today, we got off to a good start by waking up at 6. We felt a good deal less sore than yesterday, and the plan was to try to get to Ages as soon as possible, so we could have a good afternoon of rest. On today’s walk we encountered a couple of people who were intriguing for their own reasons. One of these was a man who we walked with for about 5 minutes who in mid-conversation told us he had partially torn his ACL on his 3rd day of walking. I have never partially torn my ACL before and much less ever planned on walking near 500 miles with it. Alex and my physical problems seemed minute compared to this demi-god. The other interesting person we met today was a 4 y...

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.  Every day, we try to be legends.  We try, and that’s all that matters.  We get out and grind. Yesterday’s foolish 37 kilometer trek to Santo Domingo had us feeling some type of way the following morning.  It had us feeling very sore.  We said we would sleep in to 6:45, and I tried to, but there was a biker group that took about 45 minutes to get ready for their day’s trek. And they were not very quiet.  They woke up at 6:00 AM, so if you’re doing the math, by the time they left, it was already time to get ready for the day. We got on the road around 7:30 today.  We were prepared to walk 22 kilometers from Santo Domingo to Belorado, and after the first 5 kilometers, we stopped in the first village and ate an incredible breakfast consisting of a ham and cheese toast thing, café con leche, orange juice, a package of this peporoni meat, a ham and cheese sandwich, and water.  It was just what we n...

The past two mornings have been tough. It’s been difficult to find the motivation to leave our comfortable and warm albergue beds. The only thing that has been getting us fired up to attack the Camino has been the distant sound of Memphis. We hear those yells. Yeah, the ones that go like, “Memphis Pilgrims! Memphis Pilgrims!” Then we remember. We remember why we decided to do this thing: the city of Memphis. It’s in our name. It’s in our DNA. But we forget it sometimes and thank you for that constant reminder. With all joking aside, today was truly a difficult day. If our long trek was not enough, the hurric8 (pun on hurricane and day 8, don’t think it’s obvious) that hit us at kilometer marker 9 made sure it was. We trudged up a hill where the trail we were following turned into a river. This made it difficult to use, so we put our boots in four-wheel drive and went off road a little. When we finally made it to the town of Najera, we felt like how I imagine Joseph and Mary did, a...

The Camino is the potter, and I am the clay.  Today, the Camino began its molding for us as we walked 32 kilometers from Torres del Rio to Navarrete.  It has started to shape us into the mold it wants us to be. This morning, we got going at around 7:30 am, so it was a little later than normal, but the extra sleep was needed.  After a hearty breakfast, we began our journey through a beautiful 10 kilometers of rolling hills of golden wheat fields and vineyards.  I was starting to get tired during this part, and then we started to hear guitar playing in the distance.  Confused, I looked up and there was a man who set up his classical guitar on an amplifier as he played "Hallelujah" which echoed throughout the valley.  I don't know if you have ever heard this song being played while walking through vineyards, but if you haven't I would highly recommend doing so because it was the best "pick me up" I could have ever asked for. After we walked ...

 “They’re not gonna rook us.” These are the words our beloved Coach uttered after a controversially called Game 2 in the Western Conference Playoffs. You might say the Memphis Pilgrims were rooked the first couple of nights in the albergues with the veteran snorers. Not this time, not last night. Alex and I muttered Fizdale’s famous words yesterday afternoon as we were planning our sleeping schedule for the night. We were definitely not rooked last night. We took a Benadryl each last night and were in bed near asleep at 8:30. When the snorers came into the bunk room at 9, Alex and Murray were dead asleep. We won. For the first time on the trip, we were the snorers. We expect a battle tonight. Now to today’s hike… It started off a little rough. We were planning on getting breakfast right outside of Estella at a café because our guide book said there would be one or two. There were zero. And sadly for us the next breakfast spot was not for another 12 kilometers. That’s a sol...

Hello, Western World.  Murray and I have decent Wifi at the alburgue in Estella, Spain.  Today we walked a hot 22 kilometers.  Today, the walk was mainly fields and vineyards, and the road we were on was pretty white, so the glare was pretty bad and so it was very hot. Today, was mainly a reflective day.  Murray and I had some good conversations, but we really kept talking to a minimal today as we grinded through the heat and getting to Estella.  I thought today was one of the hardest as my legs were cramping up and were very sore the whole time.  Once we got to Estella, I have been stretching every thirty minutes trying to get my legs back to normal.  You see, I naturally walk on my tip toes, and my calves have really paid the price for that. Murray taught me to walk on my heels. It has been an eye-opening experience for me and my calves.  We both would like to publicly thank Murray. Also, in one of our conversations, Murray explained to...

It's not that we have been very undisciplined recently. We are as disciplined as they come. Posting has just been difficult because of some false Wifi advertising by some our recent albergues. We promise to be better. Here is our post from yesterday... Today (May 14th) was quite the day. We woke up in our private accommodation at 6, looked at each other, and quickly decided to reset our alarms for 6:30. After hitting the road from Pamplona, we started at a pace neither of us could keep up for long. It turned out to be a very poor choice, as the Alto de Perdon, the hill of forgiveness, stood looming in the distance. We decided to rename it the Alto de no Perdon shortly into our ascent. Once we arrived at the peak, we found our beach and stayed for quite a while admiring the Spanish landscape. The descent from the peak was steep, as we continually avoided sprained ankles in the rocks. A sprained ankle is something people on this trail like to call a “mal camino.” Luckily, we avo...

Guys, we just want to say we are sorry. We know you have been on the edge of your seats for the last day and a half. We had a slight Wifi mishap, but we are back now. We kindly ask for yall’s patience as some of these albergues advertise false Wifi. This is easily one of the most amazing trips we have ever taken.  Yesterday, we left Zubiri, Spain around 7 am and arrived in Pamplona, Spain around 1230.  We walked about 21 kilometers in about five and a half hours.  That’s really good timing. Now two nights ago was something.  We had the privilege of listening to a snoring symphony in our very own alburgue.  I might argue that it was Mozart’s 10th symphony, but Murray is adamant that it was Beethoven’s 5th.  Who knows.  Either way it kept us up until we finally put our ear plugs in and were able to fall back asleep.  And despite what our friend Murray said in the previous post, your boy was NOT included in that previous snoring session....

After a tough day of hiking yesterday, we thought we might sleep in a little. The plan was to wake up at 7 and perhaps grab a quick breakfast and head on to our next home. We expected to wake up to the other pilgrims in the albergue getting their things together. Instead, we awoke to our albergue master yelling at us and opening all the blinds. We were very confused and disoriented. It seemed like we had overstayed our welcome. We quickly scrambled our things together and headed on. To determine where we would stay tonight, we chose to let our legs make the decision for us.   They said they wanted to take it easy today, and so we stopped today in the beautiful town of Zubiri, Spain, which was just a 14-15 kilometer distance from Espinal. Thankfully when we were very low in morale, we ran into our Italian friend Stefano.  He really boosted our spirits when we needed it. We have had many stretching sessions recently, as we have never felt this kind of tightness in...