by Patrick Gray
Justin, Ted, and I head out the door to tell the film crew the plan, and as we walk outside, I make the mistake of commenting to Jasper about a pretty woman across the street.
“Are you serious?” he asks.
“Yeah, she’s pretty.”
Jasper howls with laughter and says, “Dude! That’s a man in a dress!”
I really wish I had my glasses.
Armed with a plan, we are excited to get back to the Camino. But our trip to the welder will have to wait. Robin parked illegally back at the hotel, and his car has been towed, so we wait while he and Terry go to pay the €200 fine and retrieve the vehicle.
Could this day get any worse?
After we’ve waited for an hour, Robin arrives and we load the wheelchair into the back of his car. Robin, Mike, and I set out for the welder’s shop, while Justin and Ted head back to the hotel to get some rest.
Riding with Robin at the wheel is an adventure. In spite of the fact that I have a map in my lap and the destination circled in red, Robin pulls over every mile or so and asks for directions from anyone he can find. He shouts for the attention of people walking by on the sidewalk, people on bicycles, and even fellow drivers. At one point, he flags down a gentleman driving in the opposite direction. As the cars slowly roll past each other in the middle of a busy street, Robin is too engrossed in conversation to notice the pedestrian he hits. Fortunately, this happens at the breakneck speed of four miles per hour, and no harm is done.
We finally arrive at the shop, unload the wheelchair, and take it inside to the fabricator who we hope will solve our problem. As he runs his finger slowly along the broken weld, I can see he is deep in thought. Nervous about leaving $8,000 worth of aluminum in the hands of a complete stranger, I turn to Robin and say, “Ask him if he can fix it.”
Robin poses the question, and the gentleman responds in rapid-fire Spanish.
“He says, ‘Come back at ten o’clock tomorrow and find out.’”
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The next morning, with ten o’clock rapidly approaching, I climb into the passenger seat of Robin’s car while Jasper slides into the seat behind me. We make our way toward the fabrication shop, but none of the buildings look familiar.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I ask Robin.
He assures me we’re on the right track, but after thirty minutes of driving, Robin resigns himself to the fact that we are completely lost. Employing his method of getting directions, he flags down a man on the sidewalk and asks for help. Turns out we’ve driven to the opposite corner of Pamplona. Robin gets his directions and hurriedly flips a U-turn, cutting off a car behind us—which, as you might expect when things are going wrong, belongs to two traffic officers.
The lights flash on, the siren sounds, and we are pulled over. It doesn’t take long to realize we are in the middle of a classic good cop/bad cop scenario.
Good Cop approaches the driver’s window and begins talking to Robin in rapid Spanish. Robin replies apologetically and engages the officer in conversation.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “What are you saying to him?”
“I’m explaining what we’re doing in Spain, and I told him why we need to get to the fabrication shop.”
As Robin continues to talk with Good Cop, he stops periodically to catch me up on the conversation. At one point, he mentions the documentary and points to Jasper, who is filming the encounter from the backseat.
When Bad Cop sees this, he comes unglued and begins yelling at Jasper.
Jasper, who speaks fluent French but only a little Spanish, turns to Robin for help.
“It’s illegal to film the police in Spain,” Robin says, “so you need to turn off the camera . . . and you need to get out of the car.”
I’m usually pretty levelheaded, but right now my head is spinning.
While Jasper gets out of the car and Bad Cop runs his passport, Good Cop is still in conversation with Robin, who seems remarkably calm for having just been told the consequences for filming a police officer—a €5,000 fine and potential jail time. I don’t know if this is true or whether Good Cop is just trying to scare us, but Robin turns on some magical charm and continues talking about the broken wheelchair and our need to get to the fabrication shop.
As Bad Cop reads Jasper the riot act, something comes over Good Cop, and he yells something in Spanish to his partner. The conversation suddenly turns. I don’t know what has happened, but I choose to believe it is a little divine intervention, because now Bad Cop is asking us where we’re headed and is offering to escort us.
Totally bewildered, Jasper gets back in the car, and we follow the officers through the streets of Pamplona. Thirty minutes later, we arrive at the fabrication shop, and the welder proudly presents us with a repaired wheelchair. As I examine the new weld, I look up at the man responsible for the repair.
“¡Muchas gracias, señor!”
9MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE
— JUSTIN —
PATRICK’S EXCURSION WITH Pamplona’s finest has cost us a fair amount of time. As a result, our departure is much later than we’d hoped. We’re grateful to be back on the trail, but we know we’re looking at a late arrival in Uterga, tonight’s destination, about eleven and a half miles to the west.
The sun’s warmth radiates against our backs as we walk through the city of Pamplona, a surprisingly accessible metropolis of about 200,000 people. We easily navigate the many streets, sidewalks, and parks as we follow the little yellow arrows that mark the Camino path. Before long, we arrive at the trailhead on the southwest side of town, and we’re glad to be back on the dirt path. But there is a bit of fear and trepidation about the new weld. It looks sturdy enough, but the real proof is in its performance, and we have a long way to go.
As we work our way farther from town, the trail meanders through a series of rolling hills, but up ahead we see a sizable climb in our immediate future. As we struggle up a section with an abundance of loose rocks underfoot, a cyclist blurs past us, shouting, “¡Buen Camino!” This standard greeting for every pilgrim on the trail—“Good walk!”—creates a unique and instant bond among fellow travelers.
When the Italian cyclist reaches the top of the grade, he stops, lays down his bike at the side of the trail, and jogs back down the hill to give us a hand.
Stepping in as copilot next to Patrick in the back, he helps push while Ted pulls on the harness out front. It’s a short but strenuous climb, and all three human engines grunt and groan as they propel me up the hill.
At the top of the incline, I use my basic Italian to thank the cyclist and wish him good travels, but before he leaves us, we reach a fork in the trail, which initiates an entirely new conversation about the best way to go. After a brief discussion, punctuated by copious hand gestures, we decide to stay on the footpath rather than taking the bike route. We wave good-bye to our new friend as he heads off to the right while we proceed left.
Continuing up the now gentle grade, we are soon greeted by an impressive sea of green and red—beautiful poppies covering the hillsides as far as we can see. As we draw closer, we realize our path cuts directly across one of these poppy fields. Instead of a trail wide enough for my wheelchair, we face a narrow footpath, running east to west. Embracing what lies before us, we forge ahead.
Progress is slow, and we begin to wonder whether this is even part of the trail. The ground is incredibly uneven, and the path is littered with rocks the size of cantaloupes. My chair is twenty-four inches wide, and the path is maybe half that. This means that most of the time, both of the mountain bike tires are rolling against the resistance of three-foot-tall poppies. Additionally, the trail is so uneven that Patrick must constantly lift up one side of the handlebars to keep me from tipping over, while Ted pulls on my footrest and lifts the front wheel over ruts, rocks, and holes to protect our new weld. Every so often, the two switch places to give their fatigued muscles a break.
We begin to wonder whether we should turn back a
nd look for an alternate route, but we are now halfway through the field, and turning my chair around amid the thick growth of poppies will be nearly impossible. So we continue to fight our way through. Finally, we reach the other side and are back on a clearly marked trail, where the familiar yellow arrows point the way toward Santiago. We’ve read that if we go for too long without seeing one of these arrows, we’re probably lost, so we’re happy to see a large stone pillar directly in front of us with a yellow arrow pointing to the left.
The path is now wider, and we are excited at the prospect of reaching Alto de Perdón, a monument to all the pilgrims who have walked the Camino for over a thousand years. In our guidebook, we’ve seen pictures of the oxidized-metal silhouettes depicting pilgrims on foot, on horseback, and leading pack animals, arrayed in a caravan across the top of a plateau, and we’re eager to see it with our own eyes. Soon we catch a glimpse of it in the distance, and we begin the ascent.
Thirty feet from the top, we hit loose rock, and Patrick has to get down on all fours to gain enough leverage to pull while Ted continues to push me toward the apex of the hill. When we reach the top, we realize the monument is even more impressive than it appears in pictures—a work of art on display in a windy, open-air museum, stretching more than one hundred feet across the hilltop.
After the arduous climb, we’re happy to find a fountain with fresh, cool drinking water. While I enjoy a few minutes of respite looking down over Pamplona in the distance, Patrick and Ted drain and refill our water bottles and the water reservoir in my backpack.
The monument seems to stare back at me, and I think to myself, They need to add a silhouette of a guy in a wheelchair.
My musing is interrupted by thoughts of our next challenge. A few pilgrims we’ve met along the way have warned us about the section of trail leading toward Uterga. The steep downhill grade and large, loose rocks create dangerous terrain for a wheelchair. Consulting the map in our guidebook for an alternate route, we see a country road leading down the hill to our right, past a ridgeline studded with evenly spaced wind turbines. Taking the road all the way into town will add a fair amount of time, so we decide to go as far as the bottom of the hill and then cut across on a short trail identified on the map. Anticipating this next stretch will be rather uneventful, the film crew goes on ahead to find a place to stay the night.
With Patrick now pulling back on the handlebars to slow our descent, and Ted as an anchor behind him, I’m reminded of our last day of training on Quail Ridge. The steep road soon has us moving at a fairly quick pace, despite Ted and Patrick’s short, calculated steps. Off to our right, the massive windmills spin slowly, and the rhythmic sound of their blades slicing through the air marks the tempo for Patrick and Ted as they march down the hill. We make it to the short trail and take the cutoff, ignoring the absence of yellow arrows.
“Are we sure this is right?” Ted asks.
“No, but it definitely heads in the right direction,” Patrick replies. “Should we stay on the road?”
Not sure what to do, but wanting to avoid the extra distance the road will add to our already long day, we set a course we hope will get us back to the trail at a point below the loose rock slope.
“Let’s see where this goes,” I say to Ted and Patrick.
For a good mile—and an hour’s worth of work—the trail is wide and the up and down of the hills is minimal, but the terrain is reminiscent of the rough trail we fought through the Pyrenees, and the tall trees on either side make it difficult to keep our bearings. Judging by the wide tire ruts all along the way, we determine early on that this must be a popular jeep or off-road vehicle trail.
The lack of yellow arrows should have concerned us, but when we started down this path, we were fairly certain it headed straight to the base of the steep downhill section we wanted to avoid. We’re less certain now.
The second mile on this “shortcut” begins to drift to the left, and with each successive hill we’re actually gaining elevation. Our conversation dies away as the prospect of a shortcut has turned into anything but.
The brush and grass have gradually thickened, and I now have bunches of dried vegetation stuck in the spokes of my tires and wrapped around the axles. Patrick clenches his jaw as he mulls over the situation while pulling out the debris.
Both he and Ted have been taking turns running ahead to make sure we can continue. When Ted is out ahead on one of these sorties, he yells back, “The grass and growth are getting even thicker and taller the farther I go. I don’t think anyone has been through here in a long time.”
“Can we make it through in the chair?” Patrick yells back.
“I think so! We have to be close!”
When Ted returns, both he and Patrick are covered in sweat. Patrick asks me if I want to turn back.
“We’ve made it this far, let’s see where this goes,” I reply.
Ted jumps in behind my chair to give Patrick a break from pushing, and Patrick attempts to clear a path for my wheels by stomping down the growth that pushes back against my tires. With the higher elevation, we can now see the western horizon to our right, and we’re certain we’re heading in the right direction. But it’s anyone’s guess where we’ll come out on the trail.
As the trees begin to thin, we reach a wide spot connecting to the steep downhill portion of the Camino. Looking up to our left, we discover that our two-hour “shortcut” has saved us only the first thirty feet of the downhill stretch we were desperately trying to avoid in the first place.
Ted’s shoulders sag, and Patrick hangs his head in defeat. I just lean back in my wheelchair and take a deep breath.
“Well, we found the trail!” Ted says as he turns to look at Patrick and me.
“At least we know we’re not lost!” I hear from behind me. Ted begins to laugh, and it isn’t long before Patrick and I join him.
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— PATRICK —
I remember my grandfather as a remarkable woodworker. Like Justin with his artwork, my grandfather’s patience and attention to detail have always impressed me, even as a young boy. For the most part, my exposure to his work was the finished product. A beautiful china hutch sat in our dining room, and a grandfather clock stood in our living room. Every time the clock chimed, I was reminded of the hard work that Grandpa had put in to create such a gorgeous piece of furniture.
When we were old enough, my parents let each of us kids spend a week of the summer with our grandparents in nearby Meridian. A week apart from Justin meant he and I had to delay any plans for mischief, but my grandparents’ country homestead, complete with a six-thousand-square-foot house, large red barn, and massive garden, was an acceptable tradeoff. I did, however, have to work while I was there. I spent days pulling weeds in the garden, picking ripe berries, or doing whatever other chores they came up with. In addition to a good work ethic, my grandpa taught me a valuable life lesson that I would never forget but would sometimes ignore, to my own detriment.
One particular summer day when I was about nine, the day’s work was completed and my grandfather asked me to accompany him down to his shop in the basement of their home. He had already taught me how to play chess, and now he wanted to teach me a thing or two about woodworking. The subterranean room he had dedicated to his craft was incredible—about a thousand square feet filled with every tool you could imagine. Most of them looked ancient to me, but all were in perfect working order. His table saw, dating back to the 1950s, still ran like a champ.
Guiding me over to a workbench, he showed me an array of boards and nails, and laid out simple, clear instructions for building a bird feeder, which was the task at hand.
“No matter what, measure twice and cut once!” he said. “This applies to woodworking and people!” he added with a smile. With that admonition firmly in mind, we began our collective work. I measured and cut while my grandfather made sure I didn’t remove any fingers during the process.
Details have never been my strong point, especia
lly as a child. Working hard while overlooking the details has often led me down the wrong path. As I cut a piece of wood for the base of my bird feeder, my grandpa watched with little expression on his face. With all the pieces cut, I began to assemble my woodworking masterpiece, only to discover the base was about an inch too narrow.
“You measured once!” Grandpa said with a hint of a smile. “And now you have to cut twice!”
“I measured twice!” I argued.
“No, you didn’t. I watched you.”
He knew I had made the mistake, but he let me continue down the path until I discovered it on my own. He could have intervened, but chose not to. Rather than simply cutting a new piece, my grandpa made me start over from the beginning, measuring and cutting each piece again. This was one of the few times I was ever angry with him. He let me fail and then almost laughed about it. But now, as an adult, I know he wasn’t laughing. He was silently celebrating how this lesson would one day serve me well.
I wish I had heeded his advice on the Camino.
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As we begin our descent, we’re all three saying things like “Shortcuts never pay off!” and “Measure twice, cut once!” It turns out we misread the map and took the wrong road. On top of that, we ignored the clear warning the absence of yellow arrows should have provided. The sun is just beginning to touch the horizon, and we still have a long way to go.
Ted is now at the helm behind Justin, pulling against the gravity of the chair, while I am strapped in behind Ted, leaning back into the nylon harness that runs across my back and is attached to the back of the chair with two carabiners. Painstakingly, we work our way down the hill, zigzagging from left to right and back again to avoid the large rocks and to keep too much momentum from building. When we finally reach the bottom, Ted takes a break and I push Justin down the flat, wide trail toward Uterga.
“No more shortcuts!” Justin shouts into the gathering twilight. Ted and I just laugh.