Camino de Santiago (part 2)
Just getting to the Camino is a major effort. As I mentioned in part 1 of my story, I decided to start in Le Puy, France and travel by bicycle. One challenge to this plan was getting a bicycle. There are services that loan bicycles for the purpose of doing the Camino. However, the ones I looked at only seemed to deliver bicycles to starting points in Spain only. The expense was also significant at about 500 Euros.
It would prove to maybe not be the best decision I ever made, but I decided to purchase a bicycle in Le Puy. This would turn out to not be so easy when I started looking about one week before my flight. I wanted a mountain bike, but what few bicycle stores there are in Le Puy simply didn’t have any in stock. I then tried Leon, a much larger city, and they didn’t seem to have any either. It seemed there was a bicycle shortage in France. It also seemed bicycle stores didn’t carry much stock, but people tended to order them in advance to be shipped to a bicycle store, which would assemble it.
To make a long story short, the best I could do on a one-week notice seemed to be the Obrea Vector and have a luggage rack added to the back. This is what I would call a touring bike. It wasn’t the mountain bike I wanted, but was the best I could do.
With that problem solved as best I could, I left Las Vegas on August 30 for Lyon, France. This necessitated making connections in Seattle and Frankfurt, Germany. Door to door, the trip took over 24 hours. After finally arriving in Lyon, I spent a full day there to see the city.
After a full day exploring Lyon, I set off on the train to Le Puy the next day by train. This would necessitate switching trains in Saint Etienne. In said small city, there were a lot of scraggly looking young people wearing backpacks waiting for the same train. Although I didn’t know for sure they intended to do the Camino, I was pretty sure most of them were. It was my first indication the Camino would be crowded. I already knew from other sources that September is a popular time to go.
When I arrived in Le Puy, I first walked to the bicycle store to pick up and pay for the bicycle I ordered previously. I then went to the cathedral that marks the starting point in Le Puy and purchased a credential. The purpose of a credential is to collect stamps from places along the way, to prove you did it. I should have purchased a shell at this point, which pilgrims attach to their backpacks. However, I wasn’t aware of that custom at the time.
Signage at the cathedral said there would be a pilgrim’s mass at 7:00. I interpreted that to mean 7:00 PM. Europe, I had forgotten, uses military time. Had they meant 7:00 PM, they would have said 19:00. So, I made the second trip for nothing.
Bright and early the next morning I was off from my simple hotel by the train station. The actual beginning was through a door at the Cathedral, but I felt I was already there twice and didn’t need to lug my bicycle up the hill on which it was located. So, I made my way through the city until I rejoined the Camino. It didn’t take long for the Camino to take the form of a rocky trail shortly outside of town. It was too steep and rocky to ride the bicycle, so I walked it up a long hill. The terrain kept changing from rocky trails to dirt roads.
That morning, I did my best to stick to the Camino. However, one section that started out doable gradually turned into a thin and steep downhill trail in thick brush. I felt like a fool trying to carry my bicycle down this stretch. Other pilgrims on foot must have thought I was a total idiot. When I finally reached a small road, I gave up on my plan of following the Camino. Instead, I would mostly take paved roads that were in the same general area as the Camino.
I had a very nice lunch in Sauges. Afterward, it was more rolling green hills. The weather was cloudy and the weather pleasantly cool. Due to the hills and carrying a lot of weight, I was not covering as much ground as I had planned back home. Studying my maps at lunch, I planned to get to the small town of St-Alban-sur-Limagnole and hope I could find somewhere to stay. However, at about 3:30 I went through the very small town of Le Sauvage on the way. The only business in the town was a nice looking albergue (known as an auberge in French). It had a big deck with pilgrims containing pilgrims drinking beer and wine. I decided I would crash there if they had room, which they fortunately did.
The cost for a bed, dinner and breakfast was 40 Euros, which is very fair. After the host’s son went over the rules and I made the payment, he gave me my first stamp. In the picture above you can see two stamps, but the credential comes automatically with one.
While waiting for dinner, I met my first fellow pilgrim, a man about my age from the UK traveling alone. He seemed very surprised I was doing the Camino in France on a bicycle. By this point, I had yet to see another bicyclist. Later I would meet a family of four from Australia. They were a friendly bunch. The older woman of that group had been to Woodstock.
At about 7:00, we enjoyed a delicious homemade dinner. The man from the UK was being a bit argumentative with the younger man of the Australian group. When the conversation turned to the authenticity of the Vietnamese food in Melbourne it got quite heated. The Australian man tried to lower the temperature by finding some agreeable closure to the topic, but the man from the UK had to have the last word.
Later that evening, I shared a room with about six beds with just the man from UK. He recited to me a list of everything that man from Australia said that wasn’t true, in his view. Harboring hard feelings over what I felt were minor differences of opinion on matters of little importance was not the friendly conversation I was expecting on the Camino.
Overall, day one was a good beginning. In part 3, I will tell you about my day getting to Nasbinals.
Q: Using a balance scale and four weights you must be able to balance any integer load from 1 to 40. How much should each of the four weights weigh?
A: They should weigh the first four powers of 3: 1, 3, 9, and 27. Here is how to balance loads from 1 to 40:
1 W=1
2 W+1=3
3 W=3
4 W=1+3
5 9=1+3+W
6 9=3+W
7 9+1=3+W
8 9=1+W
9 9=W
10 9+1=W
11 9+3=W+1
12 9+3=W
13 9+3+1=W
14 27=W+9+3+1
15 27=W+9+3
16 27+1=W+9+3
17 27=W+9+1
18 27=W+9
19 27+1=W+9
20 27+3=W+9+1
21 27+3=W+9
22 27+3+1=W+9
23 27=W+3+1
24 27=W+3
25 27+1=W+3
26 27=W+1
27 W=27
28 W=1+27
29 W+1=3+27
30 W=3+27
31 W=1+3+27
32 9+27=1+3+W
33 9+27=3+W
34 27+9+1=3+W
35 27+9=1+W
36 27+9=W
37 27+9+1=W
38 27+9+3=W+1
39 27+9+3=W
40 27+9+3+1=W
October 24, 2024 Puzzle:
Three people, Alex, Bob and Cathy, need to cross a bridge. Alex can cross the bridge in 10 minutes, Bob can cross in 5 minutes, and Cathy can cross in 2 minutes. There is also a bicycle available and any person can cross the bridge in 1 minute with the bicycle. What is the shortest time that all men can get across the bridge?