Ready to go

Since mid-July, we’ve been preparing for the Camino.

We’ve been establishing a routine of going to bed at 9:00 p.m. every night to assure a good night’s sleep before getting up at 6:00 a.m. By 6:30 a.m. dressed and wearing our walking shoes/boots/sandals, we begin walking outside, in and around our neighborhood. We typically have walked 2-3 miles before returning home for breakfast. After breakfast, because of the extreme heat and humidity, we’ve driven to our local YMCA and walked another 2-2.5 miles around an indoor track. This has been to establish a routine, similar to what we will use daily for our walk across Spain.

In parallel, to our physical preparation, we have been identifying and gathering those items we will need to carry in our backpacks to support our 2-month, 500 mile walk. During the past week, we have been paring down to only essential items to minimize the weight we have to carry on our backs.

Preparations for Camino 2022 are essentially complete. The final tests have occurred in recent days as we loaded and weighed our backpacks (Linda’s at 21lbs and Jim’s at 23lbs) and walked with them to re-acquaint ourselves with the optimum settings and adjustments (after 3 years of non-use) to assure maximum comfort during our walks.

Yesterday, we received, via email, our approved Spain Health Control document. This, along with our passport and Covid Vaccination/Booster ID card will enable us to clear customs at the Madrid airport.

Tomorrow morning, we”ll drive to Charlotte where we will leave our car with our daughter, Amy, and then check-in at CLT for our flight to Madrid.