Behind the Albergue Door: Inspiration Agony Adventure on the Camino de Santiago

straightened up clumsily to return the farmer’s intent stare with a kind of half-wave of his overflowing palm and a kindly purple grin exposing a mouthful of similarly purple teeth. His florid grin soon faded as the irritated farmer proceeded to berate him through the window in rapid Spanish (meanwhile Laynni was backing up in comically slow fashion, palms up in the universal sign for dubious innocence, and I continued to linger at the corner fumbling unsuccessfully with my fly). He was speaking too fast for us to understand everything, but I did catch a few phrases here and there such as “my grapes”, “thief”, “industrial strength pesticide” and “permanent pubic hair loss”.
    Is there somewhere I can enjoy my cold tortilla and hot chocolate without staring at pruned feet covered in festering wounds?
    No, not really. One of the enduring traditions of the Camino, and the main reason I was there, to be honest, is taking off your shoes and socks in restaurants. It is a great way to air out your sweaty feet, give your filthy socks a chance to become just a tad drier, assess your current blister situation, and wiggle your toes at Scandinavian women in a racy and suggestive manner.
    We did encounter a few adorably optimistic restaurants along the way, mostly towards the end, that actually put up signs to the effect that you were not actually welcome to brandish your bare and unhygienic lower appendages in their place of food preparation and consumption. But I really doubt they were serious, I mean, what’s the big deal, right? Plus, we were leaving soon anyway, and that big blister, the oozing one, well, if you’d seen how bad it was a few days ago, well, you’d be thankful you were looking at it now instead of then, believe you me.
    On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing the absolute slowest (Mit Romney’s tongue) and 10 being the absolute fastest (a low-fat butter slide), how fast does Camino gossip travel?
    I’d have to give it a solid 8. Just slightly faster than the 7 of a Swiss luge, but still just a hint slower than the 9 of post-Glenfiddich foreplay.

Zoe
    Twitter, for those of you who remain unfamiliar, probably on principle, is yet another massive social networking website that specializes in taking our society’s declining attention span down yet another level by limiting its users to posts of 140 characters or less. Roughly two lines. It is used for many different purposes, from sharing stories and websites with friends to impressing strangers with your own unique brand of wittiness to promoting products to even communicating with business networks. Usernames come in the @dinojay2 format, which is also how you direct a “tweet” to a particular person. Hashtags, for example #thirdnipples, are used to categorize your tweet for discovery by people who have an inexplicable desire to read really truncated discussions about a certain topic they happen to be really interested in for the moment. In order to stay under the 140 character limit links to websites are often shortened online, which is why they end up looking like a random jumble of consonants and numbers and nothing like the normal hyperlinks you are used to seeing (i.e. http://www.touchmeagainscotty.com/fetishes/toiletbrushes). In Zoe’s case they denote photos but are not live links so just use your imagination.
    As for Zoe, well, she may not be precisely factual, but doesn’t she sound exactly like someone who would tweet mean stuff about you when you drink too much? I know, right? Please, read on!
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    Zoe Mills is a single 26 year -old Californian who just completed her Historical Literature degree in May, then spent the summer waiting tables at a tourist bar on Huntington Beach. This was actually her 8 th year of university and 2 nd degree (she previously received her Philosophy of Modern Music diploma), plus she has about half the necessary credits toward a Women’s Studies degree. Not surprisingly, she hasn’t received any job offers related to these fields as of yet (although hasn’t really applied for any either) and considers her life to be in a serious state of limbo. She got the idea to hike the Camino from a couple friends who did it last year, then she watched the movie “The Way” and decided to give it a shot. She is an avid surfer and is reasonably fit although she has not done much actual hiking previously. On the other hand, she does speak some Spanish. She has travelled quite extensively