1 more day and I am off. It is about time. I have spent the last week on a virtual camino, looking over every web page available. In 36 hours I will be in Madrid going to my favorite bar/restaurant, Tio Pepe's, in the plaza del sol eating a doner. What irony, the iconic Spanish restaurant now sells doners, a turkish food brought to Germany by all of the Turks living and working there and then brought to Spain, I guess, by Germans.
  ¶ 10:16 AM

  My rough draft of my last paper is done, handed in, and waiting for comments. Meanwhile as I sit here at my desk thinking of all the things that need to get done before the end of the semester--grade test, clean desk, get travel arrangements ready for other trips once I return from the camino--, I find myself anxious to try out my new boots in a walk in the arb. Maybe as a reward for getting the rough draft done, I will treat myself. Starting this week I have noticed that I have more energy. I don't know if it is from working out or just the excitement building. In exactly 2 more weeks, I am on a plane heading to Spain. Ok. That’s it, I am out of here. I can’t take it any more. I am going to try out the new boots....  ¶ 11:36 AM

  Today I had to break down and buy some new hiking boots. My favorite Salomons split in the soles and water rushes in every time I step in a puddle. The tops have also lost all of their waterproofing. They work about as well as a duck without feathers. They are, however, about 12 years old, so I guess it’s their time. My trip to REI just about finished off my bank account. I picked up some boots, socks, a shirt and some attitude from the clerk. The attitude was free. After REI I went to grab a bit of lunch at Einstein's Bagels. A woman standing in line ahead of me started talking to me about Italian food. By the time our orders were ready, she invited me to eat with her. She told me about her rum tasting in Cuba and diarrhea in Greece. I never found out her name, but she was a great conversationalist. She is the kind of person I would love to do the Camino with.   ¶ 12:10 PM

  As we get closer to the countdown, I feel overcome with excitement knowing that something that was just a dream is coming to fruition so early in my career. Even though I have been thinking about this for over five years, I realized I needed the patience and experience before it could actually happen. It is odd because the whole experience has recently been making me think about goals. When I look back I realize that this is something that not only had I set as a goal for myself to do (take a group of students on the Camino), but, more importantly, that I have also had the patience and foresight to take baby steps to get everything in place, little by little: first biking the camino, then teaching a class on the camino, biking the camino again. Once Andy and I found out we were taking a group, we have meet every Wednesday since October to talk about the trip and get things prepared. And now in our last month before we leave, in addition to getting all the final details sorted out, we have been walking, at first for an hour once a week, then twice a week, then twice a week for two hours. Little steps, its all about little steps  ¶ 12:37 PM

  Ok. I have started to do my own blog, since I feel like I do most of the writing in our group blog. Right now I really should be working on one of my final papers, but I just have a hard time focusing on anything except the Camino. Almost every night I have Camino dream.

I was thrilled to see what a great success climbing was. Everybody had a great time, and there were more routes than our bodies could take. It was a great last meeting before we take off. I am itching to get the climbing pictures up and online, but until the paper gets finished....  ¶ 11:10 AM