Tag Archive for: spain

Camino-Rebooting

Rebooting a Relationship on the Camino

Time Travel

Starting our walk on the Camino each morning, we were smug setting off under a pre-dawn, pale blue and pink sky, the only sound being the chirp of waking birds. But in the northwestern corner of Spain, the sun didn’t rise until 9am. My brain had a hard time reconciling the position of the sun with the time on my watch. No wonder the Spanish sleep late and eat dinner at 10pm, their internal clocks are synced with their natural world. What would happen if we all cashed it in at 4pm during the long New England winters?

After 210KM on the Camino, we went to Morocco to continue being tourists, however, we were Red Sox fans first and foremost. Having downloaded the post season MLB package for international viewing on his tablet, my husband and I were trying to participate in the fun even though we were 9 hours east of the LA start. Before game 5 of the World Series, I set my alarm for 4am, a pattern that worked on previous nights in order to take in the game’s final innings. But on that particular night, all we saw was the last pitch being thrown. The announcer exclaimed the Red Sox had clinched in three hours and fifty-eight minutes. John and I looked at each other, confused. Sure we were groggy, but then I remembered the damned King. The king of Morocco had ruled 24 hours before the clocks were supposed to change that he wished to abandon daylight savings time. Problem was our phones, watches, and alarms didn’t get the message. Note to self: old-fashioned, battery-operated travel clocks are still a good thing. Missing game 5 of the World Series paled in comparison to all the people who missed flights, trains, and business appointments. The King could do what he wanted but Apple products had minds of their own.

Timetables were in disarray and flight times had to be adjusted by an hour so that connections could be made. The citizens were up in arms about the autocratic decision and so in that confusing, passive-aggressive manner of a local protest, still three days later, waiting in line at Passport control, chaos unfolded. Screens had times that conflicted with boarding passes. Dozens of people pushed to the front and cut under ropes, worrying they were going to miss their flights. Not a pleasant ending to our wonderful journey.

When we landed in Boston, I had just enough time to lay my head on the pillow before heading to Scottsdale for an author retreat. It was one week post the Moroccan King’s decision and now it was the US’s turn to put its clocks back. Fine, except I learned Arizona is the exception. Why was I experiencing two local governments in the span of one week that felt the need to be different? Crossing multiple time zones and jet lag, caused an insecurity that I was late and never really knew what time it was. You’ve all heard of FOMO, I was experiencing FONKWTIS: Fear Of Not Knowing What Time It Is. Was this some sort of sign from the universe? Who knew traveling in October could be fraught with such complications.

Forget the world’s clocks and time zones, my body’s clock is what was really thrown off. Fatigue had caught up – being in another continent and attempting to watch the play offs and the World Series was probably a bad decision…. But all the travel west meant I had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and fight off collapsing at the end of the day. For a weekend trip to AZ I wouldn’t bother to conform. I wrote long essays (like this weird one) in the middle of the night and was waiting for the hotel gym to open in the morning. I had lived a full day before breakfast.

I soaked in every bit of desert sun before leaving for the airport. The sun’s rays and rise and fall provided the energy and charge my brain required. Flying east, I’ll soon be home for the first time in three weeks and hopefully prepared for four months of darkness.