This Is The Captain Speaking

No good news will ever follow an airplane announcement that starts with these words - "This is the captain speaking from the flight deck. Due to fuel problems ...."

We are now in a beautiful part of the country for the wedding of a friend's son. It's called the Northern Neck area of Virginia. Specifically, it's Lancaster County.  

Our short flight yesterday to Richmond, Virginia, boarded in Cincinnati at about 1:30 for a 2pm departure. No problems. We were on a small Delta commuter flight that wasn't quite full. It pulled away from the gate, then nothing happened. Eventually we were told that a storm in Richmond was preventing planes from landing there, but the storm was expected to pass. So we were to taxi to a waiting area and take off once the airport was clear. No getting off the plane. 

We waited about an hour, and took off. But once we got near Richmond a new storm rolled in. It turned out that the entire East Coast was slammed with storms, and planes were being diverted to safer airports for landings. In our case the captain came on and revealed that we were low on fuel (I didn't really need to know that) and we were being sent to Norfolk to land. The deal was that we'd fuel up, get new paperwork, and go back to Richmond where the storm was clearing out. Again, no getting off the plane. 

That time we sat for almost, but not quite, an hour and a half. Don't some penalties for the airlines kick in after an on-board wait passes an hour and a half? The flight back to Richmond took about twenty minutes. Once we got off, we'd been on that commuter jet for about five hours. Throughout the whole deal both passengers and crew handled the situation pretty well. 

We grabbed our rental car at the Richmond airport and got to our 7pm wedding rehearsal dinner at 9pm. They saved food for us. 

Jene with a J

Jene will leave for Spain a few weeks before Jim and I will. He'll start his hike along the Camino at the base of the Pyrenees on the Spanish side of those mountains. We'll meet him in Sarria on August 1st about a week's hike from the end point. Some pilgrims begin walking the Camino south out of Paris, hike a good hunk of France, cross the Pyrenees from France and continue across northern Spain. This pilgrimage started in medieval times and the reward was a plenary indulgence. What did the pilgrims do when they got to the end in Santiago? There was no Delta flight back to Paris. All they could do was turn around and start walking again. I'm guessing that pilgrimage could've taken six months to a year back then. On the other hand, the Church was pretty liberal with those plenary indulgences. I'd trade a year of hard travel for a ticket to an eternity of heavenly bliss any day. 

Back up for a second to the spelling of Jene Galvin's name. When Jene was finally old enough to ask about that spelling, our Italian-born mother told him that it's the French way to spell his name. Either Mom was stupid and didn't know that Jene isn't the French spelling of any known first name. Or, she figured that Jene would grow up too stupid to know he had a bogus French name. To give herself cover she gave him the middle name of Maurice. I think she simply forced the spelling in order to make sure the three of us had the same initials – JMG. She stuck to her story about the French spelling to the day she died.  

There's a sanctioning body of some sort that issues Camino de Santiago passports. Pilgrims get them stamped along the Way. Note that mine shows I'll travel on foot. My alternatives are a bicycle or a horse. 

Fudge Down Below

Jerry, Jim and Jene Galvin are off to Spain shortly to walk part of the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route that leads to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. It's thought that the remains of St. James the apostle are buried there. The pilgrimage dates back to the 10th century. The young brother, Jene – age 70, will hike and camp his way across most of Spain. The older brothers, Jerry – age 73, and Jim – age 71, will meet Jene down the trail and hike the last week with him. I can't speak for my brothers, but I'm going for the adventure of it, and if some spirituality seeps in, that's great. You have the picture. Three brothers, all in their 70's, spending many days together alone. Something we've never ever done before in our entire lives. 

Jene is a very experienced and very skilled backpacker and camper. Often camping in harsh conditions, while carrying everything he may need for a week or more. He's obsessed with carrying as little weight as possible. He held my underpants in his hand one day and pronounced them "too heavy." While Jim and I have done some hiking and camping, we aren't even in the same league with Jene. He's in the major league. In comparison we're still playing grade school ball. 

Jene's the one, or so I thought until today. 

Last weekend he saved me considerable money by bringing me stuff I need, but won't now have to buy for what could be one-time use. Among the supplies is a high-tech inflatable sleeping mat that goes under the sleeping bag he lent me. Then he showed me an ingenious way to inflate it. He had painstakingly fashioned a tube out of duct tape. He had cut a hole in the corner of a plastic garbage bag and made an airtight seal of the bag hole onto the duct tape tube. The tube fit perfectly and tightly over the mat's air nozzle. With the tube on the nozzle, he'd shake the bag to capture air and quickly close and roll it up, forcing the air out of the bag into the mattress. What may have taken 15 minutes or more to do by simply blowing into the nozzle, he did in maybe two minutes. He offered to make such an assembly for me to use with the mat. Knowing that Jene probably spent an hour or more making his assembly, I told him I'd make one myself with the help of a friend, Tim Fischer. 

Today I showed Tim the mat and told him what we needed to make, and how. He looked at me like I was nuts. I had a quick doctor's appointment, so Tim grabbed the mat and told me to meet him at his house afterwards. When I got there he had $3 worth of tubing and plastic plumbing parts out on a table. He slid the tube over the nozzle. Perfect tight fit. He slid a plastic part with threads on it into the other end of the tube. Another tight fit. Reaching inside the bag, he screwed a plastic cap with a hole in it onto the threaded part that was in the tube, thereby locking the bag in place in the threads. He then punched a hole in the bag so air could pass through the cap, through the threaded piece, through the tube and nozzle and into the mat. Assembly time (separate from going to Home Depot) – 42 seconds.

Tim said, "Tell Jene I'll make one of these for him with the leftover parts. Oh, and he'll fudge his shorts when he sees this."