questions from 1st timer

[bill deutschman]

bill deutschman
455 hillside avenue
klamath falls, or 97601
olcbillafireserve.net

comments by bill deutschman:

As far as bike shops, repairs etc. go, the Confraternity in London lists
them in the cyclists guide to the Camino.  Well worth the purchase.

There are bike shops in all of the large towns, Pamplona, Burgos, Leon and
many of the small towns BUT they close at noon on Saturday and all day
Sunday.  In addition you have to find them which adds another hour or so to
the Saturday closing.  We cycled into Ponferrada about 11 am Saturday and
couldn't find the shop before it closed.  So I had two flat tubes and the
patches that I though were good were not working.  So what to do?  We ate
lunch, tried again to patch the tire, inflated it and started riding for
Villafranca del Bierzo.  Managed to get about 20 minutes on a fill.  The
rest of the day I pumped as fast as I could and then rode as fast as
possible before the tire went flat.  Finally got to the refugio and spent
about an hour cleaning and re-applying the patch so it could "cure" all
night.  It then held for about 3 hours before getting soft enough to
require more air.  Finally found a bike shop in Sarria Monday morning about
10 am and was able to get a new supply of REMA patches.  I won't mention
the name of the bad patches.  We carried two spare tubes for the bikes and
one for the trailer.  It was the trailer tubes that had most of the
problems and I couldn't find any spare tubes along the Camino.

 The ride is not particularly difficult, although it would be wise to have
some training hours put in.  The hardest day for us, was what looked
like the easiest day on the map......45 km on the flat meseta against a
strong westerly wind.  Our skin felt like rhinoceros hide at the end of
the day!

As far as keeping in touch with those back home, only your cell phone
company will be able to tell you if they operate in Europe.

US cell phones will not operate in Europe.  They use a different protocol.
 I just got through asking all the providers in our area as we are leaving
for the Netherlands next month.  Our German friends bought a Spanish phone
with an hour of time for about $75 US.  It was a promotional sale.   They
used it to call home and to make reservations at the next town.  Sure was
nice to know that we had a room for the night but I wouldn't have spent the
money.

email is great as you can set up a group list before you go.  Everyone gets
the
same message, but you time is not taken up in internet cafes.

There are lots of them along the way but many were jammed with kids and
were slow as in 5 minutes to load the hotmail web page and two or three
minutes to access an e-mail.  Finally quit the one in Santiago and came
back the next morning at nine when everyone else was still sleeping.  Then
the speed was what I expected.  The other problem is the keyboard.  The
French ones are impossible as they exchange many letters, i.e. a and q we
finally gave up and told our friends to spell check the messages and then
guess at the other letters.  The worst problem were the numbers.  You had
to press shift to get numbers.  Ask at the information kiosks as they know
where all the internet cafe's are located.  Unfortunately many of them open
at 8pm and go to 3am.  We also found access in youth hostels and libraries.
 Make sure you try your group list before you leave on several computers.
 We discovered that there was some problem in France and we were only
sending to the first 15 or so on our list.  It seemed to change from place
to place.  We finally set up two lists with 12 or 14 on each list.   We had
good luck with hotmail but the Spam was terrible.  I had to delete 40 or 50
adds every week.  Not a problem at home but it was when the connection was
slow.  We found Internet connections in Pamplona, Najera, Burgos, Aruza and
Santiago.  There are probably more but that gave us contact every three or
four days.

Buen camino!
Mary

Have fun and carry lots of water.  We had Camelbacks with 2 liter bladders,
I carried to liters in cages and my wife carried a spare liter as well.  Be
sure to stop at the Ezequiel (sp) Pulperia in Meledia.

bill