[Gocamino] - Ultreya rental cell phones

[hme347 at aol.com]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Just a point of clarification.  By buddy, I did not mean to infer a walking companion.  I meant letting someone else know where you were heading and where you might meet up later to check on each other's safe arrival.


Howard





-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Spenger <rspenger at earthlink.net>
Cc: gocamino at oakapple.net; ultreya at yahoogroups.com; santiagobis at yahoogroups.com; saintjames at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, Aug 4, 2010 10:57 pm
Subject: Re: [Gocamino] - Ultreya rental cell phones


You are quite right Howard, it is not a necessity. My trip this last spring was 
my seventh one and I have never used a cell phone outside of the U.S. I did get 
valuable assistance on one trip from someone who had a cell phone and helped me 
to arrange an earlier departure for my flight home.

I used the term necessity only to refer to getting reservations in France, which 
I usually do with the assistance of gîte owners or hotel clerks. Yes, the a cell 
phone would be a convenience to me. On recent trips, there have been times when 
I have felt that it has been very inconvenient not having one. This has not 
always been the case. It is just that in the last couple of years it has been 
difficult finding a public telephone that I can use to fulfill my responsibility 
to make the obligatory calls to home.

Access to the internet on the other hand, has improved immensely. In Spain, 
especially, they are practically ubiquitous along the route - a sharp contrast 
to my first trip in 2000. They are not all that prevalent in France and, as I 
mentioned, the non-QWERTY keyboards in France make it a chore to send messages. 
I am too slow to send anything other than the briefest of notes. I had promised 
my correspondents that I would send on-trip reports and ended up writing almost 
all of them after my return.

As far as the buddy system is concerned, yes, it would be nice to have a 
companion. I had a hiking companion on my fourth trip and it was especially 
useful to have two pair of eyes checking for the white and red way-marks. The 
GRs of France are not as well marked as the camino francés. It also helped a 
great deal that my companion had a better command of French than I. I was also 
fortunate on my last trip to have a couple of young men walking with me on a day 
that was the worst I have experienced on these walks. It was also fortunate that 
they were willing to go at my current slow pace, walking with two canes. No more 
clipping along at 4km/hour. Nowadays it is barely over 3. For that reason, it is 
unlikely that I would find a "buddy" that would be willing to go at my pace day 
after day.

You might well ask: "Why on earth do you do these trips?" In all honesty, I 
consider it to be an addiction - obsessive/compulsive behavior. Some have 
problems with alcohol, other with other drugs or gambling. Yours seems to be a 
love of arguing. Mine is the urge to take challenging walking trips. Carrying a 
cell phone would be one more way of coping with these challenges.

Bob S. 


On Aug 4, 2010, at 1:06 PM, hme347 at aol.com wrote:

I do not recall that any of the refugios in Spain, where most pilgrims travel, 
accepting phone reservations.  As for gites in France, I have no firsthand 
experience, so maybe  a cell phone can be useful.  

I imagine one could easily survive the ordeal of being "lost in a heavily wooded 
area" along the Camino without a cell phone to call a rescue party.  After all, 
it is not darkest Africa or the Amazon jungle.  In summer camp kids use the 
buddy system; maybe 85 yo pilgrims should consider something similar in case 
they fear getting lost.

Your justification for the cell phone still seems a matter of personal 
convenience not a necessity.

Howard Mendes, NYC


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