My shoes were starting to feel the wear & tear of The Road, and I was starting to wonder – with more than a slight amount of consternation* – whether or not they were going to make it all the way to Santiago. And as such I had been asking at almost every stop over the past several weeks if anyone had any duct tape on hand. And astoundingly, up until Espalais I had every single time met with either a gentle-yet-outright rejection or a confused look as to what duct tape was at all … :O

And yet with no surprise in hindsight, Frederic not only had duct tape handy, he had it in a chic shiny black, allowing me to not bolster the strength of my shoe soles, but add a bit of style back into my saunter as well … 😀

“Promise yourself to be too tall for worry, too noble for anger, too kind for fear,
and too bold to allow doubt a beachhead. Promise to think so well of yourself that you think well of others – even when they least merit the same. Most importantly of all, promise to embody these aforementioned vows, and to proclaim them to the world while you live them. Promise to live in reckless faith in the core-centered Goodness of the world, and promise to do your part to do whatever you must to bring the same to the fore.” ~ inspired by Christian D. Larson,

*With size 18 feet, Europe was not the place to be needing new footwear ( 😀 ), and even though it was hypothetically possible that someone in the United States would provide me a new pair of shoes should they ever be needed (Richard Dallet, a dear friend from Chicago, had actually already pre-offered the same), without any personal ID there really was no way for me to retrieve said shoes should they ever even find me on The Road … :O

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt