April 5th: Askizu to Irun

I needed a good day… not that I deserved one, but I needed one all the same… maybe I deserved one… I’m not quite sure how that works…

The morning ride was good for the first 17kms and then my front tire went half flat again… it was kind of holding air but also kind of not… I googled and luckily I was about 4kms away from a bike shop… I pumped the tire up as much as possible and counted down the metres and seconds to the shop… made it! This little shop was a real rollercoaster… at the entrance the guy saw me and started waving and talking in Spanish telling me his objections that I couldn’t understand… I protested and said I just need a new tire, pointed to them on the wall… silence, he looked at me and then went over to the wall, and then let me in the shop, and then warmed up a little more, and then set me up at the back of the shop to change out my flat and I even got a coffee hahaha! What a rollercoaster… also he showed me how to put my fat tires back on and literally did it in under 5 seconds… what takes me half an hour to do!!!! My mind was blown!

Anyway, back to my tire woes… I began the change, inspected the old tire, and VOILA! The littlest of thorns had found it’s way in between the treads and poking the tube… I cannot explain the absolute jubilant feeling of finding the cause of your flat, running your hand on the inside of the tire and feeling that little sharp prick… it is sooooooooo satisfying!!

This was just the win I needed today… pumped up tire, bought a spare one as well as some tubes, pumped up morale, only 10kms from San Sebastián and onto Irun and the end of my Camino!

I stopped in San Sebastián for a coffee and pinchos, which is the Basque version of Tapas… I picked the tortilla de patatas coz that’s what I knew and also this yummy cruller type thing… I was looking at my phone for directions out of town and this guy saw me and won the distinction of being the first person to ask me “are you lost?” on my trip… it turns out, as it often does, that he wasn’t a San Sebastianite(?). He was Argentinian! Anyway, he really wanted to help and went to get his bike and led me towards the direction out of the city… nice guy!

Notes from two years later: It has often been my experience that non-locals are often the most friendly. They may have been in the city for a year, or ten years, and might consider themselves locals now, but they maintain this empathy for lost lonely and vulnerable explorers. I have never really belonged to the place I’m in, nor here, nor at home wherever home is… and I often find myslef observing the people around me, biasing their personalities with presumptuous histories of their lives. For better or for worse. Back to the day!

Short ride into Irun, but scary, on a main freeway and lots of traffic… just put my headphones in and rode and it was ok! I knew the drill for this Albergue, no dinner and it was gonna be crowded, since Irun is the starting point for the Camino del Norte… so stopped at a supermarket before, got some sandwich stuff, a tomato too, and was walking around and to my surprise, found peanut butter!!! The only time I’ve seen it in Spain, and it is the last store on the day my jar of peanut butter from Canada runs out…. Win win win!!!

I fed myself at the Albergue, it is crowded and with a lot of fresh faces on their first or second day… a lot of… interesting people… tomorrow I’m dead set on a campground, and happy for it… today was a good day! I deserve another good day tomorrow… I think…

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