You can sit down on the toilet

20 miles, That’s our longest day when we get on The Camino and it’s always been our goal to reach that mileage before we left. It's more than a goal, it's the farthest that any of us have walked in one go, it's also 105600 feet, 17.3795 nautical miles, or approximately 316,641.6 grilled cheese sandwiches (trust me, I'm an accountant).

We met in the middle and started at the Santa Fe Bike Path again, with a goal to make it all the way to the end and back this go around. We wandered off to Guajome park for a visit to the geese and the bathroom, then started at the 8.9 mile marker.

We wandered the bike path, seeing more parachuting people drifting out of planes, and plenty more greenery than we saw last time we were out this way given the rain that we've seen over the past several weeks. 

The miles passed easy for a long while as we chatted about our plans for The Camino, all the things that we're eating when we arrive, how much coffee we're going to drink, and how much we're looking forward to absolutely everything. Suddenly as we got within 2 miles of our turn around point things started to feel harder, and we decided to stop at a bench for snacks and a sugar boost. The sun was out in full force and it felt so good to be out in the warm after being cold for so long. Southern Californians don't abide a lack of sunshine. 

It was about this time that I noticed my hands swelling and it was agreed that I was reaching sausage-like status. I had sushi the night before, and the accompanying soy was likely the culprit. To try to alleviate my swelling I put my hands up at head height and opened and closed my hands in turns. This had the added effect of making it look like I wanted to wave at everyone passing, but didn't really know how. Confused bikers waved, smiled in a pitying way, nodded, and stared just a little as we passed them. I kept up my role as general greeter, but my swelling wouldn't give up. 

We finally got to the freeway, passed under, and crossed the street to find ourselves at the Pacific Ocean. We sat down for snacks and Carrie quickly declared the salami sticks that Jo'l and I were eating gross. "They're melting and translucent!" which didn't stop us. During snack time we all had a round of Advil and took a chance on something called Gu energy gel in a flavor called Chocolate Outrage. Tasting notes were as follows: It's like really strong chocolate pudding if it were stored on a shelf next to soap. It's just chocolate pudding, but more chocolaty I can't taste the soap. It's goopy but if it weren't this chocolaty I wouldn't be able to handle the texture. It was full of sugars, electrolytes, vitamins, and things to keep you going. 

Todays cheese: Trader Joes Toscana with coastal syrah

After we left the ocean to get back on the path Carrie and Jo'l agreed that the advil and gu were doing good work and they were feeling good. I was starting to get tired and feel quite a bit of pain in my hips, so I stared for a minute then said that I didn't think my chocolate outrage was working just yet. It wasn't working a mile later, or a mile after that. The problem wasn't the gu, it was me. I was swelling, I was hurting, and I was feeling better and better about my decision to go forward with the injections that my surgeon offered before the trip.

We paused at an asphalt pad to stretch and take our packs off and as she was squat stretching Carrie mentioned how good it would feel to lay down on the warm, sunny ground. No matter how hard it was it suddenly sounded very appealing and I put my hands on the warm ground. Jo'l promptly declared that nobody was laying down and tried to get us to stand up and move on. It wasn't immediately effective, but after telling us that she would leave us there and call our husbands to tell them that we were sleeping on the ground we dragged ourselves up and hauled our packs back on. 

When it started to get really hard on the way back and we were all getting tired I started running through the pieces left in my head: The field that looks just like this one, under the freeway, the airport, the long straight part with the wall, under the freeway, the straight part with the park (and bathrooms!), under the freeway, backyard dog gallery, neighborhood, riverwalk, parking lot.
When we finally reached the park with the bathrooms I had swollen so badly that I had to remove my ring and bracelets, and had fallen behind with a little hobbling. It was relieving to know that even though I fell behind, I wasn't so far behind that I couldn't see my friends, or that I couldn't catch up with a short pause from them. We were all excited to get to the restroom and Carrie suggested that we set our packs down on a picnic table, and Jo'l swiftly said no, that if we wanted to sit we could sit on the toilet and be quick because she knows how long it takes to use the bathroom. She watched our packs while we used the bathroom then we watched hers while she went in... and promptly sat down. Jo'l was not impressed when she returned.

Fortunately the park is only 2 miles from the car, and we made good time and speed on the last bit back to the parking lot. There was some debate about whether we were going to arrive at mile marker 8.8 or mile marker 9.9 with SOMEBODY (Jo'l) trying to make it a longer walk as usual. it turned out to be mile marker 8.9 and we got back to the lot just as a family was unpacking their car, we also arrived as we reached 19.89 miles instead of 20 so we kept the new people entertained while we marched around the parking lot reaching our last bit of distance. After laughing at us thinking we were trying to reach a smaller step goal they were encouraging after hearing the number we were reaching. 

We hit our goal, high fived since we were sweaty and went home for a corned beef feast to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.