contrasts

I have been writing this post in my head all day as I walked and it has been a LONG day. I don't know what it was this morning, if I packed my bag with the weight perfectly distributed, or my feet finally turned totally into callus, or maybe it was carving 'Nimbus 2008' into the side of my walking stick, perhaps all three, but I flew this morning. I brutalized the camino. I frightened people. My 25 lb bag felt like a pair of helium wings. I passed every single monotonous thing in a much more interesting blur, finishing the first 20km of the day in a mere 3 hours which is around the average pace for a seriously overweight bicyclist. I literally jogged at times, jumping over things that 2 days ago I would have groaned around. This lasted from about 8:30 am to noon. Then as I stopped for water I began asking the distance to whatever this town is called, Azuria or something. By my most conservative calculation the answer should have been about 6km, so when I was told 8 I accepted that since the stage distance has been 10% more than estimated every single day even taking into account the 10% undercount. 8k is normally about an hour for me on average terrain so I set my playlist on my ipod to last about 60 minutes and set out into the progressively crueler afternoon sun. After I about 50 minute with no urbanization to speak of, I stopped at one of those tiny little roadside cafes that are such a relief to pilgrims' eyes. After sucking down a liter of ice water I asked the proprietor the distance to Azuria, '7 kilometers' is what she says without a breath of hesitation. At this point, my feet had long ago left all that glorious callus behind like the retread litter from 18 wheelers on the shoulder of the highway. So I limped on, ironically snacking on a strawberry flavored foot shaped popsicle. I didn´t arrive at my albergue until maybe an hour and fifteen minutes after I ate that damned popsicle. When I stepped up to the desk I literally smelled like a horse that had just galloped through a mile long puddle track of white wine vinager. I have never been anywhere near so drenched in sweat in my life. After I removed my foul socks, I just sat in a chair laughing at my feet. They don´t hurt but I could probably win 3rd place at a science fair with them on shock value alone. They have what looks like a school of tiny jellyfish swarming over them. I literally have blisters on my blisters. But thankfully nothing open or bleeding or infected so hopefully I can pull through the penultimate stage tomorrow. I´m famished so will cut this off at that appetizing point.
adios

PS: new photos are up here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2330493&l=6548d&id=8815627

and I confirmed my supposed 24 km day as being just a hair over 31. According to both google maps and a guidebook in ENGLISH.