Joop

I looked at my phone just before I left work today....the message icon was lit.

???

No call was listed

???

Joop had called! Just to say "hello"! He left a message at the house too!

I'm sorry I missed his call, but I'm happy too that I have his message and could hear his voice again. That voice pulled me across Spain. Day three when I was trudging up Alto El Perdon, I heard his Dutch lilt - T - h - e -r- e - s - a (kind of all "a"s) in my head. The day I was madly searching for him to find all I had to do was stop and "feel" for a moment, and then to simply turn my head and find him in a teeny bar down a cobblestoned back street in Viana with is back to the door. (That's when I got to whisper in his ear "What's a girl got to do to get a drink around here?")

He's the reason I dropped "Teri" on the trail. Hearing Europeans say my name gave it a romance it had never known. Javier and the sweet gentle Hospitalerio in Viana used Teri - it is a Spanish family-use only nickname. I was honored. I digress.

Oh how I miss the glory of the trail and my "boys" who were always there for me.