May 29th

Wow this was a lot harder than I expected.  This morning we started out after spending the night in a rented house with the French group.  Quinn and Hayden started on the actual trail over the mountains just ahead of a large storm.  Deb and I started up the road to Valcarlos.  The boys would be in Roncasvalles tonight we would take two days to get there by road.  Valcarlos was about 11 or 12 km so shouldn’t have been a problem.  What we didn’t take into consideration was brand new batteries on Debs chair.  I think they were supposed to be broke in or something because the first day out was all uphill pulling full trailer with all Debs medical stuff and me with full pack.  We had gone maybe 6 or 7 km and Debs chair started blinking, low battery, not good.  We still had about 5 or 6 k to go uphill.  Well nothing to do but get after it.  We unhooked the trailer and pushed the chair about a km up the path, found a flat spot faced her towards me and went back down.  Then I would pull the trailer up to her, then back for the backpack.  It took us almost all day but hey at least it wasn’t raining.

At the last km we got to an albergue and there were 4 Spaniards there who had already showered and ate, when they saw what we were doing they all came down and helped me bring up the trailer and pack,  Thank you gentleman.  We spent the night there, it was pleasant.  Nice meal and they helped me set up to send Debs bag ahead to Roncasvalles the next day.  That should alleviate some of the stress on the batteries because tomorrow was going to be steeper and a little longer.  No worries at all.