Of Trains, and What you Think you have all Sussed out

We had a plan.
It was a good plan.
We had train tickets, we had plenty of time, or so we thought.

See, there's this thing called reality that often occupies the space between what you actually know, and what you think you know.  Sometimes you skate along and your delusions and ignorance never spring up and smack you in the face like that garden rake does to Sideshow Bob, but sometimes they do.
I find that, because of that moment, it's usually a good idea to be earlier than your delusional mind tells you to be for important appointments... or trains that only run once a day.
But when you're travelling with a group there are inevitably persons who just think it's a grand idea to do "one more thing" before heading to the train station, and the gnawing little OCD voice in the back of my head gets drowned out by the "hey don't be a prick" voice in the part of my brain that wants people to like me.
So we show up at the train station at 10:15, a full FIFTEEN minutes before our scheduled departure and find out that our train leaves from a different station, that is going to take about THIRTY minutes to get to.  Do the math, and feel the sinking feeling of a tightly scheduled, well planned trip going round the bowl.
After progressing through several phases of grief we finally came to terms with what we needed to do, how the plan had to change, how we were going to have to push a little harder to get to Santiago, and how, "hey, another day in Madrid isn't the worst thing that could befall us."
Since I'm writing this nearly two weeks later and everything worked out, I can see now how our major blunder actually set up a more epic pilgrimage than the rather easy stroll we had planned for ourselves.  I can posit that perhaps the Spirit was purposefully forcing us into the blunder in order to show us what God thinks of our plans.  All things considered, I still would have liked to be on that train at the appointed hour.
But that was part of my struggle with the whole trip, I wanted to be prepared, I wanted to take everything I might need and I ended up carrying baggage that I certainly did not need.  My obsession with schedules perhaps being one of those things.
I have always wanted to be one of those "go with the flow" kind of people, who can just fall in with whatever the scene brings their way, but after nearly four decades of life on this planet I suspect that I am not one of those people.  I have opinions, I have ways of doing things, these opinions and ways of doing things usually steer me right and keep me out of trouble.  Every once in a while I have a regret for not being more spontaneous, but these occasions are rare enough to be considered exceptions that prove a rather strong rule: be prepared, be on time, don't be a fruit loop.
Pilgrimage is, by it's very nature about dragging you out of your comfort zone, kicking and screaming.  You don't get to be a tourist, you don't get to set the agenda, you can't possibly be prepared for what you're about to journey through and to.  It is a unique journey.  It is a spiritual journey.  Your physical and spiritual being are in the hands of a loving, but sometimes rough, God.  The aches and the questions, the beauty and the struggle, the feeling of utter exhaustion and the elation of being part of something ancient and holy, these are the paradoxes of pilgrimage.  They are not hurdles to be overcome, they are mysteries that draw you to the Way in the first place.  Unlike in other situations, you don't try to avoid them, you don't just grit your teeth and push on through; on pilgrimage, you embrace them, you let them wrap around you and scare the living daylights out of you, they will jolt your spirit back to life.