con qué soñaré
i’m pretty sure that roncesvalles originates from roncasvalles, which in turn is a shortening of roncas en los valles. you snore in the valleys.
once pilgrims have crossed the pyrenes, they are rightly exhausted and in desparate need of sleep. they arrive into roncasvalleys, the valleys of snoring. don’t believe me? i have a recording on my phone.
the ratio of snorers to potential sleepers is something like 1:4, which means sleep is a bit unevenly distributed - among pilgrims, in terms of deepness since i can’t believe the snorers are sleeping very deeply either, and in terms of cumulative minutes spent sleeping throughout the night.
i’m proposing an official renaming of roncesvalles into roncasvalles, the international capital of snoring. and at least a yearly repeat of the world championships of snoring.
it is surprising that one cannot guess who snores the loudest. when i walk over at 3:14 to the next cubicle of four and look at the somewhat corpulent italian guy, he looks as me desperately, guessing my intention to shut up once and for all the loudest snorer in the dormitory, and quickly points to the other bunkbed, where a minute lady seems to be in the running for top-sport of snoring, both in terms of loudness and creative versatility of snores, chuckles, like an engine starting over several times but not quite, saliva gymnastics and more. i refrain from murdering her and softly touch her shoulder to let her know that tu roncas muy fuerte, señora!
minutes later it’s back to the same old story, the snores resume. there are deep, sonorous snores, whistling snores, probably coming through almost blocked nostrils (it’s just physics, mate), then there is this chorus of snore, repeat, echo from the walls and answers from the other snorers, evenly distributed all around me.
so, after three quarters of a night spent contemplating alternatives of how to either wake up all snorers or how to get them to sleep (permanently), i give up and think about stoicism instead. acceptance. what is under my control and what is not.
the snoring clearly isn’t. not even mine, i dare say, in case my family would like to add that i’m throughing snores in a glasshouse here. eventually i get what amounts to a total of 5 minutes sleep and am now all ready (not), fresh (not) and packed up for the hike to zubiri. more later.
what garmin has to add: recovery time delayed - poor sleep slowed your recovery, duh!
