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We were hitching to Pamplona and it was hot near one-hundred, and it was early evening around seven PM. We were in the back-seat of a car and all sweaty. We came upon a river that paralleled the road and this continued for miles and miles. It was the biggest mistake of the entire European trip and one of the worst mistakes of my life. We sat in that back-seat and drooled about swimming in that river, which was wide like the Mississippi and shallow. We sat thinking each others thoughts, and we weighed the ride, which would take us a good distance, or we could spend hours of swimming in a natural river like kids.
I was the conservative. I was just out of the army. I was provincial. I go the distance and get it done. She was wild, fewer rules, more-free, expansive in her ideas, bombastic in action, and in this instance she didn't act for me. I was for going the distance by stance, but would have swam in an intuitive instant - if. She was the wild and free life preserver. I didn't act and she didn't act. The whole trip, and perhaps my whole European tour, may have been worth this one act. But she blew her philosophy to my mind, and I lost respect for her. She probably lost respect for me, for not being the take charge man - into the water.
I liked her. I liked her freedom. Lets be honest quit playing games. Lets be real. Lets do what our bodies feel. I was going to attend a Hemingway book Event. I had read Pamplona in a book, and now I was going to attend its reality.
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