Our "Walking" Story ... so far. (A timeline)

- 1953 - 1995ish - I was "younger" and was able to keep in decent shape naturally, and without much effort.

- 1995ish - 2010ish - I had slipped into the habit of many people my age, and developed lazy eating and exercise habits.

- 2010 - the doctor said "diabetes".   I said "if you can handle this with diet and exercise, you'll never give me medication."  I began my diet changes immediately.

- The spring of 2011- the diabetes nurse and nutritionist said, "you should be walking at least 10,000 steps a day." I snorted coffee through my nose, and asked, "when would anybody find time to do that?"  Later that week I saw comic strip that said," how much time will you have when you're dead?"  Good point!

- May 2011- I started biking (because I still was not enamored with the idea of walking) and biked hard all summer, doing 30 km many days, 50 km a few days, 100 kilometers one day and some kilometers every day,  the biggest problem with this was that my wife didn't like biking at all and we wanted something to do together.

- fall 2011 - Lorraine and I started walking together and discovered that we enjoyed the walking ... and each others company. Almost immediately we began laying plans for walking vacations.

- Summer 2012 - began, and completed, the Fundy Footpath. (in the right-hand column of this blog, you should be able to find a link to a 20 minute video we put together of that experience.  (A word of caution here.  Believe the literature when it says that the Footpath is not a trail for beginners.)


- 2013 - I began logging my daily walks and walked 3200 km that year

- winter 2013 - we began to discuss the Camino de Santiago, and interestingly enough both of us felt compelled that we should do this. Almost immediately began making serious plans to that end.

- June 24, 2013 - on my 60th birthday I walked 60 km. (that's the day that I found out that 30 is no where near half of 60. LOL)

- June 21, 2014 - according to "our Camino Clock", we are 63 days from the beginning of the greatest adventure of our lives - at least since raising four daughters. That will be August 24, which is our 40th anniversary, and the day we have planned to leave Saint Jean Pied de Port,  head over the Pyrenees and walk across Spain.  The tickets are purchased. The sabbatical is arranged. The gear is in place. The boots are broken in. And we are ready to go. 

There's only one sad thing I can think of. We still have 63 days to wait.