Bags are packed

The last few days went by fast. Walked a couple of days with the fully-loaded back pack on for three miles at a time. Mine weighed in at 20.2 pounds including two liters of water. It felt fine carrying it but it felt better once I took it off.

Here are a couple of the guys I walked with on Thursday carrying their back packs. They make it look easy.

Larry and Emilio

As of this morning the scale showed that I was 21 pounds lighter than on January first. My intention had been to get rid of 25 pounds in preparation for the walk during the past three months. I fell 4 pounds short of the target but I'm happy since, as most of you will agree, shedding all that weight in three months is no easy task. I did not follow any diet or took any type pills to loose the weight. I simply walked a lot and did not over eat. The pounds just kept coming off. I hope that the trend comtinues during the walk next month and I can get my BMI low enough so as to no longer indicate "obese."

Larry, Ed, Manolo, Bob, and Emilio

On Saturday we chose not to walk. We're ready! Instead we just met at First Street Coffee to discuss final details. Ed is the happy camper showing his tube of Biofreeze. The rest of us are just happy with our coffees. The happiest one seems to be Bob. He is one of the Gilroy amigos who is not going on the walk. He may know something we don't know...

One week to go!!!

This weekend we took a break from preparations for our walk to enjoy the Santa Clara Wineries passport weekend. 

Spent both Saturday and Sunday visiting wineries in the South Bay and tasting their wines. Some were very good, some so-so, and some were awful. I won't mention which ones were bad.

The winery that continues to produce great wines and has yet to disappoint me is Satori Cellars a relatively small winery near the east foothills in Gilroy.

Emilio, Ed and Manolo at Satori
Some of us drink wine, others water...

Returning to reality, we're just one week away from departure!!!

You can see more pictures here:

Watching "The Way" one more time

Today we got together at Ed's house to watch the movie once again. This time we listened to the audio track with the commentary by the director, Emilio Estevez, and the main actor, Martin Sheen who are father and son in real life. The purpose was to gain as more insight as possible as we get close to our departure. We start the walk two weeks from tomorrow!

Here Larry, Emilio, and Ed watch the movie while they snack on some imported Jamon Serrano. The Pata Negra will have to wait until we're in Spain...

Emilio, Ed, Larry and me pose in front of the tv while the movie is paused.

Just another day in Gilroy...

Almost 10 Miles!

Today I walked a lot. Nearly ten Miles.  A total of 9.9 miles if you're to believe what Striiv reports.

This morning I walked with Al, Emilio and Larry for 3.6 miles and after lunch Carol, my wife, and I drove to Monterey and walked 6.3 miles along the Monterey Bay shore.

Monterey Bay

Monterey is about 40 miles away from where we live but its worth the drive to be able to walk on the trail along the shore from downtown Monterey to Pacific Grove. Beautiful scenery and lots of fresh air.

I thought I was going to end up with a blister on my right foot but fortunately it was just a false alarm. Looks like the new no-blister socks are working as advertised.

Along the way we passed by a small beach that seemed to have been taken over by a bunch of seals having a siesta. The good life...

We also saw this seagull that seemed to be begging us to take its picture. We were happy to oblige.

You have to admit that when you go for a hike along the Monterey Bay shore you get rewarded with more than just a good workout.

This post would not be complete without some stats:

Steps: 21,597
Elapsed Time: 219 Minutes (3 hours and 39 minutes)
Distance: 9.9 Miles (15.9 Km)
Calories Burned: 1610

All of the above numbers come from the Striiv app running on my iPhone.

Farewell Lunch

Today, after our customary four mile morning walk, fourteen of us got together for lunch. We typically get together for lunch once a month at the Sporting Club Lisboa hall in San Jose, CA.

Lunch was great. The meal today was " Carne de Porco  a Alentejana" also known as Portuguese Style Pork And Clams. It consists of chunks of pork, clams, and potatoes. This is how it looked like...

Carne de Porco à Alentejana 

...and it tasted even better. The food was accompanied with an adequate amount of white and red wine, both from Portugal.

Here are the guys going at it:

Clockwise from bottom left
Al Pastor, Larry Marques, George Besson, Ed Mitchell
Emilio de Sousa, Bob Sanchez, Mike Shannon
Manuel Silva, Fred Sousa, Manuel de Sousa
Henry Miranda, Lee Rodrigues, Ron Rodriguez
Behind the camera: Manuel Diaz

Finally, here is a short video clip:

Tomorrow I may have to walk twelve miles to burn off this meal.

I'll keep you posted...

The Gilroy Amigos

I want to introduce you to the group of guys that will be doing the walk. With the exception of my brother Jose who lives in Marbella, Spain, we all live in Gilroy. The "Gilroy Amigos" is a group of twelve guys but for various reasons only the four of us will be doing the walk.

From left to right
Front: Ed Mitchell and Emilio de Sousa
Back: Jose Carlos Diaz, Manuel Diaz, Larry Marques

Thanks to the magic of PhotoShop, Larry has come up with this composite picture of the five of us. Pretty good, I think, considering that my head came from another picture, Jose wasn't even there, and Larry, even on a good day, doesn't look half as good... Larry, if you read this, I'm just kidding.

By way of introduction here are a few details to remember us by:

Larry and Ed are native Californians. This is interesting to note because there are a lot of folks in California our age that were born in other states or other countries. Emilio was born in Portugal while Jose and I were born in Spain.

Larry was born in San Francisco, the son of Spanish parents. He was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and has been retired for about a decade. He is a great flamenco guitar player. Here he is playing guitar after a nice lunch of Jamon Iberico in Emilio's bodega (wine cellar.)

Ed is a native of the San Fernando Valley. He went to school with Donna and Ritchie! Seriously. Ed was a Silicon Valley executive and the only one with any kind of hiking experience in the group. He has been a fountain of knowledge to us sll as we've been preparing for the camino.

Emilio was an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.  He now spends a lot his time either with his buddies, or making wine, or at the mechanic, or at the doctor. Don't worry, he is in great health. Just likes visiting the doc. Emilio makes really good wine (with a little help from his friends.) His Cabernet is, in my opinion, one of the three best cabs produced in the Santa Clara Valley and there are more than twenty wineries in the valley. He doesn't drink alcohol at all and has to rely on the generosity of his friends to consume the wine that he makes. We are always happy to oblige. In case you're interested, he doesn't sell his wine to the public.

Jose, the youngster among us, lives in Spain. He has been to California many times and knows all of us well, especially me. He quit smoking as a new year's resolution in preparation for the walk. We wish him well and we'll make sure he doesn't go into a relapse while he is with us. Jose is a graphics artist and an Apple fanatic. He has so many Apple computers that he could set up a museum. In an earlier life he taught PhotoShop. Not sure if Larry learned his PhotoShop skills from Jose. Jose convinced me years ago to stop using Windows and start using Apple computers. My entire family has used nothing but Apple products for years. iMacs, iPhones, iPads, iPods, the works. Thanks Jose! Our lives are richer because of your advice.

I've been in California since 1980. Worked as an executive in hi-tech and retired 3.5 years ago at the height of the downturn. Since then, I've been having a hard time finding time to do all the stuff I want to do. Preparing for the walk has finally gotten me off my sedentary butt and I am probably in better shape now than I've been during the last fifteen years. Oh, did I mention that when I was in my mid-twenties I was hit by a train?

Now you know a bit about each of us.

The Shopper in Me

Yesterday four of us went shopping.

Shopping for clothes is something I've always disliked. Yet, since committing to doing this walk the shopper in me has awakened. I hope it goes dormant once the adventure is over. This is not my cup of tea...Not my bag so to speak.

One of the important aspects in preparing for the walk is purchasing the equipment and clothes that one will need. Everything you take on the journey you will have to carry on you or on your back for the duration. Thus, it is important to carry the bare minimum and anything you carry should be as light as possible.

During the last few months, as I have been purchasing items for the trip, I've learned a bit about purchasing clothes. Turns out that technology has also been having an influence on clothing manufacturing. There are extremely light weight garments that will keep you cool whet its warm and warm when its cold. They will wick the sweat from your body and will keep you dry. There are clothes that are treated to protect you against insects and even provide some level of SPF (Sun Protection Factor.) Waterproof clothes, waterproof shoes, blister proof socks (more on this later,) etc.

Many of these garments have "Performance" stamped on them. I have to admit, that for the most part they work pretty well as advertised and they are very light compared to cotton or wool.

Yesterday Larry bought a lot of stuff, Ed and Emilio a few items, but I only bought socks. I bought a pair of socks that claim to be blister proof and two pairs of sock liners that also protect against blisters by acting as a friction-reduction layer. Picture this: foot, foot coated with vaseline, foot coated with vaseline inside a sock liner, foot coated with vaseline inside a sock liner inside a dry-foot, no blister, no odor, cushioned-sole hiking sock. And of course all that goes into a waterproof hiking shoe.

You have to feel for the pilgrims that walked before us... Yet they did reach their destination.

My brother Jose will also be walking the camino with us. He lives in Spain and has been to Gilroy a number of times. He is friends with the rest of the guys. Today he sent me this sketch that he drew on the iPad using an App called "Paper 53." How do you like it? I've tried using paper 53 but there is nothing I've drawn that I would be proud to post here. This kind of stuff is his metier.

Let me know if I'm boring you. It should get more interesting once we start walking exactly four weeks from today!

The Genesis

The idea for this adventure had its genesis when Ed, one of the Gilroy Amigos,  saw "The Way," a movie that  takes place along the Camino de Santiago. He told us how much he liked the movie and that it would be wonderful if we decided to do the walk as a group. This was over a year ago. It didn't take the rest of us long to see the movie on our own and come to the same conclusion. It looks doable, folks have been doing it for over a millennium, we all have the time, and we are all in relatively good shape (give or take a few pounds.)

I've been walking with a group of friends for over five years now and for the last three years we've been walking everyday from Monday to Saturday for at least an hour. So, the idea of doing the Camino was not totally out of the ordinary although it was a stretch. One may argue that there is a big difference between walking four miles everyday and walking an average of fifteen miles per day during nineteen consecutive days (actually 20 days; we're planning to take a day off.)

Since we first agreed to go on this adventure we've been refining exactly what we wanted to commit to. There are many caminos all over Europe that pilgrims can take to get to Santiago de Compostela. We settled on taking the Camimo Frances which, besides being the original and the one featured in the movie, starts in France just north of the border with Spain

The entire Camino Frances (the French way) comprises 31 stages and is about 500 miles long. While a couple of guys wanted to walk the entire camino, we finally agreed on starting in Burgos. Burgos is the historical capital of the Castille region of Spain and places us 300 miles away from Santiago by foot.

Let's walk...

Burgos Cathedral

Preparing for the 300 mile walk

As part of our preparations, about 6 weeks ago three of us walked 12 miles from the First Street Coffee shop in Gilroy to the Five Guys Hamburger and Fries joint in Morgan Hill. If you've eaten at Five Guys you'll understand why we didn't mind walking all that way. We departed at 8AM, stopped for a coffee in San Martin for some 20 minutes and proceeded to our destination where we arrived at 12:05. The total time walking was 3 hours and 45 minutes. Two other friends were waiting for us there and we all had a great and guiltless lunch at Five Guys. While I wasn't really tired from the walk, I ended up with a blister the size of a dime on my right foot. Since then, I've learned about the virtues of Vaseline and Mole Skin as they pertain to foot care. The blister took a while to go away since I've kept on walking everyday since then but I'm glad it has finally gone away.

From left to right
Manuel, Emilio, and Ed

We are planning to do another long walk once Larry, the latest member of the group, breaks in his new hiking shoes and gets a bit in shape. We are planning to either walk 14 miles to the Dunneville Cafe in Hollister (they make a terrific tri-tip sandwich) or walk to the Five Guys in Morgan Hill once again and then walk back to Gilroy for a total of 24 miles. This will be the acid test.

I'll certainly dedicate a posting to this if and when it happens.

Four weeks to go!!!

Just four weeks from the start of the adventure!

We are departing on April second, arriving in Madrid on the third, and taking the train to Burgos on the fourth. Come April fifth, we start walking the Camino.

At this stage of preparations, we are almost done acquiring the equipment that we'll be carrying with us throughout the walk. We have also increased the amount of walking we are doing daily so as to improve our conditioning. While still overweight, I'm probably in the best shape I've been during the last fifteen years.

Speaking of conditioning, I have a wonderful application in my iPhone called Striiv  that keeps track of my daily activity. The application keeps track of steps taken, elapsed time while walking, distance covered, and calories burnt. All of us going on the walk have it installed on our iPhones (yes, we all have iPhones) and use it daily to monitor our activity. I really recommend this App.

As an example of the data Striiv provides, yesterday I walked 20,025 steps in 208 minutes, covered 9.2 miles, and burned 1440 calories. Over the last month the numbers are: 375,700 steps in 3,969 minutes (66.15 hours), covered 174 miles, and burned 28,507 calories. One beneficial side-effect from all this walking besides the obvious conditioning is that I lost 7 pounds! There are plenty more where these pounds came from...

Equipment wise, we all have our trail backpacks and have been purchasing so-called "performance" wear which is relatively light and keeps you warm or cool depending on conditions. One can expect to deal with a fair amount of rain at this time of year in the region of Spain where we'll be doing most of the walking so we all have rain jackets and waterproof hiking shoes. I'm also taking a poncho.

My plan is to blog everyday during our trek to keep family and friends informed and make everyone feel that they are part of our journey. This, of course, implies that we will have internet access. I'll be carrying a fair amount of "technology" to help me blog and publish with relative ease. I'll provide details on a separate post before the departure date. This is the first time I blog so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

In a forthcoming post I'll provide details on the set of characters that constitute the "Gilroy Amigos." You will want to be a bit familiar with the five of us...


Hasta pronto.