A New Adventure

Therese and I are now retired after long careers in banking and higher education.  So what do we do now?  We need an adventure.

Some of you followed my experience running the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon in 2010 (see my blog -- "Mark and Gerry's Big (Everest) Adventure").  Although I would love to go back to that part of the world again, I needed to come up with something that Therese would be willing to do, too. Otherwise, I would be in divorce court.  It had to be something that was lengthy, adventurous, a physical challenge, and a different cultural experience, but not the extremes of a third world country half way around the globe.

Over the last couple of years, I have learned of traditional pilgrimages from many points in Europe to Santiago de Compostella in northwest Spain.  These pilgrimages, or caminos, lead to the Cathedral in Santiago which contains the remains of St. James.  El Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) is an important religious pilgrimage that has been taken by countless people since the Middle Ages.  In modern times, the Camino has become popular again for spiritual, cultural, or adventure reasons in addition to the traditional religious purpose.

This seemed to be just the ticket for a post-retirement adventure and it met all of the requirements:

• we would be gone eight weeks
• we would carry everything on our backs from hostel to hostel each night
• we would have to cover 610 miles of mountain trails, hot and dusty roads and traverse major cities and rural farmlands, hopefully not getting lost
• we would be living a very different life than what we have in Richmond, Virginia.

The promise of a two-month trip to Spain was what enticed Therese to agree to retire from the job she has loved (ha, ha!).  I've been retired from my job as chief information officer for Virginia Commonwealth University since the first of the year.  While my career in higher education and information technology was interesting and rewarding, I wanted to retire at a relatively young age so that I could take more long term trips to experience different parts of the world and the U.S. Think of it as an extended bucket list.

So the deal with Therese was: I'm booking two plane tickets to Spain in early June and returning at the end of July.  You are going to have to retire if you want to come along.  Her last day in the office is this Friday!

I will be keeping this blog to document our experiences preparing for and walking the Camino de Santiago.  It will be one way of keeping our family and friends up to date on where we are and what we're doing.