JJinWI
Active Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- 2018 French Way
2022 French Way
I'm flying out tonight & will start walking my first Camino from St. Jean on May 22. (YIKES... )
Seems like everybody has a story on how they got to the Camino. Thought I would share mine...
My journey to the Camino began a long, long time ago in 1984 (when dinosaurs still walked the earth ). I was working in the sports marketing department for Miller Brewing Company at the time (responsible for our sponsorship of the US Olympic Hockey Team) and I was sent to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now called Bosnia-Herzegovina) for the 1984 Winter Olympics.
I drank a lot of these in Sarajevo! It was like jet fuel… 16% alcohol!
I heard about the Camino from some random drunk guy from England in a bar in Sarajevo. He mentioned (after we drank many pivos) that he had walked the Camino de Santiago and said that it changed his life.
Intrigued by his tales, when I returned home, I headed out to the Milwaukee library (since Al Gore had not yet invented the internet) to research the Camino. I was fascinated by what I found and thought it would be a grand adventure to undertake. But life soon got in the way (went back to school for my MBA, got married, changed jobs, blessed with a great son…) and I forgot about the Camino.
Fast forward to late 2016, I was doing some planning for our upcoming summer vacation and I was Googling (yes that is a word) something about hiking adventures in Sedona, AZ, and the Camino showed up in the search. I clicked on a YouTube link and watched a pilgrim who just completed the Camino talk about their experience – it took me back 32 years to that dark smokey bar in Sarajevo and hearing that Brit talk about his adventures on the Camino. Instantly, I decided that it was time to do the Camino de Santiago.
Unfortunately, I was fat and out of shape. At the time, I weighed 220 pounds (100kgs) and realized I would have to lose a lot of weight if I was to do the Camino. During the summer of 2017, I lost 55 pounds (25kgs)! I lost all this weight without doing any real exercise (except I took the batteries out of the remote control and had to get up and change the TV channel ) I actually went on the Keto Diet.
So, 55 pounds lighter, I made the final decision to do the Camino in the fall of 2017.
It is weird to think that I probably would not be doing this adventure had it not been for meeting a random drunk Brit in Sarajevo (I guess God and alcohol work in strange ways )
So that's my story...
Cheers,
-jj
Seems like everybody has a story on how they got to the Camino. Thought I would share mine...
My journey to the Camino began a long, long time ago in 1984 (when dinosaurs still walked the earth ). I was working in the sports marketing department for Miller Brewing Company at the time (responsible for our sponsorship of the US Olympic Hockey Team) and I was sent to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now called Bosnia-Herzegovina) for the 1984 Winter Olympics.
I heard about the Camino from some random drunk guy from England in a bar in Sarajevo. He mentioned (after we drank many pivos) that he had walked the Camino de Santiago and said that it changed his life.
Intrigued by his tales, when I returned home, I headed out to the Milwaukee library (since Al Gore had not yet invented the internet) to research the Camino. I was fascinated by what I found and thought it would be a grand adventure to undertake. But life soon got in the way (went back to school for my MBA, got married, changed jobs, blessed with a great son…) and I forgot about the Camino.
Fast forward to late 2016, I was doing some planning for our upcoming summer vacation and I was Googling (yes that is a word) something about hiking adventures in Sedona, AZ, and the Camino showed up in the search. I clicked on a YouTube link and watched a pilgrim who just completed the Camino talk about their experience – it took me back 32 years to that dark smokey bar in Sarajevo and hearing that Brit talk about his adventures on the Camino. Instantly, I decided that it was time to do the Camino de Santiago.
Unfortunately, I was fat and out of shape. At the time, I weighed 220 pounds (100kgs) and realized I would have to lose a lot of weight if I was to do the Camino. During the summer of 2017, I lost 55 pounds (25kgs)! I lost all this weight without doing any real exercise (except I took the batteries out of the remote control and had to get up and change the TV channel ) I actually went on the Keto Diet.
So, 55 pounds lighter, I made the final decision to do the Camino in the fall of 2017.
It is weird to think that I probably would not be doing this adventure had it not been for meeting a random drunk Brit in Sarajevo (I guess God and alcohol work in strange ways )
So that's my story...
Cheers,
-jj
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