This week we talk with George Mowrer, a certified retirement coach who helps people figure out how to run the last third of their lives. He shares with us why he decided to hike the Camino Santiago, what it takes to do so, the kinds of people you meet along the way, and the experiences you encounter.
Transcription:
intro 00:03
Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:19
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Changing the Rules. We're sitting here in our nice, new podcast studio in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. And we have our engineer Luke Cagno over here, who's going to make sure that the sound quality comes out. And I'll give you his number later, if you're not happy with that. And we have a guest today and this guest is going to be a little different. He certainly is one of the luckiest people in the world. And let me remind everybody that the luckiest people in the world are those people who design their own lives and live them under their own terms. But we also call this program Changing the Rules. And one of the things we found is that the luckiest people in the world handle rules well. You know, we have all of these rules that we've been given, they start out when we're born, parents give us rules, then the church gives us rules and the schools give us rules and our jobs give us rules. Before we know it, we have all these rules and rules, do two things. Don't do this, or you better do this or else, right? And I think it was Steve Jobs, the president of Apple who came in and said, you know, if you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life. And we have a guy here who I think most of us would say, changed the rules. So, George Mowrer, George is a certified retirement Coach, did I do that right, George? And he's got his own firm, it's based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and he's been helping people trying to figure out how to run the last third of their lives. You know, basically, life after work is over and how to get the most out of it. And, George, before we get into the actual thing we're going to talk about here, talk about what happens in the last third of your life, how many days do you get to do whatever it is you want?
George Mowrer02:17
I mean, it depends on how your health is or whatever. But I love to look at it, maybe in terms of weeks, but if you have 30 years, that's 1500 weeks of your life to do what you know, whatever you want to do. So it's a good idea to have a plan for it.
Ray Loewe02:34
Okay, so you did something that I find absolutely fascinating. It's not necessarily for me, but maybe I'm reconsidering it. You hiked the Camino Santiago. Okay, first of all, what the heck is the Camino Santiago?
George Mowrer02:53
Yeah, so it's a very quick, 32nd history, James was one of Jesus's apostles, after Jesus died and was resurrected and did all that, James, his mission field was that Spain, that Iberian Peninsula, that's where he went, Spain where Spain and Portugal is today, he did his thing, he made a big difference there. He went back to Jerusalem, where he was killed. And his remains were then, in honor of him, were shipped, literally shipped, to where Santiago is, and they're buried in the crypt of the church in Santiago. And so for 1000s of years, or about 1000 years, people have been doing a pilgrimage in James's honor. Everyone is moving towards Santiago to honor him. And so that's the very quick history.
Ray Loewe03:48
Okay, so, although it started on a solely religious basis, it's not necessarily totally religious today, although I'm sure some people do look at it as a religious thing. But you went and you joined a group of people, a throng of people. I don't know how you wanted to characterize it. And you hiked this. So first of all, tell us a little bit about where you went and how long was this?
George Mowrer04:13
Yeah, so I did what's called the Camino Frances, which is the traditional, the most popular of the caminos. There's multiple caminos in Spain, they all end up in Santiago. But I did the one that most people know about and it starts in actually a Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, which is at the very bottom of France, right as the Pyrenees Mountains start and, so it's about 530 miles to Santiago across northern Spain.
Ray Loewe04:45
And this took you how many days to do?
George Mowrer04:48
So I did it, I hiked for 38 days. I took four rest days in there in some of the bigger cities, Pamplona, Burgos, Leone and then Santiago some rest days. I actually continued on the hike to what's called Finisterra, which is, in the olden days was known as the end of the world, which is where the ocean is. It's just an additional three days of hiking on the back end of it. You know, what the heck while I'm there?
Ray Loewe05:14
Okay, so how many miles a day are we talking about?
George Mowrer05:17
Yeah, so I think on average, I was between 12 and 15 miles a day.
Ray Loewe05:22
Okay, so you get up in the morning, and what was the typical day? What did you do?
George Mowrer05:28
Yeah, typical day, probably alarm would go off around 630, I just gotta get up. Simply put my sneakers on, stick my backpack on and start walking. We'd probably go about five kilometers, then stop somewhere in one of the cafes for breakfast. There's the cafe, like, every five to eight kilometers, I'd stopped for breakfast, and then I'd walk another 10 kilometers or so, stop for lunch, maybe have a beer, you know, because you can do that. And the beer and the wine is pretty cheap there. And then maybe another four or five kilometers to where I was arriving, which was usually about two o'clock in the afternoon. I'd find my accommodations for the night, maybe take a shower or maybe a brief nap, I'd walk out to the cafe that was right outside the door and reconnect with other pilgrims that were on their way along the way and hang out there. 6:30, maybe eat dinner, and 9:30 or so go to sleep, and hopefully sleep well and start the whole thing over the next day.
Ray Loewe06:29
Now when you did this, did you do this on your own? Did you do this with a group? What?
George Mowrer06:39
Yeah, so I mean, I very purposely wanted to do it by myself. I didn't want anyone to go with me, I wanted to experience the Camino as a solo hiker. Of course, what happens on the Camino, to everybody, is the relationship piece happens. And, you know, so as much as I started by myself, I probably had interactions, significant interactions, with 50 or so people, and of those 50 people, there are about 25 that became pretty close friends that I still connect with. And then of those 25, 10 probably about 10 people that I feel like I've known my whole life, and that I will continue some kind of relationship with moving forward - have and will continue moving forward. It just blew me away the relationship piece.
Ray Loewe07:31
Now were these people English speaking? What, you know what, what goes on there?
George Mowrer07:39
Yeah. So, I mean that the language of the Camino with quotes is English. Although the locals, I was very surprised that English is not spoken by many of the people along the way. You know, one would think you're in the hospitality business and the cafes and the hotels and stuff. But that really isn't the case. But along the way, English was, generally, the language spoken. The people I hung out with were from Australia, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany. The German speak English really, really well so I was greatly rewarded by that. And obviously, people from the US and Canada were there as well.
Ray Loewe08:24
Okay, so you can do this in a number of ways. But, generally speaking, you had a starting point and a stopping point every day. So you did have a plan to get through there. And you knew about how long you were going to walk and you kind of knew when lunch and dinner was going to be. You just didn't know who you are going to see or meet along the way?
George Mowrer08:42
Yeah, well, I mean, and there were definitely periods of time where I was hiking with a group of people. And then there were times when like, I'm sort of an ambivert. I'm partly introvert, partly extrovert. I like time with people but I also valued and loved walking by myself a bunch too. So I tried to make sure that that discipline was all the way through my process.
Ray Loewe09:08
Alright, so how much did you organize this to begin with? Like, did you go with a tour company? Did you show up at a spot and start walking? What do you do?
George Mowrer09:18
I think for the most part, I read, I had a guidebook that I had read or looked at ahead of time. I follow tons of Facebook groups. I did this May in June of this year, of 2022. And there's a Facebook group of people doing the Camino Frances, May, June 2022, with about 1,000 people that are part of that group. So, lots of insight, lots of things I learned just following that Facebook group. I love the memoirs. I probably read four or five of those that kind of gave me some good ideas of things to do, but I was not part of a tour group. I had my backpack and my sneakers and my walking sticks and just started walking. And I knew that you follow a sign, you follow an arrow the whole way.
Ray Loewe10:04
Follow the yellow brick road.
George Mowrer10:06
Yeah, or the yellow arrow or whatever.
Ray Loewe10:08
Interesting. Now, when you go on this thing, you can go low budget or you can go high budget, can't you? So what's the difference? What happens? What did you do? And then what do other people do?
George Mowrer10:23
Yeah, I mean, the accommodations can be anywhere from six or eight euros a night, which is kind of a dormitory kind of a setting. There's public ones, there's private ones, where you're going to pay, you know, 12 or 14 Euro per night. I spent a lot of nights in those, but there's pensions, there's guesthouse, there's hotels, you know, all the way up. I think I ended up just from a financial standpoint, I ended up, believe it or not, including food about 83 bucks a day is what I averaged spending over the time. So you can do it for less and obviously, you can do it and spend more. I did not use a tour company but people do do that. I just, you know.
Ray Loewe11:13
So, if you want to do this and not have the same experience, you can have somebody pick you up at the airport, they book the hotels for you, they tell you where you're going to stay, they tell you what the restaurants are. And they send somebody along in a van and make sure that you don't fall on your face and get hurt, right?
George Mowrer11:29
You can probably arrange for something like that. Correct.
Ray Loewe11:32
And that was not you. You did it more on the lower budget kind of a thing, interspersing some luxury along the way?
George Mowrer11:41
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure lower budget, I didn't do that. I mean, there are people that spend a whole lot less. I mean, I wanted to make sure I had the full experience of that. I did not have my places arranged ahead of time. I usually, a day or two, looked at okay, I want to go there tomorrow, I want to go there the next day, and then I might make reservations for those. But you know, it also depended on the people around me. You know, we did spend a lot of time together. And so, where are you guys going, you know, that kind of a thing.
Ray Loewe12:16
Okay, so why did you do this?
George Mowrer12:22
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, there's a movie called The Way. And of your listeners, Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez star in the movie. And it is about this journey that I did. And I saw that movie and I'm like, that's it. That's it. I want to do that. And then my church, back in 2017 did a mission trip, where we hiked as a group of about 12 people. We hiked for a week, and then we served in one of these albuquerques, or these dormitory kinds of places. We served for a week and just in that week, I'm like I want to do this. As soon as I can do this, and I can make my budget work, that's when. And literally, this year was the first year that it could happen. And my wife gave me her blessing. And I said goodbye.
Ray Loewe13:15
Okay, so how do you prepare physically for this, if you want to do this? What do you have to do? Do you need to be in shape?
George Mowrer13:23
You do. I mean, you're walking each day. What I'll say is I chose to go at this kind of this 12 to 15 mile but for people that might not be as in shape or want to do it, but they don't think they can do that. So okay, so you do five miles a day, six miles a day. It doesn't matter, you know, it's going to take you longer, or you don't go as far but your level of being in shape shouldn't dictate whether you go or not.
Ray Loewe13:57
Okay, so I'm sure you met some wonderful people and you've got some great stories, so enlighten us a little bit here.
George Mowrer14:06
Yeah, so a good story. One of the Albuquerque's. One of the things I wanted to do in my own head was, I play guitar, and I thought wouldn't it be cool to be among strangers or whatever and play guitar sometime. And one of the people I was hiking with knew that I played guitar as well. I'm a little bit shy like I don't want to just pull out a guitar and start singing. So there were about eight or ten of us around the table. A couple Germans that spoke English but a lot of French people that did not. And we finished up dinner and one of the people next to me said there's there's a guitar in the other room. I'm gonna go get that guitar and bring it back and we're gonna sing. And I'm like, fine, okay, whatever. So she went and got the guitar, brought it back. I pulled up an app on my phone with lyrics and chords and we started to sing songs that everybody around the table knew. It would be like Cat Stevens Wild World. And we did some Beatles songs and everybody knew the songs. And here we were, we couldn't speak the same language. But yet, we were all singing together. And the coolest part of it was at the end of it, we did about five songs, I'm like, I'm gonna end on a high, I'm not going to keep this thing going all night. Then one of the French guys reaches across as if he wants to guitar and we hand him the guitar, and this guy starts playing now. He wasn't playing a chord, like ripping chords, let's sing songs. He's more of a delicate, and he's playing like Pachelbel Canon and you know, things like that. And we're like, oh my gosh, the language of music, has brought us all together. And that the coolest thing about that is after it was over, one of my German friends came up to me and he said, George, this has been my favorite night on the Camino. And that is what it's all about, where relationships come together like that.
Ray Loewe16:13
All right, when you walked along here, how many people did you see that were in groups? How many were singles? Who are the kind of people? You know, one of the reasons specifically is were there single women that you met along the way that do this? And was it safe?
George Mowrer16:32
Well, it was certainly the question of solo hikers. I mean, many start out as solo hikers but very quickly, come together. There's a phrase on the Camino, your Camino family, where people come together and they just form relationships and as a family, or as a group, they spend time together. But at the same time, there's people that want to be by themselves the whole time, male, female, it is a very safe kind of setting or whatever. But I ended up interestingly too, which my wife doesn't love, is I ended up with four other single women that I spent a lot of my time with. And these are four amazing women, I posted some pictures on my Instagram. So, people that were interested, they could follow along and see that. And my wife, I talked to her one day, and she said, so those are your peeps. I said yep, they are, they're pretty amazing, pretty amazing people as well. And I still stay connected with them to this day, which was lovely.
Ray Loewe17:34
Okay. Any other stories you want to get in before we move on here?
George Mowrer17:39
Move on, you know, if something comes up, I'll share.
Ray Loewe17:41
Okay, so again, you did this. I think you told me when we were rehearsing for this a little bit, you did this because you wanted to experience the kind of life that you're telling other people in your coaching job to do. Okay. So would you like to elaborate?
George Mowrer18:00
Yeah, I mean, I think the most effective thing I can do as a coach is live my life exactly what I'm trying to encourage them to do. I'm recently retired from my 35 years in the insurance business, vocational career. And this is a direction that I'm moving. I'm in about three years into this retirement coaching. And people are watching me. How can I tell people to do stuff that I'm not doing myself? And, you know, the Camino is just one example. They think I'm crazy that I'm doing this.
Ray Loewe18:32
Yeah, I think you are a little bit too, but it's intriguing.
George Mowrer18:34
Yeah. I'm breaking the rules, you know, that's what it's about.
Ray Loewe18:37
So, would your family go along on this excursion? Would you do this again?
George Mowrer 18:44
Well, I mean, good question. I do plan on doing it. I mentioned earlier there's multiple caminos and from what I understand, on the Camino Portuguese, there's a particularly beautiful part of it that goes from Porto up to Santiago and is supposed to be incredible. And I would love to do that again next year. I'm not sure my wife this is her thing to do. And she's given me her blessing for me to go do it. But I will say that I talked to my son who lives in Berlin, Germany, and if he can make it work with his job and stuff, now it we it may not be next year but there may be a future year that we actually do this together. So I'd love that. But I'd love to do it again by myself. I don't really care.
Ray Loewe19:29
I'm getting the idea this is not something you would do with a tour group because the tour group is fixed and what you really want to do is you want to explore the new relationships and you want to meet people from other cultures and things like that. Do people just walk this? Do you see bicycles? Anybody riding by horseback?
George Mowrer19:52
Good question. Bicycles. There are a lot of people that do this on bike, maybe there's a little bit less. They can do it quicker. But yeah, bikes are very popular, a little bit annoying. But there are paths, bike areas around some of the mountains, and things that we go over. I saw a few horses. I actually saw a guy with a donkey. He had walked his donkey to Santiago and he was walking back. And I don't remember where he started, but it wasn't Spain and it wasn't France. He may have started as far back maybe as Italy or somewhere like that to hike in. So, only a little bit of that, almost everybody was walking though.
Ray Loewe20:39
Okay, so you're gonna meet new people. What about the relationship with the locals though? And stuff like that? Is this something they're for?
George Mowrer20:48
Yeah, I mean, the locals, not only do they love the pilgrims, which we are called, but it's become a pretty significant part of their economy. I think when I think about Northern Spain, it's wine and farming and then pilgrims. We are in the top three economic drivers for that place. And I think, pre-COVID 2019, I think there are about 350,000 pilgrims that did the Camino in one way or the other that ended up in Santiago.
Ray Loewe21:20
Okay, so we're near the end of our time. What do you want to tell people to do? You know, obviously, you're going to do this again, you enjoy this, you got a lot out of the experience. Any final remarks you want to make?
George Mowrer21:36
I mean, for me, it was the most unique thing I ever did in my life. For me, for the first time in my life, literally, I had nothing on my calendar and no responsibility to anybody. So, it gave me a glimpse of what life could be outside of my normal life, and experience something new and amazing. And, you know, obviously I'd say yeah, hike the Camino, you should do the Camino, anyone can do the Camino. Or you know, people in wheelchairs have done portions of the Camino, it is possible to do with, you know, with proper planning. But it is an incredible, unique thing. So I encourage anybody to do it if they're interested in doing it.
Ray Loewe22:20
I think it's a phenomenal experience. And it's one I never heard of until recently. And now all of a sudden you talk to one person about this and you find there are other people hiding in the woodwork that have done this or are wanting to do this. So you know, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, and let me think about this a little bit and maybe we'll have you back and we'll continue and go into the next Camino and see how that works out. So join us again next week. We're going to be back with our engineer Luke again and Luke why don't you sign us off.
Outro 22:58
Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.