There’s something nobody tells you when you decide to reinvent yourself at 72: taking off looks a lot like dropping dead weight.

I’ve lost 20 kilos in the last few months. Literally. Diet, cycling, quitting the gin & tonics (I already told that story). The doctor’s happy. I’m happy. My bicycle is probably happy too.

But it turns out losing weight wasn’t enough. I also had to lose databases.

Five databases. I thought I had one.

When I sat down with Claude to audit my management system — the system I’ve been cobbling together since I discovered AI can do more useful things than write poems about sunsets — I found something fascinating.

I had five databases in Airtable.

Five.

I thought I had one. Maybe two, being generous. But five is the number of a man who’s been creating tables the way you open browser tabs: with enthusiasm and no intention of closing any of them.

The first was my CRM. Client files, destinations, dates. Legitimate. Necessary. Sound. So far, so good.

The second was a diving liveaboard catalogue. 74 boats. 31 routes. Real data. Useful. Made me feel somewhat professional.

The third… well, the third was the same as the second but in a different format. Like owning the same jumper in navy blue and dark blue and swearing they’re different.

The fourth was a “demo” I created one day to test something. It had fields called “Nmae” and “Surnaem.” Without the letters in the right order. I’d clearly built it at eleven at night.

And the fifth was an imported CSV that at some point I thought I’d need “just in case.” The “just in case” never arrived. The CSV did.

Five databases. 42 years selling trips and my digital infrastructure looked like that drawer we all have: the one you never open but you know contains a Nokia charger, three pens with no ink, and a battery you can’t tell is new or dead.

The Token Was Literally Expired

But the best part wasn’t the ghost databases. The best part was the token.

I’d spent two months trying to connect Airtable to Claude. Two months. The access token — that digital key that lets one system talk to another — wouldn’t work. Try, fail. Try again, fail again. Change one thing, break another.

One Tuesday at eleven at night, after the umpteenth failed attempt, I got up from my chair, went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water (in another life it would have been a Larios gin), and made a sound that my neighbour probably interpreted as an existential scream.

It was.

The problem, I discovered the next day with a clear head and Claude’s help, was that I’d been using an old token. One that had expired weeks ago. The new key had been sitting there the whole time in a configuration file, saved, ready, functional.

It was like spending an hour looking for your car keys and discovering they were in the pocket of the jacket you’re wearing. That level of productive humiliation.

When I finally connected the right token — pat2iGc08... for the technically curious — it was as if someone had switched the lights on in a room where I’d been tripping over furniture for months. Suddenly, Claude could read my data. And the first thing it did was tell me, with that polished British courtesy that AIs seem to have, that I had five databases and two of them were completely useless.

Thanks, Claude. Very kind.

From 5 to 3, and 141 Fields Later

The cleanup was surgical. Well, as surgical as a 72-year-old man deciding which databases deserve to live can be. It was more like one of those Marie Kondo shows but for nerds.

“Does this database bring you joy?”

“No.”

“Out it goes.”

We killed the duplicate routes database. We killed the demo with the vowel-deficient fields. And what remained were three clean, organized databases that actually made sense:

The CRM — 17 real client files, 27 fields each. Clients, destinations, dates, statuses. Everything I need to manage a trip from the first phone call to the “Giora, that was the best trip of my life.”

The quotes system — Three interconnected tables. Quotes, line-item breakdowns, price options. For when a client wants to know exactly why the Maldives costs what it costs (spoiler: because the Maldives are far away and they’re gorgeous).

The diving catalogue — 74 liveaboards with their photos, their highlights, their prices. 31 routes with seasons and skill levels. This database is my secret pride. Because if there’s one thing I know how to do after 42 years, it’s knowing exactly which boat you need to board to see hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos, mantas in the Maldives, or mandarinfish in the Philippines.

Total: 141 fields audited. Every single one verified, typed, documented. I know what’s in each cell, what format it has, and what it’s for. It’s the first time in my life I can say that about my IT system.

141 fields. Sounds like a lot. But a trip has many moving parts: the flight, the hotel, the transfer, the insurance, the dates, the client’s preferences, whether they want window or aisle, whether they’re allergic to something, whether their anniversary falls during the trip and you need to arrange something special. Each field is a detail. And details are what separate a good trip from one your client talks about at every dinner party for the next five years.

Drop the Weight, Take Off

So here I am. 20 kilos lighter. 2 databases lighter. A token that works. And 141 fields that for the first time in my life I can see, touch, and understand without having to call anyone.

I don’t know if this is what people call “digital transformation.” It sounds far too grand for a man who basically went from having a messy junk drawer to having three tidy shelves. But it works. And when something works, it doesn’t need a fancy name.

I’ve dived with hammerhead sharks off Darwin Island, currents dragging me around like a leaf. That’s scary. But it’s also scary to open a database at eleven at night and discover you’ve been feeding a table called “Imported table” that has zero records.

The fear is the same. The adrenaline, curiously, is too.

The difference is that from the sharks you come out with a story to tell. From an Airtable audit you come out with a system that works.

And honestly, at 72, both feel equally valuable.

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Giora | Viajes Scibasku | CICMA 2283