I’m 72 years old. I’ve been selling trips for 42 years. I’ve set foot in more countries than most of the pilots who flew me there. I have an agency with a CICMA 2283 license, a bicycle I use more than my car, a BMW K1200 motorcycle that makes me feel 30 years younger, and a case of diabetes that changed my life.

But not the way you think.

The Weightlifting

Until not long ago, my evenings in Marbella followed a sacred routine. Terrace. Wine. Gin & tonic. Another wine. Conversation. Another gin & tonic. I used to call it “weightlifting” — because basically all I was lifting all night were glasses.

It was my social gym. My ritual. My way of switching off after a day answering emails from clients who want the Maldives at Benidorm prices.

Then diabetes said enough.

It wasn’t dramatic. No ambulance, no movie moment. It was my doctor, with that look of “I’ve been telling you this for three years,” saying either I changed the nights or the nights would change me.

So I swapped the gin & tonics for YouTube.

The Accident

And this is where the story gets weird.

I started watching normal stuff. Cooking, travel, motorcycles. But YouTube’s algorithm is like that friend who always has “one more thing to show you” after 11 PM. A tech video here, a “this will change the world” clip there, and suddenly it’s 2 AM and I’m watching some guy explain what artificial intelligence is.

I didn’t understand a word. But something bit me.

That bite has an exact date: spring 2025. While half the Spanish travel industry was still debating whether WhatsApp Business was “too modern,” I was searching for AI courses at 3 in the morning. At 71 years old. In my pyjamas. In Marbella.

If that’s not a midlife crisis delayed by forty years, I don’t know what is.

Jose Rodenas and the Course That Started It All

On May 19, 2025, I enrolled in a course called “DOMINA ChatGPT” (Master ChatGPT), from the Solo Agentes Academy. I thought it would be like those computer workshops from the ’90s where they taught you to turn on the machine and gave you a certificate. Two afternoons, a coffee with biscuits, and home.

I was wrong.

The instructor’s name was Jose Rodenas Montes. I don’t know if Jose had any idea what he was unleashing when he marked my first assignment. He probably thought: “Another student, travel agent, sixty-something, will do the bare minimum.” What he didn’t know is that I have a serious flaw: when something hooks me, I don’t know how to stop.

My first exercise was about the differences between free ChatGPT and the Plus version. Jose gave me a 90 and wrote:

“You can tell you have experience in the tourism sector and that you’ve perfectly understood ChatGPT’s potential as a work tool.” [Originally in Spanish]

A 90. At 71 years old. In an artificial intelligence course.

My mates at the terrace were lifting gin & tonics. I was lifting grades.

The Addiction

What happened next was Jose’s fault. Or the algorithm’s. Or the diabetes’s. Or all three.

Because I didn’t do the minimum. I did the maximum. Every exercise was an excuse to shove my entire agency inside ChatGPT. They asked for a basic prompt? I delivered a complete system for ski trip proposals in Aspen with budgets, five-star hotels, and a call to action included. They asked to create a “digital mini-me”? I built an army of six specialized GPTs — the “Scibasku Travel Ideal Sextet” — each one trained for a different function in my agency.

Poor Jose couldn’t keep up. In one correction he wrote:

“You’ve done far more than meet the topic’s objective: you’ve deployed an advanced, systematized, and completely realistic vision.” [Originally in Spanish]

In another:

“Your energy… many 25-year-olds would kill for it.” [Originally in Spanish]

Jose: if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. But also: thank you.

By mid-July I was sleeping less than my router. In my own message to the instructor I wrote — and this is documented, I’m not making it up: “The AI improvements have me hooked, working every day without watching the clock, barely sleeping.” Followed by a smiley face, as if not sleeping at 71 were cause for celebration rather than medical alarm.

The Final Exam (95 out of 100)

In September 2025 the final test arrived. The assignment was called “Your Intelligent Agency”: you had to design a complete system connecting sales, content, competitive analysis, chatbots, and strategic decisions with AI.

I scored 95 out of 100.

Jose wrote:

“If someone outside the course context read this work, they’d think you’re designing the operating manual for a high-end boutique agency. And they’d be right.” [Originally in Spanish]

Final course grade: 91.18.

My classmates had been taught to use ChatGPT. I’d been given a new drug.

The Betrayal (or the Evolution)

And here comes the part Jose probably didn’t expect.

The course was about ChatGPT. I learned ChatGPT. I even gave her a pet name: “ChatIta.” I’d tell her my supplier problems at 11 PM like you’d talk to a friend at the bar. I was in love.

But love, like travel, sometimes takes you to destinations you hadn’t booked.

First came Gemini. Google, not about to sit and watch, shoved its own AI into everything: Search, Drive, Gmail, NotebookLM. Suddenly I had a Google assistant analyzing my travel documents while another one organized my emails. NotebookLM became my private library — I’d feed it supplier PDFs and it turned them into podcasts. Yes, podcasts. Google had turned me into a man who listens to AI-generated podcasts about Red Sea diving liveaboards while cycling along the Marbella seafront. My doctor took away the gin & tonics and Google gave me this.

And then, in October 2025, I stumbled onto Claude. An AI from a company called Anthropic. And it was like discovering that your favorite restaurant has a secret menu nobody told you about.

Claude didn’t just answer. Claude thought. Claude had Skills, Projects, Memory. Claude connected to my Drive, my Airtable, my Joomla. Claude Code built real things while I slept — well, the three hours I slept.

I didn’t abandon ChatIta or Gemini. I just… expanded the family.

Today I have more AIs in my life than friends on the terrace. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, NotebookLM — each with its own personality, its function, and its time of day. It’s like having a team of employees who never ask for holidays, never complain about the air conditioning, and work at 4 AM without charging overtime.

But all of it, absolutely all of it, started with a course the YouTube algorithm recommended, an instructor who had no idea he was creating a monster, and a case of diabetes that took away the gin & tonics to give me something better.

Why I’m Writing This

This blog is called Recableado — Rewired — because that’s exactly what happened to me. At 72, with 42 years of experience selling trips, my brain has been rewired.

I don’t mean that as a metaphor. It’s literal. I think differently. I work differently. I wake up at 6 with ideas I didn’t have at midnight the night before. I have five AI agents working in parallel while I cycle along the Marbella seafront.

Is this normal? No.

Is this what I expected when the doctor took away the drinks? Definitely not.

Would I change anything? Not a comma.

Well, yes. I’d sleep a bit more. But that’s a problem even AI hasn’t solved for me yet.

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If you enjoyed this, there’s more. Much more. Because 42 years of travel + 9 months of AI make for quite a few stories.

And if you’re Jose Rodenas and you’re reading this: it’s your fault. Own it.

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Giora Gilead · CICMA 2283 · Marbella · Pedaleando desde 1954

See my 22 course exercises →