I’ve said the line, “one of the best parts of the trip is…” countless times, usually with a different ending to the sentence. The scenery, the food, the laughter, the nature, the Kimptons, the bonding. All great, and true. But another one-of-the-best-parts is the people. Each stop, each park, each hotel, each city brings new people into our lives. People we will most likely never cross paths with again. A few feel like long lost cousins and we bond instantly. Few seem like answers to everything that is wrong with the world. However, most are just nice, normal families or couples or fellow adventurers. We usually have a small handful of things in common, chat about those topics, then move on, never to see them again. Once our paths part, we as a family often wonder about their next stop and their next adventures. Those are the people we talk about at dinner the rest of the trip, the rest of the year, but we never get to know the rest of their stories.
It dawned on us recently, that we are probably those same people to other families. We questioned if others wonder about our next steps. So we bought business cards. 250 of them. So we could share the link to this site and maybe answer those same questions we have of them.
Most likely, we are just another small moment in a handful of peoples’ summer days, but if they do sit around their dinner table and wonder if we made it to the Rockies, or the top of Mount Ida, or the Florida beach, or back home, they will have a physical reminder of where to find the documentation of our adventures.
Seems pretty cool and practical, but then I remember we have business cards for our family. How freaking weird. Zoe just rolls her eyes at the nonsense. But not Ellie. She is proud to have business cards to hand out to her friends and teachers. Each day she comes home and says, “I need to bring in three more tomorrow, one for so and so, so and so, and so and so.” She is handing these things out left and right. And that’s fine, but then you have to remember that I teach at the same school she attends, so I’m certain there are parents who will find a dirty, torn business card at the bottom of a backpack on the last day of school and will have a lot of questions about our family. It won’t matter though, because we’ll be hitting the road to hand these out out across the country.
