We have a tradition in our family. After every major trip we document a report of between 20 to 30 pages with photos, flight/hotel/car details, other trivia – then print and put the pages in heavy duty plastic sheet protectors and into a three ring binder they go. The electronic document itself goes into Carbonite and various other archives.
Every new trip gives a chance to revisit the trivia from previous ones.
Examples from the hundreds of pages:
- October 28, 1998: we took our shortest flight ever from Honolulu to Lihue on the island of Kauai – 95 nautical miles.
- July 5, 2002: Strausberg rail ride in Amish country.
- April 27, 2003: Tommy competed against a Cameron Myhrvold from Washington State at a chess tournament at Hyatt Orlando (wonder if he is related to the famous Nathan?). Rita competed against Chris Rogsby from Indiana.
- July 7, 2004: Mom and Dad took a quick tour of Sam Gimignano in Tuscany while the kids slept.
- July 13, 2006: Tour Guide Jim Crew at Edinburgh Castle joked the Scots being tight-fisted chose One O’clock to fire the daily cannon to save on gun powder.
- July 2009: Most of our hotel rooms across a week’s drive across Bavaria, Switzerland and Austria ended with the number 04. What is the statistical probability of that?
- July 19, 2010: Rita’s commentary : Mom asks the waiter to sing happy birthday to Tommy. Instead he calls a band of wandering Romanian musicians who serenade Tommy. So American and Irish cousins at an Italian restaurant in Amsterdam listening to Romanians. Can you get more international?
Last week as Margaret and Tommy drove across California, I vicariously traveled with them by updating their trip report each night. I observed how much easier and richer the documentation has become with today’s technologies. So, I used FlightAware to track their flights and added their flight maps to the document – maybe Tommy’s kids will find fascinating 30 years from now the altitudes they were at while near the Grand Canyon and the air traffic control centers they were handled by. I used almost real-time credit card statements to get precise information on restaurants they ate at and got photos and menus from sites like Yelp. I used Google Maps to trace their 1,500+ miles of driving (see below). Their Flips and Blackberries made photos a breeze.
When they got home, I asked them to review my draft and add their commentary. Tommy thought the pomegranate juice ruined his dish at Francis Ford Coppola’s restaurant, Rustic in Geyserville. Margaret raved about an old book store they had stumbled across in San Francisco. A quick check at the credit card site and a search at Wikipedia got us a photo of City Lights – founded in 1953 and with a colorful past.
Why still print out the reports? Well, poor HP needs our support:).
Seriously, nothing beats a family get together around those three ring binders. The plastic protectors have kept even the old trip printouts in great shape. And technology allows us to keep improving the content. And yes, those binders with all that plastic are pretty heavy so an iPad or a Nook might replace them soon.
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