I go on business trips several times each year to attend conferences and workshops held at various locations around the world as part of my job as a research scientist. In the scientific community, such organized exchanges of information are an important part of the process of announcing new measurements or calculations and providing an important forum for debate and critique. I have always gone on these trips by myself, to be sure that I could spend as much time interacting with the attendees as possible. Next month, my journeys will take me to the big island of Hawaii. This trip will be my third to our 50th state, as I have been to previous conferences on Maui and Oahu. However, this trip will be very different than any other that I have ever made. I will be travelling with my young daughter. Just the two of us. Her and me. Me and her.Her young mind and imagination are already overflowing with thoughts and plans. Swimming in every pool at the hotel, horseback riding, all the sights and smells, the food, the pineapples, jumping on the hotel beds, and maybe most importantly, getting out of school for a full week. I would like to think that she is looking forward to a special, perhaps once in a lifetime, adventure with her daddy. There is just something very special about planning a big adventure like this and looking forward to it and then living it out. My daughter has been telling her classmates and teachers at school about her trip, and I know that she is absolutely loving the attention that she is getting. It all serves to build up her level of anticipation and excitement even more.
In a blog entry from earlier this month (Life's Adventures), I wrote of a recipe for living life outside of the routine, away from the usual crutches of watching T.V., playing video games, or surfing the net. I noted that my daughter has never once said "Daddy, remember the time that we were watching T.V.?" If we are not active and passionate about making time for real adventures, life has a sinister way of quickly slipping past us, the years falling away and leaving us to wonder where the time went. We are left with regret. For once, I listened to my own ideas and the adventure is on.