Happy 40th Anniversary Mom & Dad!

The story of how my parents met is one of those tales that happen so rarely. The year was 1969, my Mom was on an epic voyage around the world, traveling sometimes by air and mostly by freighter…which was a cheaper way to travel back then. On a stop in Lesotho, she was introduced to my Dad who was a South African cricketer. As the story goes, it was love at first sight…my Dad walking into a restaurant and stopping in his tracks when he saw my Mom’s over-the-shoulder glance and smile. They spent about 10 days together, traveling from Lesotho to Durban, to Cape Town and back again, and then my Mom was off on the rest of her journey.

The way it worked back then was that if you wanted to reach someone traveling by boat, you would send a letter to the next port-of-call and passengers would pick up mail when the ship came in to port. They exchanged a few letters this way, and in one letter, my Dad suggested that they travel around Europe together. Of course my Mom responded that she wouldn’t travel with someone unless she were married, so in the next letter, my Dad proposed. It was a bit funny because my Mom never got that letter, and her next letter to my Dad made no mention of his proposal. But eventually they figured it out and my Mom accepted. The rest is history. My Dad emigrated from South Africa to the US, they were married in my Mom’s native Connecticut and then they headed  to Arizona where my Mom was living at the time. That was 40 years ago today.  Here’s the story on Tripline:

It’s missing some detail since my parents just moved (from my hometown outside of Boston back to Connecticut) and they don’t have internet access in the new house yet, but my Mom said she’d add more details from her archived letters and diary soon. I love this story.

Congratulations Mom & Dad, and thanks for everything.

-Byron

Day 1, off and running

Well, it’s been an amazing day.  We’ve been watching the new trips come in for the past few hours and we’re loving it.  It seems that everyone has lots of stories to tell, so we hope we’ve made it easier (and more fun) to put these things together.

When you’re building something, it’s always hard to tell if anyone is really going to enjoy (or even understand) what you’re making, so it’s incredibly uplifting to see that people do.  We’ve already seen a wide range of trips created so I thought I’d post a few of them here.

Here’s Kathy Park’s latest.  She’s obviously a huge Steelers Fan.  Dare I tell her that I’m a life-long Pats fan?

These are two examples of how you can use Tripline every day.  I think it’s really neat to see these – it’s the reason we built Tripline to be flexible.  While the genesis of the idea came from travel, and that’s where we’re focused, we also understand that people don’t go on big trips all the time.  But everyday life does involve moving across the map, and so do many of the things we’re interested in…sporting events, bands, authors, stories, etc.  We felt that Tripline as a content creation application shouldn’t be restricted to a certain subject matter, so we were always conscious of supporting these sort of things.  One example is dates.  Since we got such a kick out of creating historical trips, we built in support for dates in the distant past.   It meant a bit of extra effort for us , but I think it’s worth it.  Anyway, it was too much fun to not do it.  Same goes for famous/fictional characters.  A bit of extra effort, but how could you release something that supports historical trips like Paul Revere’s Ride and not give someone the ability to add Paul Revere?

Why is all of this important?  Well, it goes back to the question of what travel is.  In the parlance of our time,  travel = vacation.  But really, travel is moving across the map.  And whether you do it for fun, for work, for adventure, to see family or just dream about going somewhere some day, we hope Tripline is what you use to put your plans and your stories together.   We’re going to keep making it better.

It’s been a long day, so I’m going to get some sleep.  We’ll be back in the morning checking out your trips.

Welcome to Tripline!

– Byron