Whenever I run into a friend I haven’t seen in a while, they always mention the adventures that I post on Facebook. It seems that a lot of my friends are living vicariously through my travels, and I’m glad they enjoy my pictures! I accepted years ago that life is short, so I’m going to have fun and live it to the fullest. Of course, living life to the fullest means including friends in all the fun things I do.
Because getting people together for adventures is so important to me, I’m usually the guy moving all the mountains and herding all the cats to make things happen. Recently I managed to get 30 people together for a Bioluminescence kayak tour with 25 of them going to dinner beforehand. That was work! It can be somewhat frustrating to manage all the activities, but it’s completely worth it for the memories and hearing my friends say how much fun they had. One thing I’ve learned after creating all of these adventures for my friends is that it helps to get through the planning phase as efficiently as possible. Since helping businesses create efficiencies is what I’ve been doing for the past 30 years professionally, you could say that this part comes pretty naturally to me.
A particular inefficiency that has bugged me for years, even pre-pandemic, is how so many restaurants have stopped taking reservations or even doing call-ahead seating! When I’m planning for a group of 8-10 friends to have dinner before a show or celebrate a birthday, I really need to be able to make surefire plans. I was never really sure exactly how to solve this issue, but when I finally did, it happened in a completely unrelated way!