Great Adventures

Have you ever had something go completely wrong...and years later realized it became one of your favorite stories?

Amy and I were driving down I-95 on our way to a beach vacation in Florida. Our destination was my aunt and uncle's condo in Sarasota. It was around midnight just before we reached Georgia.

Amy was driving.

I was sleeping.

Hey—don't judge me. We had an agreement.

I woke up as Amy was pulling off the highway onto some rural road.

"Where are we going?"

"We need gas."

I looked at the gauge. Yep. The needle was on E. But I knew my car.

"We have enough gas to make it to the Welcome to Georgia gas station."

There was just one problem.

There was no Welcome to Georgia gas station.

Amy made the mistake of trusting me, got back on I-95 South...and I went back to sleep.

A little while later, she screamed. I woke up and immediately announced the obvious:

"We ran out of gas!"

We slowly rolled to a stop halfway up the bridge taking us into Georgia.

Oops.

I had an idea. "You steer. I'll push us over the top of the bridge. Then we can coast down the other side."

Seemed reasonable at the time.

So there I was, in the middle of the night, pushing our car up the bridge. As we crested the top, the car started rolling on its own.

"Slow down!" I yelled.

Amy had a different idea.

"GET IN!"

She opened the passenger door. I ran. Fast.

For a moment, it felt like The Dukes of Hazzard. I caught up, jumped into the moving car, and we coasted down the bridge.

We gained maybe half a mile.

We didn't care.

We laughed.

Eventually, we walked to a rest area, called the police, got a ride to a gas station, bought a gas can, and were back on our way.

Amy and I have retold that story countless times over the years. And it makes me smile every time. We've had a lot of adventures like that—some planned, some definitely not.

But I've come to realize something.

Shared experiences create connection.

The dinners are nice. The vacations are great. But sometimes it's getting lost, running out of gas, discovering a little town, trying a new restaurant, or doing something completely out of the ordinary that creates the stories we tell for the rest of our lives.

Those stories become part of our story.

So, here's your challenge.

Plan an adventure with someone you care about. It doesn't need to be a big vacation. Drive to a town you've never visited. Walk around. Explore a few shops. Find a little coffee shop. Try a restaurant you've never heard of.

Do something together that's a little different.

Because someday you may discover that the adventure wasn't really about where you went.

It was about who you went there with.