Improve the World and Have Fun Doing It

What is the Zephyr Adventures raison d’être, French for “reason for existing”? To improve the world and have fun doing it.

I started two small companies in college and after getting an MBA in entrepreneurship, was determined to start a company that would become my full-time job. However, I was particular. I wanted to create a company that had me doing something I loved that also improved the world.

So I wrote down five things that made me happy: outdoor activity, travel, international cultural exchange, drinking wine, and group bonding. Lo and behold, the tours we run today have all of those aspects. I love doing what I am doing.

But are we at Zephyr positively impacting the world? Honestly, sometimes I question this. Should I retire from Zephyr and work in another field? Should I start a non-profit that more directly helps people?

A few weeks ago I received an email from our long-time traveler Tony Santucci, who had been asked to write a summary of his life in one paragraph (not easy!) for his college fraternity reunion. He sent that summary to me, remarking on how much of his life summary talked about experiences he had had and travels he had done with Zephyr. I followed up with Tony.

Tony and his partner Rick signed up for one of our first three tours, an inline skating tour in The Netherlands, back in 1997. “We had so much fun in the Netherlands that we wanted to take more skating vacations,” explained Tony. They signed up for our Sonoma Wine Country inline skating vacation in 1998 and continued to travel with us after that.

26 years later, Tony and Rick have now traveled with us for 124 tour days over 19 tours, most recently on our Scotland Hiking & Whisky Adventure just this past month. Tony wrote me about this run of tours. “Zephyr has become one of life’s highlights, making it easy to visit places all over the globe with the knowledge that all the ‘unpleasant’ details would be covered. Most of my memorable vacations have been with Zephyr.”

It is pretty amazing to think the little company I founded 27 years ago has provided Rick and Tony with the most memorable vacations of their lives. I have had people tell me many times “This was the best experience of my year” or “I will always remember this trip.” We have had people meet on our tours and get married. Our travelers celebrate special anniversaries or birthdays. Friendships form across the country and around the globe. People meet on tours, keep in touch with each other, keep in touch on the phone or through social media, and even meet up on their own for various events.

Rick, Tony, and I have traveled together multiple times over the years outside the structure of a Zephyr tour. Tony wrote to me “Those ‘extra-Zephyr’ trips have been fun — less structured but just as interesting. We enjoyed hiking Elbert (in Colorado) and touring around the Rogue River area but we probably liked the ‘scouting’ trip in Chilean wine country just before the Patagonia tour most of all.”

Tony, Rick, and I have become friends. Without Zephyr Adventures, we would never have met. We live in different areas of the country, have different backgrounds, are over a decade apart in age, and don’t necessarily even vote the same way. Humanity could use a few more friendships forming, especially among strangers. If Zephyr Adventures can provide so many people with such amazing experiences and can produce friendships like ours, I do think we are helping to improve the world.