We got back from India last Friday morning. On the one hand it was a great trip, on the other it was a very challenging trip. I’m going to break my report into 3 posts since otherwise it would be WAY too long. The first post will talk about the abundance of Travel we experienced over 9 days. The next post will talk about the Culture. And finally, the last post will go over the Work part of the trip: the reasons Dave Gray and I went over, what we learned, and how things are progressing specific to Doba.

I still have to process some of my images and finalize everything, so watch for these posts in the next few days.

Last week I returned from being AWOL in Italy. Tomorrow, Dave Gray (Doba’s Cofounder and CTO) and I leave to India through the end of next week. Rather than being AWOL, we’re heading on official Doba business. I won’t be posting until I get back, and when I do, I hope to have a good mission report to share with everyone. That might prove a challenge however because there’s a 12.5 hour time difference to adjust to. And we’re visiting 5 cities (Delhi, Agra, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune) in 6 days (and that means lots of flights, a couple of trains, and several in-city car rides that I’ve heard can be quite hair-raising). And it’s the monsoon season. And yesterday in Delhi it was 110 degrees with 85% humidity. But like good soldiers, we’re off on our mission. Wish us good luck. We might need it.

Three weeks ago I launched out on an Adventure Buddies trip with my daughter Kaitlin. I took her backpacking for the first time and she absolutely loved it. We drove up the Mirror Lake Highway into the High Unitas about 90 minutes from where we live and we backpacked 1 mile into Wall Lake.

Did I learn anything from her on this trip? You bet. The mosquitoes were bad on this trip. As bad as I’ve ever seen. We had only hiked 1 mile. If I were alone, I would have bailed. But she wanted to have the ’sleep over’ part of the trip so bad. So we stayed by the lake in the sun and with our repellent and a slight breeze we were fine for a while. But as evening progressed, they started swarming. Again, we were only 1 mile from the car. But I really wanting to let her experience her first night in the backcountry, so we headed to the tent. I knew we’d be in there for about 3 hours before it was dark enough that she might go to sleep. So we hung out. Took some pictures (she even took one of me with our massive Nikon digital SLR - see below). Told some Dillie-Willie Bird stories. And had some really amazing daddy-daughter time. The next morning, she literally jumped out of her sleeping bag and yelled, “Dad, it’s daytime! It’s time to wake up! We had a sleep over!” And then looked over at me a little bit later and said, “I love you too, dad.”, without me having said anything to her. That’s when my patience all paid off 100 times.

So when on an Adventure Buddies trip with a 3 year old, sometimes you have to be really patient. That’s a lot like business. When you look forward, seems like you’re not moving at all. When you look backwards, you’re completely blown away by how much you or your company has done in the last year. Patience is key. Kids are great, they teach us more than any adult could ever even come close to.

Here are some pictures of our adventure:

Some of you may have figured that I’d fallen back in my old habits of posting about every three months, but I was just AWOL for 2 weeks with my wife in Italy. This time, I left the laptop and cell phone home and it was a very nice break from work and a great time with my wife.

It’s the first trip we’ve gone on a vacation since having kids without the kids. We spent our time there in Venice, Verona, the Dolomites (Italian Alps), Florence, and Pisa.

I’m back now (for 8 days anyway until I leave next Thursday to India, more on that later). Here’s a couple of pictures from Italy:

Overlooking Florence from atop the Duomo.

Showing my true colors with the Doba Flag in St. Mark’s square in Venice.

That tower over there is going to fall over. It really leans!

I’ll be posting next week before I head to India. I have an adventure buddies trip to report on and lots of Doba stuff to catch up on.