On the second day of my business trip to Chicago, I thought I would share another one of my favorite travel trips (remember the first one?). This tip is for those of you who have young children.
The Trap
A long time ago I used to travel fairly frequently with a co-worker who had several children. Unfortunately for him, he got into a vicious pattern he couldn’t control. He inadvertently trained his children to expected a trinket after every business trip.
He always had to ransack the airport right up to final boarding, furiously searching for key chains, buttons, magnets or whatever doodads happened to bear the name of the city. Each child had to get an individual gift of approximately equal value and coolness. I vowed to always avoid this trap. Then I had kids.
The Solution
So I decided to take another tack. Why purchase something materialistic, destined to be tossed into a corner a day later in anticipation of the next trip? I decided to give something of value but in a non-monetary sense instead. It took the form of photographs and a brief travelogue I sent home each day by email.
I started carrying an old digital camera that fit neatly into a coat pocket. [UPDATE: Remember 12MC posted this article in 2008. Today I would use a phone, of course.]
I used it to capture sites that conveyed a characteristic feature of the location. In Chicago that meant its architecture as with this scene along Michigan Avenue. I also sent home a photo of the Chicago River. However, I didn’t go into all the gory details as I did in my recent post. Dare I say I sanitized it? (awful pun alert – read the entry and you’ll understand).
A History Lesson Too
There’s also a sense of history on this particular visit regardless of one’s political leanings. As I write this, Barack Obama is President-Elect and he will soon occupy the White House. But today he lives in Chicago and uses a floor of a Federal building as his local transition office.
This photograph is quite nice for describing the historic events of the past few weeks and my current proximity to them. The entire block around the building is literally crawling with law enforcement. I made sure to photograph one of the banners on the other side of the street facing away from the building. I was feeling really paranoid about the suspicions I might raise if I pointed a camera in the wrong direction. But it’s an exciting time here. I can use a photo and a little narrative to allow the kids to stretch their imagination and gain a curiosity for new places. Hopefully they’ll learn a little in the process.
And It’s Free!
So that’s my latest travel tip and it requires no expense and minimal time. You’re probably going to want to get out of the hotel just to stretch your legs anyway. Go take a walk around the block and snap a couple of photos. They don’t have to be perfect. As “they” say, it’s the thought that counts. The kids will enjoy seeing the world through your eyes and it will be a whole lot more authentic than some cheap Chinese-made snow glob from the airport gift shop.
Leave a Reply