Travel as Service
MEETING FOR THE WEEK OF August 12, 2024
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Travel as Service
Speaker: Bobby Puleo and Scott Rhinehart
Is this your first time to visit us? If so, welcome to our weekly online meeting! To complete our meeting, please continue reading from here to the bottom of this page. Each Monday, our week’s meeting is posted early in the morning, U.S. Pacific Time. These meetings are designed so that you can read and watch what we post anytime during the week. The entire meeting takes about 60 minutes to complete, with the video conference recording of the program being the bulk of the time. Note that you can easily read this meeting with your favorite device, so feel free to take our meeting on the go with you. Please also complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
To properly attend this meeting, please:
Read and watch the content below in its entirety.
Complete the attendance survey.
Everyone is encouraged to leave a comment in the Disqus section at the bottom of the page.
Message from our President
As the 2024-2025 President of our Club, I welcome our members, friends, and guests. Thanks for joining our weekly meeting.
WEEKLY FUNNY WITH SHAGS
We believe laughter is an important part of life, and we should all make time to laugh a little. This segment of our meeting is meant to tickle you just enough. These funnies are curated by member Steven "Shags" Shagrin!
The Young Lieutenant
A young, freshly minted lieutenant was sent to Bosnia as part of the peacekeeping mission. During a briefing on land mines, the captain asked for questions.
Our intrepid soldier raised his hand and asked, "If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?"
"Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area."
INSPIRATION
Here's one we shared in our first year as a club. It's a Coca-Cola commercial about a connection between two places where it might not be expected.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW
Open AI Explained
Curious about OpenAI? 1440's got your breakdown of how it works.
Club News For Members
Our Club News and Member links are now on the Members Only ClubRunner Site and are emailed weekly as a Club Bulletin. Please make sure your email address is current on ClubRunner.
Members, be sure to read our Weekly Club Bulletin, which is sent separately to your email address from ClubRunner each Monday. In it, you will find updates and information about what our members are up to, club activities, projects, Happy Dollars, news from District 5170, and various ways you can support The Rotary Foundation. We also send your Dues notices using ClubRunner email.
Our Weekly Bulletin, sent every Monday, provides club information. To stay informed, please ensure your email is current on ClubRunner and add mailservice@clubrunner.ca to your address book so it does not go into Spam.
PROGRAM: Travel as Service
SPEAKER: Bobby Puleo and Scott Rhinehart
We bring you a new program every week on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education and how they contribute to service to others.
The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley seeks to explore perspectives on service from across the world. The views of the speakers in our programs are their own and, unless stated otherwise, are not necessarily reflective of the views of our eClub or Rotary International.
If you have an idea for a cool speaker, please feel free to reach out to them directly or submit THIS FORM so our Program Committee can contact them!
Traveling is more than an opportunity to visit important cultural and historic sites, or a chance to sink your toes in the sands of a tropical resort. Travel is an opportunity to create bridges to alternate cultures and traditions. It is an opportunity to learn and to grow from that awareness. To walk in someone else’s footsteps. Travel puts us in touch with people from all walks of life and experience. Through these interactions we can learn how people from different places encounter situations similar to our own in their own unique way – where they live, how they live, what they eat, what they value. Learning about different cultures provides a greater understanding and empathy for people around the world, which in turn can lead to greater tolerance and acceptance. These are the bridges that travel can serve to help unite our diverse planet, celebrate our common goals, and minimize misunderstandings – all with a hopeful eye towards peace.
Bobby Puleo (aka Grandpa Bobby) was born and raised in a small town in Upstate New York where he dreamed of being an architect and traveling the world. After receiving his degree in Architecture from the University of Arizona, Bobbly moved to San Francisco where he met Scott Rhinehart, and formed a relationship that has lasted nearly 46 years. Together with Scott’s former wife, Grandpa Bobby helped raise two daughters and six grandchildren. The travel bug never left, and over the years Grandpa Bobby has visited more than twenty countries throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as most of the United States.
Scott Rhinehart (aka Grandpa Scott) was born and raised in a small mining town in Eastern Utah to a large family of nine, and as a young boy, dreamed of the adventures that lay beyond. After moving to Southern California as a teenager, Scott received his degree in sociology, married and had two children. While the marriage may not have lasted a long time, the friendship with his former wife Laura was a constant. Together with Bobby, the three coparented their daughters and grandchildren as a close family unit. Two years ago, Scott created the YouTube channel Two Gay Grandpas Travel to document their travel adventures for their grandchildren and to inspire them to seek out new adventures. The internet soon came to embrace these videos as well, and to date, over 97,000 subscribers follow their adventures.
Members and guests, please welcome Grandpa Bobby and Grandpa Scott!
To learn more about their travels, watch their videos at:
https://www.youtube.com/@twogaygrandpastravel/videos
To listen to the Travel Your Heart podcast, you can go to:
https://open.spotify.com/show/29TnR3cpXCGRlif38XYy6P
Our Three Podcast Series
Our main program speakers are available as podcasts in addition to YouTube videos! Each week, they are available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Or you can click below for this week’s speaker:
The Weekly Rotarian
Inspiring Solutions
And our original podcast, featuring some of the best of our previous speakers, is still available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Development Success Stories
Our third podcast features success stories about economic development from around the world. It is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or you can click below.
UPCOMING PROGRAM RECORDING SCHEDULE
All of our guest speakers and programs are recorded live online over Zoom video conference. We welcome members and guests to join us in one of these upcoming recordings. Recordings are approximately 30 minutes long and are subject to change without notice.
Our online video conference room link for these recordings is always http://zoom.siliconvalleyrotary.com/. You are welcome to join us! Please note the timezone listed for all recordings is US Pacific Time (San Francisco, California, USA).
If you can’t join the live recording, please send your questions for an upcoming speaker to programs@siliconvalleyrotary.com.
THE ATTENDANCE SURVEY
Thanks for reading and watching this week’s meeting. You have two last things to do before you’re done.
We have a very short attendance survey below for you to fill out to record your attendance.
Visiting Rotarians, this is how you can get an email receipt to pass along to your club’s secretary as proof that you’ve attended our meeting if you need it for makeup.
Non-Rotarian Guests, we would love to see who is dropping by our meetings! This part is optional for you. If you think you may want to join our eClub at some point in the future, we would strongly recommend you fill out the attendance form as it will improve your chances of success for your membership application.
For all members and guests — we strongly recommend and ask that you leave a comment in our comments area below. Tell us how you enjoyed the program. Ask this week’s speaker any questions you might have. Or just stop by and say hello and tell us where you’re from!
Important: Once you submit the Attendance Survey below, please make sure you see the confirmation message. If you get an error message instead, please try the 'submit' button again, and if that doesn't work, please refresh the page and fill out the form again. Thanks!