Travel as Service
In briefAI summary — tap to read
Grandpa Bobby and Grandpa Scott shared how travel serves as a bridge to build human connections across cultures and generations. Through their YouTube channel, they've documented meaningful encounters with people worldwide—from hotel families in Italy to monks in Pompeii—demonstrating that understanding others through direct interaction reduces prejudice and builds empathy.
Key takeaways
- Meeting people from different cultures and backgrounds through travel creates lasting bridges that foster understanding and reduce misconceptions.
- Personal connections made while traveling can continue and deepen through social media, maintaining relationships across geographical boundaries.
- Travel doesn't require extensive resources or distant destinations; local trips and neighborhood interactions offer equal opportunities to connect authentically with others.
- Young people, particularly those without nearby grandparents or from marginalized communities, find meaningful mentorship and representation through their content.
- Direct human interaction—sharing meals, conversations, and experiences—makes it difficult to maintain hatred or prejudice toward others.
About Bobby Puleo and Scott RhinehartBobby and Scott are a long-term gay couple who have been together for nearly 45 years, raised two daughters, and are grandparents to six grandchildren. They've recently gained significant online following through their YouTube and TikTok channels documenting their travels and meaningful human connections around the world.
AI-generated from the meeting recording — AI can make mistakes, so check the recording for anything important.
MEETING FOR THE WEEK OF August 12, 2024
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Travel as Service
Speaker: Bobby Puleo and Scott Rhinehart
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The Young Lieutenant
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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.
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Program: Travel as Service
Speaker: Bobby Puleo and Scott Rhinehart
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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
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