Our Mission

We all have an expiration date. Most of us just don’t know when it is.
It’s easy to spend our lives believing there will always be more time. More time to travel. More time to sit around a campfire. More time to call an old friend, meet someone new, drink a cup of coffee together, or finally take that trip we’ve been talking about for years.
A good friend recently told me something I haven’t been able to forget. Facing terminal heart failure, he said, “I now have all the money I could ever need, but I’m unable to do any of the things I dreamed of doing with it.”
That hit home.
Donna and I aren’t running away from our lives, and we’re not waiting until everything is perfect to start living them either. We still have responsibilities. I still work. We still have a home to come back to.
But we’ve decided to stop letting the daily rat race have all of our time.
We want to see beautiful places, but even more than that, we want to meet people. We want to hear their stories. We want to share ours. We want to sit down with strangers over a cup of coffee or beside a campfire and get back to something life sometimes makes us forget:
We need each other.
If Second Wind accomplishes anything, we hope it encourages someone to stop saying someday.
Take the trip.
Call the friend.
Sit by the fire.
Talk to the stranger at the next campsite.
Stay for another cup of coffee.
Make the memory while you still can.
We don’t know how many miles any of us have left.
But we can make the ones we have count.
Slow Down. Make Memories. Find Your Second Wind.
And if our paths cross along the way, pull up a chair. We saved you a spot by the fire.

What We Believe

Faith comes first.
Our Christian faith is the foundation of how we try to live our lives. We believe in gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, serving others, and recognizing the blessings we’ve been given. We won’t always get it right, but we’ll keep trying to walk that path.
We love our country.
We’re proud Americans. We value our country’s traditions, our communities, and the freedoms we’ve inherited. We have tremendous respect and gratitude for the men and women who have served—and continue to serve—our country and for the sacrifices they and their families have made to protect those freedoms.
A neighbor doesn’t have to live next door.
We believe in helping people. If you’re stranded on the side of the road, need an extra hand at the campground, or simply need someone to sit down and listen, it doesn’t matter whether we’ve known you for twenty years or twenty minutes. If we can help, we will.
Kindness doesn’t mean weakness.
We try to treat everyone with respect and give people the benefit of the doubt. But kindness should never require ignoring bad intentions or allowing someone to take advantage of others. We’ll stand up for ourselves, our family, our friends, and someone who needs defending.
Everyone is welcome around our campfire.
You don’t have to look like us, vote like us, worship like us, or come from the same place we do to pull up a chair. We can disagree about things and still share a cup of coffee, tell a few stories, laugh together, and treat one another with dignity.
Because at the end of the day, Second Wind is about faith, freedom, friendship, helping your neighbor, and making the time we’ve been given mean something.
There’s room around this fire. Pull up a chair.