DAILY BLOG

People have been asking us for weeks when a bike tour t-shirt would be available. We were going back and forth on whether we should do one. The focus of the tour, after all, is communicating the key message of the book The Expeditionary Man, and we don’t want to detract from that objective. In the end, after mulling it over, Kim, the boys, and I decided to take this on as an “unofficial” family side project.

However, we decided that if we were going to do one, the design should be more theme-oriented than tour-oriented. Instead of a typical ride shirt—like something you would get at a bike-a-thon—we wanted it to communicate a message that would remain relevant long after the tour wraps up in July. So, we decided to combine elements of the tour logo (the swooshy riders) with a major theme of both our ride and my book—the importance of a family living and working along side each other towards a common goal in Christ-like unity. That’s quite a mouthful, so we decided to go with something much shorter and symbolic—ad alta simul, which is Latin for “to the summit together.”

Here’s the ad alta simul design up close:

ad alta simul (”to the summit together”)—our family motto for the tour

The symbols underneath convey the idea of climbing to the summit together as one family in Christ:

Justy models the shirt:

To answer a question I just know my mom will ask—
Yes, the text running onto the sleeve was intentional. :-]

And the back:

Here’s all of us: