Olen family roadtrips are not unlike the Olympics. They occur every 4 years and typically bankrupt the hosts. They are also like hurricanes as, if they meet certain criteria, they are named and involve a significant amount of chaos. The two main criteria to become a named vacation is at least 20 days on the road and a travel schedule that makes my wife break down in tears. The tradition started with H2Olen in 2008 and then Westward-O in 2012 - both of which are chronicled earlier in this blog.
The goal was to have a 2016 edition but I had already taken a 10 day vacation, 3 weeks after starting my new job at Abiomed. So asking to take additional time the next summer seemed to be a bit career limiting.
So I turned my sights to planning for the summer of 2017. The US Southeast was a one potential destination as it is not a well travelled road. However, the chance to follow my idol Clark W Griswald on an adventure overseas was compelling. The kids would be turning 20, 18, 16 this summer and this is likely the last hurrah. My company has an office in Aachen Germany and figured I could leverage a work trip as the launching pad for Euro 2017 !!!
As usual there are some skeptics within the family ranks. The news of terrorist attacks in London and other European cities and anti-Trump fever sweeping the globe makes the matriarch of the Olen clan a bit nervous. Our plan is to tell everyone we are Canadian to minimize our chance of encountering any anti-Trump backlash from over seas.
Should be fun, or at least interesting as we explore different cultures and languages.
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