Hoo wen wear

Hoo / wen / wear

If evereething was spelld lyke it sownds, hoo nose wat kynd uv trubel peepul wood get into?

‘nuf o that…on2 some details.

The three amigos, Pete / Will / John (listed by age: ancient, almost ancient, and the youngest…of seven) decided a year ago that we would visit “the old country”.  Which means the Netherlands, Holland as it’s called by most.  We thought it would be good to see where dad & mom grew up, to introduce ourselves to a side of the family that we’re almost completely unfamiliar with and to visit places that we’d likely see only once in our lifetime. Mom is the only person in her family to have immigrated.  From her description of brothers and sisters, she may be the only person to have moved out of her home town in a couple generations.  All in all, it would have been a great thing to see our family’s history, to see significant places on the Continent and to be able to just hang out together for awhile.

We still get to do all three, but on a different continent.  Will fought a serious back injury this past year and traveling overseas wasn’t an option. But with vacation time inked into the calendar for he and John (John works for UPS / Will for Oak Harbor Freight Lines), we needed to still do something we’d likely see only once in our lifetime.  For each of us, the east coast has realistically been the eastern banks of the Columbia or Colorado river.  I’ve been fortunate enough to cover a few more miles than they, having spent a summer in Rochester, NY when I was eighteen (wanna hear the story about selling Bibles door-to-door?  Didn’t think so….), but for each of us, setting our sights on Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Dutch country, the Washington / Lincoln / Vietnam War memorials would be the USA equivalent of getting to places we wouldn’t otherwise experience.

We’ll be traveling from Monday late – a redeye flight to Dulles that lands 6:00 a.m. Tuesday all the way through October 4th.  What we know so far is that we’re headed to Gettysburg first, will spend a couple days there, headed to Cooperstown for a Friday visit to the baseball Hall of Fame.  Will has in-laws in Connecticut, so we’re debating whether we head there the first weekend, using that as our “base camp” for the next week.  Because of the time of the year and the many tropical storms this year, weather might dictate where and when we go places.  Add the color of the Northeast – the Fall Leaves – to the equation and we could end up anywhere from Maine to North Carolina before we’re through.  We intend to spend four – five days stationed outside Washington DC so we can commute into the Capitol to visit the sites that interest us (if you don’t see or hear from us for a couple months, come looking inside the Smithsonian museums ( ).

Two days and counting.  We’re excited to see the unknown and to experience the fun of three little brothers all dressed up as family men, working guys and doting dads for most of our lives.

Time to figure out the east coast time zone difference.