Like a Rolling Stone

I was the Station Manager of our school’s radio station during my senior year of high school, and using the perks of the position, I assigned myself and a friend the plum 8-10 PM slot on Tuesday nights. That slot virtually guaranteed that at least two (maybe three!) other people were listening. A tradition was to start and end the school year with a Dylan song (if you haven’t, give “Up to Me” a spin – you won’t regret it…), and I closed the last show of my illustrious high school career with “Like a Rolling Stone.” The tune is a classic to be sure, but little did I know just how prescient the title would prove as the succeeding years took me to two colleges, law school, the Navy, and, by my count, 15 homes in and out of the US over the next twelve years or so (and not counting those summers where I really bounced around). All of this bouncing around instilled in me, as it does in most with similar backgrounds, a hunger to keep going, to keep seeing, tasting, and experiencing. Once out, that genie won’t go back in the bottle.

This eagerness for experience, when appropriately tempered, is, for me, sated by travel. Through both the Navy and Apogee Adventures, I’ve been incredibly fortunate and able to see many places I never would have dreamed of when I was sitting in the dark green glow of the Sony CD players up there in the studio at WGAJ. And now, this winding path has led me, my wife, Susan, and business partner, Kevin, to build Parallel Adventures. Our first trips – trips that will bring Parallel travelers to the Mediterranean Sea and Spain’s rosemary-scented Costa Brava and also to Portugal’s wild and breathtaking Fishermen’s Trail – are born directly from our own travels and are deeply personal to us.

It certainly looks cliché as I type it, but we’re putting Parallel together out of a true love for travel, for engagement, for community, and for exploration. As they are so personal to us, we’ll be sharing experiences that have truly meant something to us. We hope you might find Parallel to be similarly soul-satisfying – particularly if you, too, are a rolling stone.

Chad

Chad Olcott