Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays, oh my
A travelogue for the busiest travel day
Today is the day before the day we travel to get somewhere in time for the next day, a day when any turkeys left waddling count their blessings, text safe messages to each other on their Apple watches, and talk trash about that night’s football game.1
Tomorrow is the day when we become one with Rosey, our trusty minivan that has seen hundreds of miles to loving farms in central New York and magic kingdoms in central Florida and back again.2
Thursday is the day when we eat like it’s our job, our calling, our destiny; when we tightly hug family we love and rarely get to see, make nice with family we don’t really vibe with but who seem kind enough, share war stories about yesterday’s traffic, and hopefully feel warm and safe and surrounded by love.3
Friday is the day when we talk about who said what on Thursday, and some of us shop and some of us don’t and some of us nap and some of us wonder what’s next and some of us decide we’re done and wake us up in 2026.4
Saturday is the day when we load up Rosey and roll along back to the Granite State, sad to leave the farm and the fam and the rolling green hills of New York, now with maybe a dusting of snow that says “you love me because I’m prettier in winter.”5
Sunday is the day when I will hopefully reconnect with an old friend—the other remaining musketeer—in our hometown, where we, and our dearly departed third member, once were geeky teens, wondering if there would be a place for us in the world.6
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving is no doubt circled in red on every turkey’s calendar as the day when they can finally breathe again after holding their collective giblet breath for two solid months.
We will also become one with the oodles of other drivers on the same road at the same time, headed to their own holidays, some with joy, some with hope, some with let’s-get-this-overwith dread.
Even though Thursday at some point became the new Friday, this particular Thursday is thankful to be the center of attention but secretly yearns to be this particular Friday, which everyone knows actually has more fun.
Yes, the Friday after Thanksgiving has more fun than Thursday, but secretly feels like everyone looks at it and asks “now what?”
As much as my heart will always be solid New Hampshire granite, I can’t deny what the wife has always said—the fields and hills and valleys of central New York are gorgeous on a level that makes my home state have a real case of the wallflowers.
Seriously, what would the world make in the early 90s of three marginally-attractive boys with bad hair who only wanted to talk about the inner workings of the latest “Star Trek: TNG” episode or a new comedy cassette someone had bought, with only the faintest hope that girls would give them half a sideways glance at some point?
Happy Thanksgiving, Adam! I love this, right from its opening sentence.