Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #3
At the hotel in Falls Church, VA - Sat, 23 Nov 2024, 11:20pm

We're checked into our hotel for night now. Actually, not just tonight but the next 4 nights. When I was planning out the details of this trip I considered moving hotels every night to be closer to what we were doing the day of or the day after.... Then I looked at how much extra driving it would be to stay in one place the whole time and decided that saving 30-45 minutes a day, even as much as an hour a day, of driving is not worth the hassle of repacking a bag, checking out, checking in somewhere else, and living out of a suitcase. I expect it'll be more satisfying to have the same room for 4 nights.

While it certainly sounds nice to say we've picked a hotel that's sort of centrally located to all the things we're doing for 4 days, the flip side of that statement is that it's equally inconvenient to everything we're doing. This afternoon, for example, we drove ~30 minutes from BWI airport to visit friends in Silver Spring, MD then afterwards drove another ~30 minutes here to Falls Church, VA. But having dinner and some hangout time with old friends was lots of fun.

We only see these friends, Adrian and Joe and their son, Luc, about once a year. And it's usually during these extended Thanksgiving week trips back East that we see them. They're friends of Hawk's from college days, and I enjoy their company, too. As I remarked to Joe when he was musing on the nature of our friendship, "I enjoy talking to people my age... who can conduct an intelligent adult conversation... and aren't assholes because think they're way more intelligent than everyone else." That may seem like setting a low bar. Sadly, nowadays, it is not.

What about dinner? Oh, yeah, we went to a local bar in Silver Spring that also serves a full menu. I noted as we entered, "Hey, it's a bar-themed bar!" It looked like a classic bar. It sounded like a classic bar. It even smelled like a classic bar. Y'know, stale beer spilled on the floor that hadn't been mopped up yet because they're too busy. But it wasn't too smelly as it's also a family-friendly place. Lots of families were there with young kids.

After years of living in California, where things are generally new and manufactured, it was fascinating to go to a bar that genuinely looks like it's been a bar since 1950. Adrian teased Joe about going there in his robes after college graduation to order a celebratory drink. Heck, I could imagine my father visiting here with classmates when he was in college, as the bar is roughly halfway between UMd and where he lived in Wheaton with his parents. I'd call him up and ask, "Hey, dad, did you ever hoist pints with friends at ___ except he's several years gone now." I could only imagine his spirit there next to me as I poured out the last sip of my pint of Guinness.

"Thanksgiving Eve"... is that a thing? I think you know what I mean, though: the night before Thanksgiving. It's one of the bigger travel days of the year (Sunday following Thanksgiving is the biggest) when people travel to visit friends or relatives elsewhere in the country. Most hit the roads and airports in the evening, after finishing the school- and work day, and travel late into the night to be there in time for holiday dinner on Thursday.

I remember so many Wednesday evening trips when traffic was a complete mess. Delays often added hours to the drive. I braced for that last night as we prepared to drive from Washington, D.C. to my inlaws' house in Harrisburg, PA.

"It's showing 2 hours 15 minutes," Hawk noted early in the day, referring to what mapping apps indicated at the time.

"Yeah, but we'll see how bad it is at 4 or 5pm," I warned. Internally I was prepared for our 2h15m drive to take 4 hours or longer due to holiday traffic.

Well, 5:30pm came around (we stayed in DC later than expected) and maps apps showed that our 2:15 drive had grown to... 2:17. LOLWUT?!

Indeed, Thanksgiving Eve traffic was... on holiday 😉... this year. From 14th & C Streets SW in downtown DC we drove south across the 14th Street Bridge with no traffic and looped onto the George Washington Parkway headed north. Traffic on the parkway moved at the speed limit until the right lane slowed down a bit for the exit ramp onto the Beltway (I-495). The Beltway was slow for a few miles as it crossed the bridge into Maryland but never stop-and-go; and it sped up to the limit as we neared the I-270 split. Commuter-heavy I-270 flowed smoothly, its monstrous 12 lane width doing what it was designed to do (i.e., keep us all moving). And even as it narrowed down from 12 lanes to 8 to 6 to just 4 (2 in each direction) further north, the volume of traffic tapered down with it such that I rarely dipped below the speed limit.

The only delay on our trip was stopping for dinner and impulse shopping in Germantown, MD. I'd figured we'd stop for dinner anyway... but as a much-needed break from driving in bad traffic. Instead it was leisurely. That stop pushed back arrival at my inlaws' house to 9pm. Still, it was early enough to stay up and chat with them for a few hours, rather than us arriving 2 hours later and wanting to go straight to bed.