Cruisers Holiday

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, FL

What do cruisers do on a national holiday?   Take it easy and enjoy the lack of stress?  That would be a bit of a bus man's holiday wouldn't it?     Well, for many holidays yes.   Cruisers and other retired people enjoy those things all year long.  In fact most holidays, come and go without us even noticing.  It is often the case that we are only dimly aware of which day of the week this is.  Why should we?

Some holidays we avoid.  Labor Day and Memorial Day in particular are  the days that all the crazies decide to take their boats out for a spin.  Smart cruisers hide in some quiet corner and just wait for it to go away.

Other holidays, Christmas and especially Thanksgiving are traditional family days.  Aren't cruisers deprived and lonely on those days?   In part yes.   We do indeed miss our families most on those days.  But sometimes the cruisers can arrange to see family on those holidays, perhaps by flying home.  That is not uncommon.

Another solution is to spend the holiday with good friends.  That's what we did yesterday.  We enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Bob and Sandra and Derrick and Sharon.  But that solution is not unique to cruisers.   As you know, the literature is full of stories of the stress and anxiety, and travel horrors suffered by family members gathering for the obligatory Thanksgiving holiday.  According the the New York Times yesterday, increasing numbers of people are choosing to spend Thanksgiving with friends instead of family.

I talked with my sister Nancy on Wednesday.  She had her children at home, and their guests, and our sister Marilyn there for the holiday also.  But Nancy said that they were all joining with four neighbor families for a pot luck Thanksgiving dinner.  That is very much like what we have been doing in Vero, or Marathon at the cruiser's pot luck.

If you see gradual changes overcoming supposedly immutable traditions, does that mean that you are old?