Traveling during the holidays can be both exhilarating and frustrating.
The exhilarating part is being at a destination, a festival, party event, a long weekend at the beach or a lake. Perhaps you’re headed to the Indianapolis 500 with its wild Snakepit infield scene. Or to the boat tie-up bash at Austin’s Lake Travis.
The frustrating part is getting there. AAA anticipates 42.3 million Americans will travel for the 2023 Memorial Day weekend; that’s a whopping 7% increase from last year. In Southern California alone, 3.3 million people are expected to travel for Memorial Day with LAX, the Los Angeles airport, having 1.2 million travelers from Wednesday through Monday.
There will be flight delays, flight cancellations, crowded airports and planes and traffic jams.
PubClub.com’s biggest travel tip for travelers this Memorial Day Weekend is simple, and it can be summed up in a single sentence: “the difference between ordeal and adventure is attitude.”
This quote is from a guy known around the sailing world as Bob Bitchin’, tho Bob knows better than to bitch about things he cannot control. It is the frustration over all the headaches of travel – always amplified during holiday events – that can cause people to lose their minds. If not their temper.
So relax. There’s nothing you can do about it. Yes it can be maddening but when it happens to me I grit my teeth and remember Bob’s words. I also start singing Jimmy Buffett’s “No Plane On Sunday” song, with these lyrics:
You can throw your luggage down
Lose your cool and stamp around
But there’s nothin, nothin you can do
Wipe away your girlfriend’s tears
Go to the bar and have some beers
There ain’t no way the bird’s gettin through
No plane on Sunday
Maybe be one come Monday
Just a hopeless situation
Make the best of it’s all you can do
till they get through
Yeah, traffic jams, crowded airport and planes and other obstacles of travel blows. Just remember why you are traveling in the first place. And have fun when you get there.
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