//------------------------------//
// November 24 [Thanksgiving] 
// Story: Silver Glow's Journal 
// by Admiral Biscuit 
//------------------------------//

November 24

Both of us woke up early, 'cause Nebraska is in a different time zone, and Peggy said that she wanted to get on the road as soon as we could so that we'd get to her house in plenty of time for Thanksgiving dinner. 

I took a shower while she was getting dressed and packing up her things, and then I groomed my coat on the bed, but I left my wings alone—I could preen them in Cobalt, as long as she didn't mind a few stray feathers. And then we looked through the room one more time to make sure that we hadn't forgotten anything, then went downstairs to check out of our room.

The morning clerk wasn't too happy to see me with her and when he put his head down to look at the computer I heard him mutter that he ought to charge extra because of me, and I thought if he did that would be really unfair, 'cause I hadn't used as much of the bed as a human would, and we hadn't used the exercise room or swimming pool, either, and we weren't going to eat their breakfast. So he should have charged us less.

But I didn't say anything until we were putting our bags in Cobalt, and Peggy said that she would check her credit card statement and if there was so much as one extra dime on it she'd call them and yell at them, and if that didn't work she'd have her Mom do it, and if they still wouldn't listen to reason than she'd tell Mister Salvatore. And I thought he'd like that, because he did like being angry at people when they were bad.

So that we could get some exercise, we walked to the International House of Pancakes, which wasn't even a kilometer away. There wasn't a sidewalk, and even though it was so early it was dark out, there was too much traffic on the road to walk on it, so we followed a thin dirt trail that ran alongside the road.

It wasn't very busy when we got there, and we sat down at a booth that was by the windows, and when our waitress came we got coffee and then we both ordered pancakes. They had lots of different kinds, and so between the two of us we got six different ones, and cut them all in half so we could each try all the different flavors.

I liked the grain and nut pancake the best, and Peggy's favorite was the New York cheesecake, which was also good. And when we were done eating, I used my plastic money-card to pay for the food, even though she said that she could pay. I thought that since she was paying for all the gas for Cobalt, it was fair for me to contribute, too. I thought about asking if I could help her out by driving some, but I didn't think I'd be very good at it, and I wasn't supposed to anyways.

When we were walking back, she told me that it was going to be a long day of driving and she hoped that I was ready for it. She said that it would be shorter than yesterday, but I was going to be really sick of Nebraska by the time we got to the end of it.

She put gas in Cobalt before we left Lincoln, and once we got past the city, it was all farmland, and even the road was almost straight for miles and miles. There weren't a lot of cars, but there were lots of trucks. Peggy said that probably most people were already home for Thanksgiving and that was actually good for us, because that meant that the road would be more open.

We passed by signs for a town that was called McCool Junction, and that sounded like an interesting place to visit. I bet Mister Salvatore would have stopped there, but Peggy didn't. And it had been a good choice to wait and preen my wings while we were on the road, 'cause there wasn't much to see. I had to be careful not to stretch out too far, though, and hit Peggy by mistake, so it was a little bit uncomfortable.

We'd been driving for almost two hours when Peggy said that it was time to stop and stretch our legs and that there was a special museum up ahead that she thought I would like to see, although we couldn't spend a whole lot of time at it. She said that it was called The Archway and it was about people traveling west before there was an 80 Highway for them to drive on.

It was really interesting because it had been built right over the highway, like a bridge, and it was really pretty inside, too. There were lots of displays that told how people had moved west along the Platte River, and all the different trails that had converged at a fort near it. And then it talked about the railroad and the Pony Express, which actually used horses to deliver the mail. I told Peggy that lots of pegasuses were also mailponies, 'cause we could carry mail almost anywhere, and there was also a special team of pegasuses for important Royal mail and messages.

They had displays about the railroad that had been built across the country, too, and the early roads that were there before there was an 80 Highway, and there was even a guest book that we could sign. There weren't any windows over the highway, though, which was too bad, because I thought it would be fun to look at cars and trucks going by from above.

We skipped the gift shop, 'cause Peggy said that we didn't have enough time to look at the things there, and then we got back in Cobalt and drove until we got to a rest area which was near Cozad.

After we'd peed, I went outside and flew around while Peggy watched. It was all fields on one side, but on the other it was forested and there was a river running along next to the 80 Highway. So I flew over there, but I made sure to keep looking back so that I could always see the rest area, 'cause I didn't want to get lost in the middle of Nebraska and make us late for Thanksgiving dinner.

So I only stayed in the air for about a quarter of an hour, and then I glided back over the highway and landed next to Cobalt, and Peggy opened the door for me, and we got back on the road.

There was a sign alongside the highway telling us that we were going into the Mountain Time Zone, and it felt a little bit strange that the time changed but the sun didn't move at all. And I wondered how confusing it was to people who lived right next to it, 'cause they could just walk a few feet one way or the other and it would change what time it was.

We stopped just before going into Colorado at a Flying J, which was also a truck stop. They didn't have a museum or as many different choices for lunch, just a Subway and a Cinnabon, so we got a footlong sub and shared it, and Peggy put more gas in Cobalt.

The Platte River was north of us now, 'cause we'd crossed over it a couple of hours ago, but it was still really close to the highway, so I went out and flew over it, and went a little ways in each direction from the bridge that crossed over it, before coming back and landing in the parking lot. Peggy had moved Cobalt all the way to the very edge of the parking lot, so I wouldn't have to watch out for traffic as much.

A few miles down the road, there was a big interchange, and we got off of the 80 Highway finally, and onto the 76 Highway. And that was going to take us all the way to Denver, and it started by taking us into Colorado. Peggy said that we were almost home, even though it was still going to be several hours before we actually were.

It was very strange, but when we got into Colorado, all the fields were on the north side of the 76 Highway, and there were almost none on the south side. Occasionally, we'd see one, but it was mostly prairie, and I asked Peggy if she knew why, and she said that she didn't. She thought that maybe it was some kind of federal land of some sort, but she wasn't sure. And she said that she'd never really thought about it, but it was more than an hour before we got to Brush, which was the first place where there were lots of fields on both sides of the road.

The car was too hot, because Peggy wanted it warm enough that she could just drive in her t-shirt, and it made me kind of sleepy, and the scenery was all the same. And I'd been fighting to stay awake since we'd left the Flying J, but it was finally too much for me, and I dozed off until we got to Denver, and I might not have woken up even then except that Peggy had to slow down and that was enough to wake me up.

I yawned and then looked out the windshield and I could see the mountains ahead of us, so I knew that we were really close. And in front of them, the city stretched out on the flat land. There was a big cluster of skyscratchers just like Chicago had, and when we got off the 76 Highway and on to the 25 Highway, we got to drive right by them.

There were lots of other cars, just like Chicago, and we had to slow down a lot as we went through it. And it was really big, too, and so it took us a pretty long time to get to the other side, and I was starting to get a little bit hungry.

I was a little bit confused about what time it was because the sun said one thing and the clock in Peggy's car said another thing, and I didn't know how long I'd been napping.

Peggy said that the clock in her car was wrong, that it was two hours earlier than what it said. Which I should have remembered, because it had never changed when we'd gone into the new time zones before.

She told me that we'd stop for lunch once we got past Denver, and that we should try to eat a light lunch because her parents would probably have lots of food for Thanksgiving dinner.

There was snow up on the mountains, but Denver itself wasn't snowy, although I thought it would be. Peggy said it was usually snowier than this when she came home, and maybe there would be more further south. But she said that her parents had told her that it was warmer than usual, and it had been in Kalamazoo, too until just last weekend.

I told her that if there were teams of weather pegasuses, there would be snow on the ground. Although after so many years of feral weather, it might take us a while to figure out the whole system so that we could tame it.

The road went through a little cut, and then on the other side Peggy got off the highway, 'cause there was a whole cluster of little restaurants, and she didn't even have to ask me where I wanted to go, 'cause there was a Taco Bell.

She turned into their parking lot and she looked at me and said that if I started farting I was going to have to fly the rest of the way to Colorado Springs, and I asked her how far it was, and she told me that it was about fifty miles, and I said that I could fly that far. It would be a little bit harder because we were higher up, so there wasn't as much air to give me lift, but if I kept a slightly lower altitude than I did in Michigan, I could make it there. And I knew that there was the airport right by her house, so I could just have my watch tell me how to get there. The last part would be tricky, because I didn't remember exactly where she lived, and I might have to call her for directions from the airport.

I kind of wanted to do it, even though it would take me a couple of hours. And Peggy saw that I'd opened the door and was just looking up at the sky, and she said that it probably wasn't really smart to do it today, because I'd get to her house too late and miss dinner and the Thanksgiving football games.

We went inside and got some burritos, and when we were done eating, I asked Peggy if I could fly to the next exit and meet her there, if it wasn't too far. And she said that it wasn't—it wasn't even two miles, and she said that if I followed the 25 Highway it would be really hard to get lost, especially if I stayed low enough to read the signs.

So after we'd finished eating, we went out to the parking lot and I put on my vest and blinking light just to be safe, and then Peggy had to use her portable telephone to figure out how to call the Denver Airport, because I thought that I was probably close enough that the airplane directors would want to know where I was.

Well, they were very confused and a grumpy-sounding director finally told me to stay under five hundred feet and I would be fine, and then another pilot who said that he was United 1575 and was I an actual pegasus, and I told him that I was, which the airplane directors seemed to have trouble understanding until he told them that I wasn't some kid messing around on the radio and he'd seen movies of me flying in storms. So then they were a lot nicer, and gave me clearance up to a thousand feet above ground level, which was nice of them. And for such a short flight, that was plenty.

I wasn't even a hundred feet up when I saw the next exit—I'd angled a little bit so I was close to the side of the 25 Highway, and I could see the signs for it, although I couldn't read them all because they were still a ways away.

I looked behind me and Peggy was still in the parking lot, watching me, and I turned around long enough to wave at her, then I focused back on the road ahead.

I was almost halfway to the exit when Peggy passed me, and I could watch her all the way until she got off at the exit. She stopped on the exit road and turned on her blinking lights, and it only took her a couple minutes until I was gliding down for a landing next to Cobalt. The road was named Happy Canyon Road, so I looked both ways to see if I could see the happy canyon, but maybe it was further away, because I didn't see it. There was a little plateau to the east that the road ran around, but I didn't think that was a proper canyon at all.

I told the airplane directors that I was back on the ground, in case any other airplanes wanted to come by, and then I got out of my flight gear and got back into Cobalt. It hadn't been all that much of a flight, but even so it had been good exercise.

Peggy got back on the highway, and we kept going south. I was getting excited, 'cause we were close, and she was, too. She said that sometimes the last leg of a trip really stretched out and other times it was quick, and she felt like this was going to be a quick time.

The highway kind of twisted and wound around like it was a river, always trying to find the lowest places to go, but unlike a river it could go up and over hills, and it did sometimes.

Pretty soon we started seeing the signs for Colorado Springs, and then we were in the city. And we had to go most of the way through it, and there was lots of traffic again, and we got slowed down. Peggy said that there wasn't exactly a direct route to her house and I was thinking that if I knew exactly where it was, I could get out and fly and maybe I'd beat her there, which would be fun, but I stayed in the car with her.

We got off of the highway and pretty soon we were at her neighborhood, and she drove through until she got to her house, and she parked in front and then we got out of the car. And she got out her travel bag and I got my saddlebags and we went up her front walk, and she had a key to let her in the house.

It smelled really nice inside, because of all the food that they were cooking. It was almost like walking into the dining hall, and I wanted to sit down at the table right then, but the food wasn't ready to eat yet.

Chrissie and John came out to greet us, and they weren't the only ones, because Peggy's grandparents had come for Thanksgiving, and also Chrissie's brother and his family. So it was a lot of new people to meet. There was Jane and Phillip, who were Chrissie's parents; Francis and Margaret, who were John's parents. Brad was Chrissie's brother, and his wife was Amy and they had two girls about Trinity's age who were called Riley and Vivian.

We went inside and they all had all sorts of questions for me and it got kind of overwhelming until Peggy said that we needed a little bit of time to get cleaned up from our long drive.

So the two of us went upstairs and Peggy said she was going to take a shower, and asked if I wanted to take one, too. I thought that since I'd taken one in the morning, and I hadn't really done much exercise today, I didn't need it, although I wanted to brush myself, 'cause my tail was kind of knotted again and my coat was a little bit clumped from sitting.

It felt a little bit unsocial to be sitting upstairs in Peggy's room while everyone else was downstairs, and I thought about going downstairs and maybe grooming myself in the living room, but I wasn't sure what her family would think about that. It was something that nobody minded when you were among friends but it was kind of rude to do when there was company over, and maybe it was the same with humans.

I'd finished with my coat and was brushing my tail when Peggy came back into the bedroom. She was still wearing the same clothes she had been driving in because all of her clothes from college were dirty, but she had lots more in her room that she hadn't taken with her. So she found some nice clothes to wear, and she said it was important to wear pants that were a little bit loose to Thanksgiving dinner.

Before we went downstairs, she said that we should try not to talk about politics at the table, and she also said that we also shouldn't talk about sex, and I probably shouldn't tell anyone about Aric and Meghan, either. She said she wasn't sure how her grandparents would react, but she said that Grandma Margaret and Grandpa Francis were kind of conservative. So I said that I wouldn't bring it up, and she said that maybe I could say that I had a stallionfriend back in Equestria. I wasn't sure that that was a good idea, though, because whenever mares were gossiping, if somepony said that then everypony else wanted to know everything about him. I guess they wouldn't know if I was making it up, though.

When we got back downstairs, dinner wasn't quite ready yet, so everyone sat in the living room and had a chance to ask me questions until Grandma Jane said that it was time to come in and sit at the table and she told everyone to wash their hands then looked at me and said I should wash my hooves, too.

Their dining room was really crowded, because they'd had to put in a bigger table since everyone couldn't fit at the one that had been there in the summer time. And all the food was already put on the table. The turkey was right at the center and it kind of bothered me to look at it, but I kind of couldn't help myself. I knew that humans cooked birds and the dining hall had chicken a lot, but it was all in pieces already and didn't look like a headless, featherless bird-body on the table.

Chrissie had gotten a special small turkey called a tofurkey for me and anybody else who wanted it, which was not actually from a turkey, and then almost everything else she had was similar to what the dining hall had had, so I knew what most of it was. The cranberry sauce was a little different, though; it was one consistent color and in little sliced discs.

I tried a little bit of almost everything except for the actual turkey, and when I'd eaten a bit of the tofurkey, John asked me how it was and I said that it tasted very strange and had an odd texture. I thought that maybe that was what normal turkey was like, so he took a piece and chewed on it and said that it was nothing like a normal turkey and that they ought to be sued for false advertising. But Vivian liked it more than the actual turkey, and Riley said that was because Vivian was weird, and then they stuck their tongues out at each other until Amy told them to stop.

Peggy's parents and grandparents had a lot of questions about college and our classes, and when she told them about her egg catapult, everyone thought that that was really funny, and she said that she had a movie of it and she'd show them later.

We didn't have dessert right away, because the pies weren't done and we also needed time for the meal to digest, Grandpa Francis said. All the men wanted to watch the football game, too, because the Dallas Cowboys were playing the Green Bay Packers, and everyone thought that the Cowboys were going to win and maybe they'd make it to the Super Bowl this year. I thought when people said things like that they were usually wrong, 'cause Mister Salvatore had said that the Cubs were going to lose and they'd won, and Aric had said that Trump would lose, and he'd won, too.

I kind of divided my attention between the game and Riley and Vivian. The girls kept asking me questions like how it felt to be covered in fur and how it felt to walk on four legs all the time, and they tried that but weren't very good at it. Human arms and legs are different lengths, so it doesn't work very well for them, although they can move on their hands and knees well enough.

They wanted to pet me, too, and Amy said that they couldn't until I said that I didn't mind. Vivian was fascinated with my wings, and my feathers, and she kept asking questions about why some of them were missing, so I told her about moulting. And if I'd had a really loose feather, I would have given it to her, but right now none of them wanted to fall out.

Pretty much everyone wanted to see me fly, so during halftime, we all went outside and I flew along the street. Not too high, because it was dark out and if I flew too high they wouldn't be able to see me any more, and I also wasn't wearing any of my flight gear and we were right next to the airport, too.

I watched a little bit of the third quarter, and the Cowboys had a good lead—they were ahead by eleven points and nobody seemed to be able to get the ball anywhere. Riley and Vivian were coloring, and they made a crayon-picture of me which was really cute. Then they decided that they wanted to play with some dolls that they had, and one of them was Elsa who I recognized because Trinity had dressed like her for Halloween. So Riley and Vivian had to tell me all about Elsa and she was from a musical movie called Frozen and had a friend who was a snowman called Olaf.

The Cowboys won the football game, which made everyone happy. The Packers had rallied in the last quarter and gotten twenty points, but Dallas had gotten fourteen, so it hadn't been the victory that Green Bay had been hoping for. And then they turned off the television when the commentators started to explain the game, although I thought it was kind of interesting to hear.

There were two kinds of pie for dinner, a pumpkin pie and also a pecan pie, because Frank liked those the best and so did everyone else. And we also had spiced cider and mulled wine, although it was a little too warm for that. Riley wanted some of the wine, but Amy said that she wasn't old enough for it, and she thought that was unfair because I could drink it, and Amy had to explain that I was older, too.

Vivian said that if I was older I'd be a horse, and Amy said that it didn't work like that, and that ponies and horses weren't the same thing.

Nobody was staying for the night, which was too bad. Brad and Amy and Riley and Vivian left first, after the girls gave me a big hug. And then the rest of us sat around the table and drank some beer to relax after dinner, although nobody wanted too much because we were all still pretty full.

It was really late by the time Peggy's grandparents left, and I was covering yawns, 'cause we'd been up early today, but I didn't want to be rude and go off to sleep. And I could see that Peggy was really tired, too, so after we'd waved goodbye to everyone, me and Peggy went upstairs, and she put on her sleeping clothes and said that I could sleep in her bed instead of on the cot.

So I curled up in bed next to her and I was almost asleep when I set my head on the pillow. It had been a really long day.