The Thanksgiving Holiday is one of my favorites. It’s a time when the work load drops way off and gives me time to concentrate on family and friends.
As busy as our travel schedule is the rest of the year, this is a time when I can really soak up the family life and enjoy time with people that I don’t get to see often.
It’s also a time to reflect on things to be thankful for; I have an abundance of them, none the least of which is to have a career doing something that I love so much.
This Thanksgiving will be a special one as I will get to hang with some business friends who are like family. That’s one of the amazing things about our sport – you build a second family when away from home and that family becomes equally important to you.
When you’re on the road as much as pro anglers are, you develop close relationships with fellow competitors, the people from B.A.S.S. who make this happen, the media and sponsors.
To celebrate this year, my wife, kids and I are going to Detroit to watch our beloved Lions play the Bears. We’re getting a suite at the game to share with Bassmasters TV co-host Mark Zona and his family; Bassmaster Emcee Dave Mercer and his family; James Chevrier and Vivian Ho, who run the Toyota exhibit at Bassmaster events; and Al McGuckin of Dynamic Sponsorships, a company that represents some of my sponsors.
We’re also going to have Thanksgiving dinner during the game and go out to dinner after the game.
Whereas that may seem like an odd way to celebrate Thanksgiving, you must understand that I’ve been a longtime Lions fan and they always play on Thanksgiving Day. I’ve watched the game on TV, but have never been to the Thanksgiving Day game. The fact they are playing the Bears (Zona’s favorite team) will make it even more fun.
We’ll return home Friday and have another Thanksgiving Dinner with our immediate families living around Kalamazoo. That allows us to extend the holiday and see several people who are important to us.
When giving thanks, you can bet that my family will include the military, especially those servicemen and women overseas, who will be in our thoughts this holiday.
I hope you will, too. Remember, thousands of our troops won’t be with families over the holidays. It’s because of them that we get to do so many things in America that we often take for granted.
And in the VanDam clan, we take nothing for granted!
Remember, it’s all about the attitude!