Too Much Convenience

I needed this. Hank Stuever: Wawa in the morning, Sheetz at night.

Sheetz in the morning, Wawa at night.

They’re just convenience stores, you shouldn’t think too hard about them. (Fair warning: This story thinks too hard about them.)

By late July, this much came clear: Some of us were going no place exotic in this, the bummer summer. There wasn’t the time or there wasn’t the money. Things keep not happening, or the wrong things happened. We never got farther than the Sheetz convenience store off the interstate. Stood there paralyzed by the choices in a Wawa — what kind of chips, what kind of sandwich, what kind of soda, what kind of frozen chocolate thing? What kind of life? Which? What?

How about just resigning ourselves to summer’s fate? What about a local sort of road trip, a mini-mart epic, bouncing between all the Sheetzes and all the Wawas you can find? Sheetz just opened its 360th location. Wawa will open its 571st this week. We live right where their territories overlap, a lovely Venn diagram of two same-but-different worlds.

Where are you going?

I got the jits tonight. I’m going for a drive.