Travelling with Corona Virus Lurking Around Us
The first time I really felt myself social distancing was when I politely declined an innocuous offer from a kind passerby to take our photo. No way was she touching MY phone. The second time was a moment later when a family of 5 lined up in the same picturesque spot and one member took a photo of the others. A 100 times in the past I have been the guy “please allow me to take a photo of your group”. Not today. I didn’t want to touch HER phone.
When does that come back I asked myself? When can I once again touch a strangers device without fear of giving or receiving some deadly virus. (Geez Dwayne, it’s more like a cold dude. Sure, for me perhaps, but what about my Dad? What about my friends who are immune compromised? Do I want to add burden to my other friends that are on the medical front lines? No. I don’t.)
Will we ever see “normal’ again? What is normal anyway? Will I ever write a sentence that is not a question? Normal moves. Normal is not static. Imagine Harriet Tubman wanting to return to her “normal”. Sometimes normal moves along for the greater good. Sometimes the greater good is redefined. It would appear that COVID-19 is an opportunity for us to bring our heads up and out of the sandbox of our daily life and ask ourselves ‘what do I need to do to help the greater good?’ By practicing social distancing, by isolating after travel, or with questionable symptoms, we are helping those that need it the most; the elderly, healthcare workers, the immuno-compromised, and ourselves. By treating this like the pandemic it is (sans hoarding), we hold back the tidal wave of deaths and hospital visits that will server only to overwhelm our health system and elongate the time of extreme disruption.
So back to my current personal situation. It is March 16th, 2020 Monday just after 1:00 PM here in Australia. Sunday evening in Canada. The government is meeting. They are listening to experts and they have crossed the hump of “this is not real” to end up at “we will do what we must.” I predict that will involve closing our borders, closing nearly all business, and forcing the country to hunker down for a period of up to 8 weeks. Once you stop the merry go round, getting it spinning again is a long slow process.
So why am I not on a plane right now? There are many answers. No seats. No flights available is the first one. We could possibly still get into the USA, but we would be landing into Seattle, with no assurance that we could still get into Canada and Seattle has 10X the COVID-19 problem that all of Australia has.
We are blessed with a great team at work, and we are all working remotely in any event, so work will still get done. What about the house? Our amazing son Cam is getting his own “ice storm” moment. When I was 16 my parents left for 2 weeks to Hawaii. It was winter and a very bad storm came in, followed by one of our famous ice storms. No power for 5 days. Cows still had to be milked. The neighbours came together to assist, and I made it through. I was pissed when my parents came home, as they never called once, and I did not know how to get ahold of them. My Dad famously said, “Well, you got through it.” My Dad, ever the stoic. So Cam will have his own 2020 version, with substantially more communication from us, and a full supply of power and no cows. He will “get through it.”
So we have a choice - camp at airports and beg a hopscotching flight to Russia and then get on a freighter to Alaska, buy a camper van and drive the Alaska highway home - if they let us off the freighter. Or we can embrace the curve ball and see what we can make of it. We can dive the Great Barrier (fish are COVID free so far), we can explore Queensland, learn to drive on the wrong side of the road, and generally take advantage of being forcibly confined to Australia, like the convict settlers of this countries past. Except with wifi.
For those of you interested, I will update this blog periodically and perhaps my new “normal” will include this Blog as a depository of thoughts, or at least questions, from time to time.
Blessings,
Dwayne from Cairns Australia.
