Travel in the Time of COVID

Part 1: A long time ago…

…on a continent far, far away, Lea and I took a very long trip. So long, in fact, that for a while we didn’t even think about traveling again. Time passed, as it does, and at last came the day when we felt that… maybe… it was time for another overseas adventure. But not a stressful one, no. We wanted to sit on a beach, or perhaps by a pool, and have someone supply us with copious amounts of alcohol as we emptied our minds of all things work-related. In other words, we wanted an all-inclusive resort: a vacation spot that would collect us from the airport, drive us to the hotel, and let us turn off our brains.

Therefore, dear readers, at the dawn of 2020, we used a discount travel site to book a stay in Cancun a few months later, in April.

Then a plague happened.

Though we’d already paid, in light of COVID, the travel company let us postpone our trip to Mexico—but not forever. By December 2020, the pressure was on to pick a date and commit, so we did, with much crossing of fingers and gnashing of teeth. We knew that COVID might surge again, new problems might arise, and cannibal zombies might start walking the earth.

Time dragged. We went camping. We both worked from home. I published some books and sold some short stories. Vaccines were released, which Lea and I got as soon as humanly possible. For a while, it even felt safe to go in public (masked, of course). Lea’s sister Lisa was scheduled to visit the US from her job in South Sudan, so the question came up: How much were tickets to meet her in New York, and did we dare venture into airports and subways?

We dared.

New York, May 2021

The cheapest flights to New York are really into Newark, followed by a leisurely forty-minute train ride from Liberty International direct to Penn Station. I say “leisurely,” but after working from home for over a year, this was by far the longest time we’d worn masks in one stretch. Since we were being extra-cautious, we each wore two masks on the plane and on the train.

Breathing my own air for hours on end was a COVID-related pleasure I hadn’t enjoyed yet. Medical and service-sector employees have had to deal with that since Day One, but Lea and I spent our quarantine as hermits. This trip was our first taste of “Here’s what your breath really smells like—all day.”

But you know what we call that, folks? Inconvenience. Mask up, people. Cover your nose and your mouth. New Yorkers seemed to understand this idea. Why do I have to explain this?

(ahem)

Trains arriving from New Jersey are consigned to the deepest bowels of Manhattan’s underground. Any New Jerseyite readers out there, let me know if that’s a personal attack against your state. Once we rode the escalator up from Penn Station, our very first sight of NYC was the Empire State Building. No giant ape, but what can you do? Our hotel was only a few blocks around the corner, so we checked in and did the first thing you do when arriving in New York:

We got bagels.

Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, the bagels! After a year of home-cooked meals, exhausting ourselves of every recipe we could tolerate, those real New York bagels were sheer carb heaven. We bought enough for ourselves, Lisa, and our travel buddy Melissa, retreated to our room, and browsed for things to do that weren’t completely locked down.

It turns out that while New York was back in business, many of its people still chose to stay indoors. The subways, for instance, were never crowded. That is a sign of the End Times, my friends. Before COVID-19 and the subsequent plague of “Waaah, I don’t want to listen to doctors,” getting a seat on a New York subway was a thing almost unheard of. Another glitch in the Matrix was that it was never hard for us to find restaurants that didn’t require reservations. Some public buildings were closed, but businesses were open. Some put a cap on how many people could be inside at once, but most just required masks, a temperature check, and hand sanitizer before entering.

One of the first things I’d wanted to do post-quarantine was visit an actual brick-and-mortar bookstore, so we went to The Strand and spent money. We wandered Chinatown and Brooklyn, took a walking tour of Harlem, and went for the nighttime view from The Edge, a platform high above Hudson Yards (a futuristic mega-mall whose target consumers are probably Cylons from Battlestar Galactica).

Though vaccines were available before we went to NYC, they were still pretty new. We expected that everyone would get their shots sooner or later (har-har), but at that point it hadn’t been possible yet. We spent the whole weekend masking in public, maintaining social distancing when possible, but nevertheless enjoying ourselves. Once we came home (after another day of double-masked transit) it was a pleasure to peel the layers off my face and take in a few easy breaths.

Shortly after, the CDC relaxed its mask mandate for the fully-vaccinated. Which, of course, gave the hardly-maskers and anti-vaxxers permission to go around mouth-breathing at people. We already had another weekend trip planned, but grew ever more anxious about the inevitable rise in cases due to the swarms of careless people being asshats.

Tampa, June 2021

The great thing about living a short ride away from the world’s busiest airport is that if you watch the sales, weekend getaways are a snap. Early in June, we took an extra-long weekend to visit our friend KT in Tampa. (We also took our computers so we could work while hanging out.) The number of incautious people were on the rise, so we spent more time “in” than “out.” It was great to spend a weekend near the water with some BBQ and first-class Cuban food, but as at home, we ate take-out or made use of outdoor seating. We went kayaking on the Homosassa, then spent an afternoon drinking cocktails in KT’s  pool.

In the name of sanity and everyone else’s entertainment, and because there was no compelling reason not to, I got drunk. Drunk drunk, y’all. Me being intosic… insoxa… intoxicated is a sight that very few people have had the privilege to behold. Call me a lightweight: I never got passed-out, falling-down, hugging-the-porcelain drunk, but for Lea and KT’s edification, I made it my mission to clean out a couple unwanted bottles of rum. Lea says I get a little belligerent when drunk, but I rather think it turns off my inbred Southern inhibitions. And makes me dizzy. Real dizzy.

Meanwhile, COVID was back on the rise, quickly surpassing 2020’s peak. After returning to Atlanta, Lea and I put ourselves back into lockdown, especially once the Delta Variant kicked into gear. On top of all that, we lost our cat Miss Piggy to a series of medical issues. In August, going nuts in a cat-empty house, we decided to take a “working holiday” to visit Lea’s mom at her home in Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach, August 2021

Instead of flying, this time we drove. Urgh. The advantage of driving is not having to wear two layers of masks for hours at a time. On the other hand, while the drive should have been five hours, it was made longer by torrential rain on the way over, and torrential Atlanta traffic coming home. The COVID rates in Georgia and South Carolina were dismal, and several vaccinated people we knew had come down with cases of Delta. Nevertheless, for better or worse, we had to get out of the house.

In Myrtle Beach, we worked, ate out, and sat on the beach in the evenings. I was glad for a beach chair and the sunsets by the waves, but in restaurants it was somewhat disturbing. It seemed that nobody was taking precautions. In one restaurant, even the wait staff weren’t masking. I cannot believe that we weren’t exposed to COVID; I can only assume that our vaccines did their job.

Get vaccinated, people! Why are we still talking about this?

(ahem)

About that Cancun thing…

Back when it came time to book a flight or lose our money, we rolled the dice and chose October 2021 as our vacation date of last resort. October was far enough away from 2020 that we’d hoped everyone would be vaccinated (cue hysterical laugher and/or sobs) and things would have returned to something close to normal. It was also the furthest date out for which we could purchase airplane tickets.

All through the summer, COVID cases crept up. We worried whether we could travel at all, or if we even should. The worst-case scenario was that we’d get COVID in Mexico and be stuck in Cancun for an extra two weeks. It wouldn’t be an extended vacation; we’d have to do our jobs (while sick) using a foreign hotel’s Wi-Fi and our tiny laptop screens while hemorrhaging pesos on room-service bills.

But as the date grew closer, infection rates inched down. We still didn’t trust it. We avoided going out as much as we could, but a mountain of necessities kept drawing us out of the house. A week before our departure date, we both got COVID tests to make sure we weren’t going to bring the bug with us.

At last, the big day arrived, the day we’d been planning for since January 2020. We packed our beach clothes and our work computers, took the train to the airport, and flew to Mexico. No matter what happened next, we’d at least have margaritas by the pool.

TO BE CONTINUED