pandemic fallout

In early March 2020 the WHO declared that COVID-19 was in fact a global pandemic. More than seven billion people were affected in at least seven billion different ways. Anything tagged “pandemic fallout” reflects something that happened to me that probably wouldn’t have happened in that alternate reality where we stopped the virus in its tracks.

Posted on episode 250

Pandemic Puppies

At least half the dogs in our neighbourhood these days are less than a year and a half old.

The pandemic puppy phenomenon did not pass us by around here, and every day as we go for our walks in the rain, shine, epic heat or brutal cold, we encounter so many other of these pandemic pups in the park.

Pups who have neither care nor concern that the very pandemic that forged virtually every aspect of their lives to date still has a lingering subtle effect on their human companion’s day-to-day.

Some day, maybe even soon, things will go back to normal… ish.

But maybe not quite yet.

Posted on episode 236

Travel: Disney in the Time of COVID

My wife has been waking up at three thirty in the morning lately. Deliberately. Her alarm goes off, she activates her phone, logs into the Disneyworld website, and queues up her virtual reservation system trying to get us a dinner seating at a reasonable time and place … for some time next year.

I’m not a planner.

For example, when a couple years back I ditched the official tour group, our dance studio travelling companions, for a couple days to head off in advance to Ireland leaving them behind in Scotland, I arrived in Dublin, checked into my hotel and then, simply, went for a walk.

No real destination planned. No expectations. No reservations. Not even a proper bus ticket to get me back to the start. Just me and my feet, wandering.

I plan vacations, of course. But more often than not when I get there I like to explore, take things as they come, and see what the trip presents me.

It’s great.

But here’s the thing …

We’re planning a trip to Florida for the new year.

We’re even crossing an international border, no less.

And I assumed the planning part, including booking flights, hotels, and a car rental was complete. (In fact I assumed it was complete almost two years ago when we booked it the first time but then it got cancelled and we had all these travel credits and … deep breath!)

I was wrong. In 2022 a trip to the magical magic kingdom is rife with a less-than-cavalier planning problem. You can’t just show up. You can’t “wing it.” You can’t arrive without a charged phone with the Disney app, nor lacking a catalog of ride times, neither walking in out of the parking lot hoping for anything but a day of disappointment and disaster … which brings me back to three-thirty this morning, when my wife’s alarm went off.

See, between crowd limits and general popularity, it seems as though Disneyworld has its own planning problem: tens of thousands of people arrive each and every day into their parks and all those people want to enter, play, ride, shop, eat, and exit to go back to their hotels. Rinse. Repeat.

In order to get a meal that isn’t served at a kiosk from a paper plate, we need a reservation, and reservations open so many days in advance at six in the morning Florida time, fill up in literal minutes, and we’re not on Florida time. So, if she waits until the morning … hello quick serve pizza slices for supper.

See, guys like me throw off the flow.

Disney can’t just have everyone … or really anyone … showing up and wandering, no plans, no structure, lacking expectations or reservations.

In fact, those literal reservations need to be made months in advance, setting up plans about which rides you plan to be riding on which days and which meals you intend to eat at what time and when and where … and perhaps even why…

All that spontaneous family fun, it turns out, needs to be carefully orchestrated months before the suitcases come out of storage. I already know what days and times we’ll be standing in line for that Star Wars ride or It’s a Small World, or just Starbucks to keep my eyes open with a venti coffee to help keep me alert as I reach the point of exhaustion from the meticulously planned vacation.

Partly I blame COVID. The need to organize people flow around health rules has exacerbated the drive towards app-driven, technology-backed, ultra-planned everything.

Partly it is also a symptom of going somewhere nearly universally popular.

And partly, I take the blame as someone who doesn’t thrive in this type of vacation … and taking one for the “team” so that the family can have a long-planned trip.

Next time, though, I’m just going to leave my phone at home and go get lost in the woods.

Posted on episode 231

Holy Molar! (Part Two)

Life happens.

It being Sunday, I went for a run this morning. A Sunday run is not that unusual, you say … well, except for the fact that I’ve been barely conscious for the better part of a week and a half.

The nine klick run through the near-freezing suburban trail system was a mix of joyous relief and pounding pain.

Relief, because after ten days in a perscription-induced fog of pain and sleep and blurry half-aware hum, it was wonderful to be back out on the streets feeling the air and the asphalt and the buzz of adrenaline.

Pain, because my tooth felt every jolting footstep like an earthquake aftershock, and oh right we had one of those a few days ago, too. The teeth are unforgiving bellwethers of health and prosperity, it seems.

I try to keep things light and upbeat on this blog as much as I can, but given that a tooth infection that left me all but bedridden for more than a week also found me AWOL from writing the same, I figure I owe a small explanation.

I recall, but you may not that about six months ago I lost a filling.

I had it repaired, took some antibiotics, and went along my merry way.

Or so I thought.

The thing about lost fillings, tho, the thing that doesn’t get mentioned (or if it did didn’t get heard or understood because there was a lot of background noise, everyone was wearing pandemic masks, and my face had just undergone two hours of emergency dental work back in March) is that infections are a real possibility and a big ol’problem.

They creep up on you.

You are busy minding your own business, planning your running training schedule, looking forward to some new snow, and pushing through work hectics. Then the pain starts, at first as a mild headache, then later as a throbbing migraine-like mist over your brain, and then ultimately as electric shocks running up the side of your face that hurt like so much angry bacteria ravenously feeding on the nerves of your molar … until your wife needs to drive you to an emergency dental appointment in the middle of the morning where they do x-rays and give you stack of prescriptions an inch thick and send you along your way with a fresh appointment for an upcoming root canal.

I’ve been popping a cocktail of drugs to kill the infection, sooth the pain, and reduce the swelling, and it has left me tired and numb and so much disinterested in finding interesting things to write about here. So I didn’t. Sorry.

Did I mention that life happens?

Well, life happens.

And yet somehow I woke up this morning feeling almost … almost … back to normal, a few days prior to that root canal appointment later this week, and decided I could probably handle some time on the trails.

It turns out I was right.

I just wish sometimes these lessons came a little less painfully.

Posted on episode 225

Boston Pi (Virtual)

Most everyone I know in the running community knows that in addition to Canadian thanksgiving, this weekend is also the Virtual Boston Marathon.

At least five people I know signed up for the race, which thanks to the pandemic was a once in a lifetime opportunity to run through your own streets, track it on the Boston Marathon app, and call it an official run.

I did not sign up.

… but I did go out on the dawn trails with a trio of friends who had signed up to run the pandemic version of the famous race.

When three of us tag-alongs met up with them early on Saturday morning near a local park, the sun was just peaking over the horizon and they had been at it for almost ten kilometers already.

We trotted into step with their route, followed it as it wend its way along the river, up in the neighbourhood, down into a local recreation area, and around the back side of a golf course. After about eight kilometers of support running, we turned back to where we’d left our cars … and ultimately logged just over thirteen klicks total even as we zoomed past a half dozen other virtual Boston’ers with their race bibs or support cyclists or multi-coloured tutus plodding along with fierce determination through the morning trails.

Our thirteen was not quite a marathon. Obviously. Not even quite a half marathon. I later calculated that my logged distance of 13.43 km as per my GPS watch, worked out to almost exactly one pi of a marathon. Weird. After all, forty two point two kilometers divided by thirteen point four-three kilometers equals three point one-four, or pretty much as close to one pi of a marathon as my technology can measure.

Mathematics and adventure collide on a Saturday morning in a curious way, it seems.

And then the event ended, and we cheered in the actual racers across the finish line via text message, as they completed their virtual distance … and won their real medals.