I realize that many of you folks following this blog don't read the Travel Log page which is where I post up-to-date information. My posts take longer to put together, getting the pictures downloaded and organizing the stories more coherently. They tend to be a month or more behind where we really are. But with the coronavirus crisis impacting our trip, I am publishing this post in real time.
Monday, March 16, 2020
We're heading home to New Hampshire, but not on our bikes as we had planned.
In the last few weeks, I've read emails and seen announcements of events cancelled in Colorado and New England. When the Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass for disabled vets was cancelled, I thought, "What a bummer. So many people, both instructors and participants, look forward to it all year." But it didn't affect me personally. We were away from crowds, on our bikes, we had no need to worry.
Although, after following the news in the evenings on my tablet, while bicyling during the day I would run through scenarios in my head. If Rob came down with the symptoms (it was never going to be me) we'd go to an emergency room and I'd insist they admit him. If they told me to self-quarantine, what would I do? Stay in a hotel room for two weeks? I worried, but only a little. After all, most of the time we were on our bikes alone, and only came into contact with people in convenience stores, not the kind of people who had been traveling internationally, who were the ones spreading the disease.
Kylee, our daughter, called us a couple weeks ago. "Mom, have you been following the coronavirus?" I assured her I had and would continue keeping track of it. But obviously she was more concerned than we were.
Then again, we've been in Trump country for some time now, where Republicans believe that - as a campground manager told me just two days ago - "You can't believe everything you hear. The media is making the virus look worse than it is just to make Trump look bad."
That same night Kylee called again, telling me, "Mom, Boulder [Colorado] is shutting everything down. Libraries are closed. Denver schools are closed. CU is going online. People are working from home."
The schools are closed in Florida for spring break, and they will continue to remain closed for a week after. Florida universities are going to online classes after their spring breaks. But go to a restaurant, stay at a campground, you wouldn't know we are in a public health crisis. The county campground and state park campground on Saturday were both full. Saturday night we couldn't find a hotel room in a small resort community. They were all booked. The restaurant we stopped in on Sunday morning was running out of food because business had been so brisk the day before.
It was an article that Kylee sent us Saturday night after our phone conversation that finally made me realize maybe we needed to take a long hard look at ending our trip and head home.
My biggest concern? The health of my favorite traveling companion. Rob has two chronic lung diseases, pulmonary hypertension and asthma. He has heart disease. The coronavirus can lead to pneumonia and organ failure in patients with just those sorts of underlying conditions. In Italy they don't have enough of the medical equipment to save people's lives. We don't either. This is very scary.
I have said that the reason I picked this year to make this trip happen was because this is the year I am 63 years old and that was how old my mother was when she died. I wanted to thumb my nose at that family history. My mother had pneumonia. She checked into the hospital and within a few hours had heart failure. Four days later she passed away. My mother smoked cigarettes all her life.
Rob turned 63 this past January. It would be a cruel irony if pneumonia and organ failure took him away from me at the same age my mother was when I lost her.
Sunday morning, over breakfast, Rob also read the article Kylee sent. Our plan until then had been to continue down the west coast of Florida to Key West, then turn north up the east coast. "What happens if you get sick while we're down in the Keys?" I asked.
We have friends near Orlando and family on Florida's east coast just south of Georgia and in Savannah. We talked about maybe seeing if we could hole up with them for a couple weeks. Then we could continue on our way. But the uncertainty of the crisis, the worry that the southern states aren't ready for it (none are taking the drastic measures their northern counterparts are taking), and knowing that Rob's doctors in New Hampshire are aware of his medical history made us decide to try to get home as soon as possible.
I got choked up when I looked at Rob and said, "We need to go home."
We have a Southwest flight booked for Wednesday. We have 43 miles to ride tomorrow to get to the Orlando airport where we will pick up a rental van. Then on to a bike store to pick up boxes to pack up our bikes so we can fly them home with us. We'll have to buy packing tape and sanitary wipes for the plane ride.
Of all the possible scenarios of what could go wrong, we never imagined a worldwide health crisis. Wildfires, injuries, getting hit by a car, but not this.
Neither one of us wants this amazing journey to end this way. But we know we're making the right choice.
We just hope we haven't waited too long.
I will continue to keep the Travel Log page updated for news on our return home. Then I will continue to publish posts on the remainder of our journey including the rest of Texas, Louisiana, our brief jaunts through Mississippi and Alabama, and Florida.
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