Page 96 - FDCC Pandemic Book

Living in a Pandemic: A Collection of Stories on Coping, Resilience & Hope
US and Canada shut down for the rest of the year. International travel withered as airlinescutbackflightsbyover95%. Cruiselinesallbutceasedoperationsthroughout the world. Major hotels sent staffs home. Convention centers languished.
It hit home for us almost immediately as Paula’s son’s wedding set for March in Panama postponed for a year. Unlike most of the United States, real lockdowns actually occurred in Panama as the government began permitting only men to leave their homes on certain days and times, and only women to do so on other hours and days.
As advices from US government and public health authorities conflicted, separating fact from fiction, rumor from reality, editorial agendas from real news, became harder to discern. One thing became apparent — getting outside was healthier, better, and allowed for the freedom to move about so many of us had begun to crave. Hiking and cycling in parks, driving further to local or state parks we so often overlooked for “more exciting far off” places allowed Paula and me to travel locally, and experience life ‘in our own backyard.’
The nation’s people sought to work and connect with others from home. ‘Essential workers’ still worked, assuring America’s infrastructure maintained the basics to keep critical aspects of America still moving. Paula and I waited in suspense as Ohio’s Health Director issued her “Stay-at-Home” Order just before St. Patrick’s Day, eager to read that Ohio declared the work of both real estate agents and attorneys “essential” and thus able to work. Yet others, in the travel, entertainment, and restaurant industries were crippled, unable to work. Almost completely shut down. As March bled into April, then May, some business and other critical air travel was maintained even so, but with considerable new viral safety rules in place.
Not able to sit still for long, we undertook our own risk analysis strategy on travel. We hitched our bicycles to our SUV and went outside. We took downstate day trips. One such Saturday trip took us to Columbus, Ohio where we found ourselves cycling down Columbus’ major thoroughfare, High Street, at noon. It was bereft of any vehicular traffic. Astounded, we rode that empty road from Ohio State’s campus to the state capitol building along the street’s center line. It seemed right out of a post- apocalyptic movie. Still, vestiges of travel normalcy crept into our lives another week as my daughter drove home from a major east coast metro area without incident.
These travel successes “spoke” to us, pushing our envelope further. Seeing it looked safe if virus safety rules were followed, we opted to travel overnight to more distant lodging. Our governor opened up an extremely popular state park downstate, so local we’d never been to it, and we jumped on it, driving down to spend a number of days hiking and renting a cabin deep in the Appalachian woods. Paths and trails were marked “one way,” which seemed very odd, but designed to maintain concentrated park visitors’ social distance, even in that very rural area. To our surprise, that state
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