ME VS. THE VIRUS

I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to weather the Coronavirus when there doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel? I've been dodging the bug; so far so good but it's been a minefield. Without a test for the virus I'm still self-isolating and keeping this diary

Back in the middle of March work pushed me into a situation where I had to defy reason and embrace the stupid. Work for us centers mostly in New York, one of the places in the United States at the time most likely to suffer the major brunt of the epidemic. What was I going to do?

Should I sit home in Madison a city with major medical assistance from three major hospital systems including state of the art medical research facilities or head straight into the storm? Barring the fact that there is a strong medical presence in New York it still remained woefully deficient in supplies and hospital space for an expected onslaught of the ill and dying. I thought about it. I'm old enough for my family to worry about my health. They were even threatening to cancel any travel plans I'd already made. The only place worse to travel to would have been Italy and as much as we consider it to be our home away from home it didn't fall into my game plan.
Everything was a last minute decision. Should I go or should I stay?

The scramble in Madison was on as I rushed from grocery store to drugstore to the construction worker's protection section of our local hardware store, all to no good. Hand sanitizers...no. Protection masks...no. Sanitary wipes...no. Construction worker's respirators...no. When I got home Rick had found some rubbing alcohol with a 70% rating in our medicine cabinet along with a bottle of Aloe Vera gel in a box where we keep our summer suntan and sunburn ointments. If you mix two-thirds rubbing alcohol to one part Aloe Vera you have an adequate hand sanitizer. I felt a little better about leaving on a jet plane. Rick was meeting with a client in Milwaukee. To add salt to his wound I made him drop me off at the General Mitchell Airport.

When I arrived the Milwaukee airport was neither overly packed nor noticeably empty. There weren't an abundance of masked passengers although I was aware of keeping my distance and did wear a pair of winter leather gloves despite the fact that I was inside and it was seasonably temperate outside. Any glances I got from my mostly unmasked companion passengers were only worth a shrug on my part.

Since I travel so much I had an early boarding number on Southwest Airlines. With Southwest there are no assigned seats. You're given a boarding number and from there you get your choice of seats. I was second to board, second out of a little less than seventy passengers. It meant we could spread out on the plane. In fact we were told we had to spread out to distribute the weight so as not to make the plane nose heavy. I obeyed by sitting in the aisle seat of a three-seat row intimidating anyone to try and squeeze by me into the window seat. I've gotten very good at this.  Since the number of infected in New York hadn't risen to anything to warrant having the hairs on your arms start to stand on end the concern factor on our plane was minimal. None of the stewards wore masks as they nonchalantly passed out drinks and those little packets of miniature pretzels with their bare hands. I still put my gloves back on as we disembarked the plane and I exited through the new terminal B at LaGuardia Airport.

When I fly from Milwaukee to New York to save money I take public transportation to get me from the airport to the apartment. I'm usually traveling pretty light since over the years that we've been doing this we've accumulated a complete double wardrobe one in each location. I can get right off the plane, hop on the bus for a short ride to the subway (I do have to a one time subway transfer) and then I'm out with a one-block walk to our front door. Time wise I can normally beat an Uber or cab ride by a good deal of time and my savings is great, dropping the price from $50+ to $2.75. Who's smart now? The ride was a breeze but I still wasn't seeing a lot of paranoid or even cautious subway riders. The train wasn't too full. I got a seat and still managed to keep myself a little under the now recommended social distancing recommendation.

It was around eight at night when I unlocked the door to the apartment. I sat my luggage down, picked up a pencil and a pad and went right to work putting together a grocery list. We have a Trader Joe's three blocks up Columbus Avenue. It wasn't raining when I got home but in the fifteen minutes it took me to put together a shopping list the rain had started. It was barely a drizzle, not enough to run back up the three flights of stairs for an umbrella. I had at least remembered our, dare I say, pretentious linen bag with the word, "Montalcino" stenciled on the side. I was willing to get a little wet but I wasn't ready for the pandemonium of Trader Joe's. The minute I walked in and realized I'd have to wait for a cart I knew I was in trouble. Almost all the shelves were empty and although I didn't see any fights over the last bag of chopped kale and broccoli salad I was willing to grab one of the last bunches of clearly over ripe Chiquitas. Somehow I was able to fill my cart with some frozen blueberries, a gallon of 1% milk, a dozen eggs, a couple of frozen Masala vegetarian dinners and a tub of crumbled blue cheese before I went to find the end of the checkout line. Our Trader Joe's has five aisles each stretching the length of the store that occupies half of a city block. I was the last person in the last aisle in the queue of shoppers that snaked all the way through every aisle. Patience was a virtue as I found there were several benefits to this long line. I quickly became friends with Laquicha, the woman in front of me, and Felicia, the woman behind me. We quickly formed our own little cadre where we held each other's places in line, moving along each other's carts as one or the other of us found something we could add to our buggies that we weren't able to see before. I picked up three boxes of ginger cookies, a jar of peach halves and a plastic container of salted brownie bites someone had discarded in the ice cream cooler.

When I finally got through checkout and walked out into the rain at 9:45 there was now a line of people stretching all the way down the block and around the corner waiting to get in when the store was scheduled to close in fifteen minutes. I felt lucky. A little wet but lucky.
I wouldn't have come back to the city were there not clients I had to attend to. I scheduled my meetings but intended to quarantine in place as much as I could. You have no idea of how difficult this is for me. I'm not good at just veg'ing out. On vacation I need to be on the go trying to see everything there is to see. I schedule trips to museums, urban park excursions and shopping trips when my family would prefer sitting poolside and working on their tans. They usually end up telling me to just go and do my thing and that's fine with me. I tried my best to hunker down and stay in the apartment.

I organized paperwork, I cleaned, and I re-watched every season and every episode of The Great British Baking Show. I even started Googling all the contestants to discover their backstories. John now has four cookbooks and a TV guest roll, Liam is the new host of Bake Off: The Professionals and Val still insists everything tastes better when baked with love. In between episodes I'd shuttle back and forth to MSNBC to check on what was happening with the world and the Coronavirus thinking that perhaps Mother Nature was sending us to our rooms without any dinner to think about what we had done. Each day in New York the itch to run progressed into a severe case of hives, a creeping anxiety telling me to finish up what I could and then leave before I could no longer get out of the city. I changed my flight twice as the news kept on intimating that air travel was on a precarious edge of total discontinuation. I moved my first flight back to Madison from Friday to Wednesday and then Monday morning my intuition told me it was jump now or relegate myself to a very lonely stay in New York without any family. I leapt. Clearly the airlines were as scared as I was.  Even with less than twelve hours between changing my reservation and the scheduled flight departure I got the new flight at no extra cost.

I had enough time to pack up my presentation and walk it across Central Park to my client's, drop it off with the doorman and then walk back to my apartment past all the closed museums on Fifth Avenue. I decided that the less public transportation I needed to take the better.

I threw any client folders and materials I might need into a carry-on, called Rick to tell him my plan and headed to the airport, the virtually empty airport. There were twenty-three ticketed passengers for my flight back waiting to board a plane that held hundreds. I had my homemade sanitizer and a pair of gloves. I wrapped a summer scarf around my face and crossed my fingers. I didn't need to use the snake eye face to commandeer my entire row. We all spread out trying to maintain our six feet of distance but once again the stewardesses didn't seem to be particular concerned. I would have been wearing a hazmat suit if I were forced to work in a metal cigar with a bunch of strangers whose medical histories I didn't know.

I'm back in Madison self quarantining for the next two weeks and re-watching the episodes I've already re-watched a half-dozen times of The Great British Baking Show. As long as it can still make me smile every time Rahul wins another star baker title or Nadyia with tears rolling down her face soliloquies on how she's learned to believe in herself through baking. Just hand me the hand-sanitizer and a hanky and I'll be l okay.