Where From Here?

Tentative Steps

A client reminded me recently of the need to perform a punchlist (final inspection) for a building I helped plan in Beaverton Oregon. The trip will require air travel and a rental car.

For thirty years I've traveled nearly every week. And, prior to March, I wouldn't have given a quick trip to Portland a second thought. And although I'm convinced the travel industry is doing its part to safeguard my health (while they fight for their very survival), the thought of a return to frequent business travel is disconcerting.

I'm assessing my need to travel against the backdrop of a society desperate to "return to normal". Here in Arizona, we (too) aggressively "reopened our economy" (an abysmal catch phrase I despise) and the by-product has been stark.

Already any visible public commitment to basic Covid safety precautions have eroded. Bars in Scottsdale are full. My Safeway and Fry's stores wipe carts now and then. Restaurants are open with half the tables empty and the other half filled with guests sitting elbow to elbow. Friends traveling to outside the metro area tell of abuse hurled at them for wearing face masks in public (facemasks are viewed as a political statement, rather than a health measure?) Sheesh.

So we now have a soaring infection rate (doubling again last week) and local hospitals advise that ICU units are completely full and no more ECMO machines are available. Friends in healthcare express profound heartache and frustration.

And through it all our governor and state health director offer doses of nightly spin saying that they "expected a big increase in infections" due to "additional testing". Yet Governor Ducey ignores that infection rates are outstripping percentages of additional testing. And, like a president that who abdicated a coordinated national response to Covid to local government, our governor has pushed responsibility for addressing Covid to individual cities.  I guess next the cities can push the responsibility to neighborhoods?   

I've always advised that travel is an essential part of unifying the world. Through travel we gain understanding and develop empathy for others. I've always taken great pride in the esteem Americans were once held in throughout the world. But in three years that esteem has vaporized with the slaughter of heroic Kurds, endless broken promises to NATO and missed payments as our nation enshrines a policy of pure global xenophobia.

So although, Roadboy, by necessity, will start traveling again, I can't stop feeling that we are all passengers on an airplane that failed to file a flight plan.

Welcome to 2020 - a global rolling dumpster fire.

(Bob thanks for this image!)

Roadboy's Travels © 2020