This post reflects on two trips my wife and I took, one in 2020 and one in 2021. Both departed and returned home on nearly the exact same dates. Both were to very nice beach destinations. Both trips were wonderful. But the similarity ends there, in terms of the world we returned home to, and the world in which we were traveling. I thought readers might enjoy reflecting on the contrast, and thinking about how their own worlds are different now vs. a year ago.
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Early 2020 involved a lot of travel for my wife and me. First, we flew to Tampa and spent the night in late January. It was during the annual Gasparilla Festival, which attracts a few hundred thousand drunken pirate wannabes to the city for a weekend of carousing, a boat parade, and other activities. It's Tampa's Mardi Gras.
We stayed in the middle of it. Our hotel was crowded with people attending the festival. The lobby was packed. The elevators were full. Nobody was probably going out of their way to wash their hands more thoroughly, not touch their faces, or avoid other people. The only masks were pirate masks.
Then, we embarked on a cruise. We touched the usual surfaces, got food at the buffet, etc. (We've always been diligent about washing our hands. And I will not miss the demise of the cruise buffet. I've seen far too many people grab a food item with their grubby hands, look at it, and put it back.)
When we got home from the cruise, I was sick (that's never happened to me in the 20+ cruises I've taken - so much for the "floating petri dish" myth). I went to the doctor, and tested positive for ... influenza A. In spite of getting a flu shot the previous October. I do recognize that flu vaccines are based on the strain of flu that is expected, and sometimes the flu throws a curve ball, as it did last year. My case was very mild, probably due in part to the vaccine.
I then had several business trips in February: San Francisco, Tampa, Jacksonville and Austin. I followed my normal routine, even though there was some buzz about this coronavirus thing that originated in China. (Okay, I didn't make my usual sojourn into Chinatown when I was in San Francisco, but that's it.) I didn't worry about what I touched in the hotel or on the plane, but again, I washed my hands regularly, as always. And I had no qualms about dining out, no matter how crowded the restaurant. (I still don't.)
Then, my wife and I went to Hawaii in late February and early March. Same story there. We spent the night on the way out in Oakland, and on the way back in San Jose. In the Oakland airport, we did see some people - mostly Asian - wearing masks, but that's common there during any flu season. The flights were fairly full. Nothing was different in Hawaii (the state that would later have the most draconian lockdown and quarantine measures in the nation, in spite of the lowest case numbers in the nation). Restaurants were crowded, the hotels were at capacity.
We didn't really notice that anything was different until we flew back to San Jose. We were the only people on the shuttle bus to our hotel. The driver said the restaurant was closed, and they'd laid off all but the most tenured staff, because the usually brisk convention business in Silicon Valley had dried up. The hotel was indeed like a ghost town.
On March 10, we returned home to Kansas City. The next day, I made a Target run. I was literally laughing out loud as I pushed the cart through the stores, incredulous at the behavior of the panic-driven hoarders. No soup. No beans. No canned tuna. Of course, no toilet paper, no facial tissues, no paper towels, no hand sanitizer, no wipes. I'm still trying to figure out how a respiratory virus can cause one to have to increase one's arse-wiping exponentially. I figured it would be short-lived.
I was wrong.
A few days later, I awoke at oh-dark-thirty, thinking only about what would happen if we ran out of toilet paper. I lay awake thinking of schemes - mostly illegal - to obtain some, should the stores remain out of stock. I decided to be at Wal-Mart when it opened, and try to find some. If they didn't have it - or even if they did - I'd run across the street to Target. Then hit the grocery store on the way home. But I had a back-up plan.
I have Diamond status with Hilton, as I stay at their properties when I travel for business (which I used to do a lot). They offer a digital key that lets you use your phone to open your room door, so you can bypass the front desk. I was going to take an empty suitcase to the nearby Hampton Inn (a Hilton property), walk past the front desk as though I had a room, walk to the elevator, go up a couple of floors, find a maid's cart, and fill the suitcase with TP while the maid wasn't looking. Hey, I said some of the schemes were illegal. I didn't tell my wife what I was contemplating - plausible deniability.
So I set out on my pre-dawn raid, hell-bent on coming home with toilet paper. Fortunately, Wal-Mart had some. They also had wipes, so I scored some canisters of those.
My grocery shopping routine was altered for months. It often took me three stops at different stores to find everything on my list. However, I view grocery shopping the way military leaders view missions. If it's on the list, I am by-God not coming home without it. Besides TP, flour and cream of mushroom soup turned out to be the greatest challenges. (Flour, because of all those first-time sourdough bread makers. What's up with that? Do you really need sourdough bread to survive?)
Every trip I made, I bought toilet paper, which by now was limited to one package per customer. But if I stopped at three stores and they all had it, I scored three packages. I'm no hoarder, but I do worry about the behavior of others. If they're inclined to try and buy up all of an item out of panic, I'm going to make sure that I'm well-stocked in that item. So I continued that buying behavior for a number of items that had been in short supply. Suffice it to say that I'm well-prepared for the next round of irrationality.
Over several months, shopping largely returned to normal, and shortages were once again virtually non-existent. But those few months felt like living in a third-world country - or one governed in a manner that none of us should hope for.
We continued to travel. Only my Jacksonville client had me keep making my regular quarterly visits, so I went there in May, August, November, and February 2021. I also went there for a board retreat in June, and my wife accompanied me, and we stayed a few extra days at a beach resort. She accompanied me again in November. And we took a couple of driving trips with our dogs. One of the advantages of the remote work model is that you can do it from anywhere, so we plan to make additional trips with the dogs without having to take time off work.
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March 1, 2021, was our 25th wedding anniversary. Our original plan was to make our first visit to Italy in late May and early June to commemorate the occasion. We booked three amazing properties for three days each: an apartment on Lake Como, a villa in Tuscany, and a home perched above the Amalfi Coast. We booked them after the pandemic began, thinking that by our travel dates, things would be back to normal.
As 2020 progressed into the fall, we concluded that travel to Europe for our dates was highly unlikely without a draconian quarantine requirement. We didn't want to wait until the last minute and cancel, running the risk that the property owners wouldn't be able to re-book our dates. So we canceled our plans. Instead, we decided to go to Los Cabos, Mexico. We had been twice before, and had stayed in the Hilton located between Cabo San Lucas (CSL) and San Jose del Cabo (SJD), using points to pay for the room. Mexico was open for business, and there were no restrictions on going there.
Rather than stay at the Hilton again - even though we were sitting on about a million Hilton points - we decided to try to find someplace special for this milestone celebration. And we did: a three-bedroom, three and a half bath villa with a pool and hot tub perched above the ocean, with expansive views. The villa is in a gated, off-the-grid solar community about 15 minutes east of SJD - well away from the night life and hustle of CSL, which is not our scene. It was perfect.
A few weeks before our trip, the CDC announced that anyone flying into the U.S. from abroad - including U.S. citizens - must show negative results of a covid test taken within three days of the return flight. We considered canceling. But we decided that we weren't going to let the CDC imprison us in our home over a covid test. We found that they did accept the less invasive and inexpensive rapid antigen test. So we began to try to figure out how we'd go about getting tested in Mexico.
Within two days of the CDC announcement, Mexico had mobilized resources to respond. The Los Cabos tourism website had a page with information on testing. Every hotel and timeshare resort had tests (free for guests), medical personnel to administer them, and the forms required by the CDC. The website also listed all hospitals and clinics that offered the tests, which tests they offered, the turnaround time for results, and contact information. U.S. states should be so organized, and they've had months to get there. Private enterprise will always get better results than government.
Traveling was different this time. Yes, masks are required at the airport, and onboard flights. But no one says anything if you're seated in the airport without one, especially if you're eating and/or drinking. The same is true on the planes, and the flight attendants are seated during taxi and takeoff, so they can't see who's wearing a mask and who isn't. So one could basically lower or remove one's mask as soon as the flight attendants sit down before takeoff, then pull out food and drink when they get up, sip and nibble until they sit down again, and then don the mask when the plane stops at the gate.
The flights were, for the most part, pretty full, and there were lots of people out and about in Cabo. The airports were busy. Travel is clearly coming back - especially in places like Mexico that are welcoming visitors.
Arrival in Mexico was the same as always, with an added form to fill out saying we didn't have symptoms, hadn't been in contact with a positive case - the usual.
The situation in Cabo was pretty similar to home. Masks are required until you're seated at restaurants. Some of them ask you to use hand sanitizer, and take your temperature. Masks are also required at the grocery store, but not in most shops. We took a sunset cruise, and had to wear them to board the boat and in the harbor, because hey, we all know that the 'rona spreads in harbors, but not on the open sea, nor on the dock.
Testing was a breeze. Without an appointment, we went to a local hospital where everyone we encountered spoke English. We were in and out in ten minutes, had our test results by email in less than two hours, and picked up the paper forms the next day. The whole thing cost less than $60.
We had to fill out an attestation that we'd been tested on the Southwest Airlines website, which was automatically entered into their system, so all we had to do at check-in was show the negative test result.
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Our Cabo trip was amazing, and it made us glad that Italy fell through. It was the best vacation of our lives, and we've had some incredible travels. The villa we rented was amazing. We'd wake up in the morning and step out on the terrace by the pool, and watch the whales play in the ocean. We ate at awesome restaurants, visited beautiful beaches, and saw indescribable sunrises and sunsets. I would not have traded this experience for anything. We will only have one 25th anniversary, and ours is a marriage worth celebrating.
Sure, we could have stayed home because we refused to wear masks for the little time we had to, or to get a test to be able to return to our own country. However, that would not have made us "free" - quite the opposite. We wouldn't have missed this trip for the world, and we weren't about to allow the CDC to imprison us at home with a two-inch by four-inch strip of cloth and a nasal swab.
Oh, and when we got back, I again went to the grocery store. This time, there was plenty of toilet paper, soup, tuna ... you name it. (But the basement's still stocked, just in case.)
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