That Birthday Thing
Do I know how to celebrate my birthday, or what?
Yes, another birthday of mine showed up on the calendar today, and I’ve had quite a commemoration, indeed. Among other things — not many other things, admittedly — I got a coronavirus shot, and Sharon and I ate some Wendy’s take-out inside our car at the fast-food chain’s parking lot on Shaw Avenue in Clovis.
Now, don’t laugh (yes, I can hear some of you chuckling). For starters, getting my second dose of the Moderna vaccine on my birthday was, quite likely — no, make that certainly — the best present I could have received. After all, no other gift could have given me as much chance to have future birthdays.
As for eating take-out at Wendy’s — well, consider this. Indoor dining is still prohibited here in Fresno County because of the virus. I happen to like Wendy’s burgers, and Sharon tolerates Wendy’s baked potatoes. So there’s that. But why, you might well ask, didn’t we transport our take-out to a nearby park and enjoy our lunch there? Well, because our partly-sunny day brought with it temperatures that barely broke into the 50’s. Sorry. That’s too cold for us older-timers.
After our in-car dining experience, we came back to our Airbnb in Clovis and started packing. You see, when we first moved here weeks ago — after we had sold our home in Paso Robles — we were unable to book this lovely place continuously through June. Other people had, unfortunately, reserved time here before we did.
So we have to live somewhere else for the next three weeks. We’ve chosen a motel on Clovis Avenue for the first half of that — and another Airbnb (near this one) for the rest. We return here in the second week of April, and we’ll likely remain here until we head to Iowa for the summer.
Yes, we are still going to Iowa. For one thing, we like living there part-time, even though the state’s legislature and overall political climate have turned more conservative — and, at times, crazy — in the aftermath of last November’s election. For another, we have friends in Iowa. And we still own a condo in Ames, so we will save money by living in “our place” there while our “new place” in Madera County is being built.
Construction has not started in Madera yet, and when it does, the build-out will take about four months. So it looks as if we’ll be in the Midwest for at least a few weeks this summer.
Last year, our trip there was — well, less than satisfying. Just driving to Ames was a continuous tension-filled challenge, requiring numerous itinerary changes as we tried to avoid staying overnight in places with big coronavirus surges. And trust me — last June, just about every place had big coronavirus surges.
Once we arrived for “overnights” in Cedar City, Utah; the always-undesirable Rawlins, Wyoming; and North Platte, Nebraska — there was no food to be found at any of our hotels. We ate breakfasts at McDonald’s (drive-through, of course) and made our own sandwiches for lunch, which we ate at state parks along I-80.
And once we arrived in Ames, we found, to our dismay (but not to our surprise) that everything was “different.” Every public event — the Fourth of July parade, the fireworks, outdoor band concerts — had been canceled. We were afraid to dine inside any of our favorite eateries, so we bought take-out and ate with friends at city parks.
And then we skedaddled out of town in early August, fearing that returning Iowa State University students would bring a load of coronavirus with them. And did they ever. Within weeks after our departure, Ames was recognized as having the worst outbreak of coronavirus cases per capita in the entire nation.
After our return to California, we made only one more trip anywhere — again, by car. We drove to our daughter Amy’s Airbnb in Amity, Oregon, where we spent a delightful week in seclusion, doing our best to avoid other people. Then we headed east to Montana, where we stayed with friends Paul and Sharon Finlayson, who had moved out of our Paso neighborhood months earlier.
But mostly what we’ve done for the past year is — try to avoid getting “it.” We have not dined inside a restaurant. We have not attended any activity that had any kind of crowd (and there haven’t been many to attend). We have not traveled anywhere by plane. And when we’ve had to go inside a grocery store, we have always masked up, and sometimes double-masked.
There is hope for the future, of course. Vaccines have been developed, and more and more people are getting them. Yes, there’s still a sizeable minority of folks who say they will not get vaccinated; but we can’t fix craziness, so we’re just moving on with our (vaccinated) lives and avoiding them.
No, we are not quite “there” yet in terms of life going back to “normal.” So today, we had to “dine out” in our car for my birthday lunch, and later this week — after our move to the motel — we’ll have to wear our masks when we go grocery shopping.
Today’s birthday “celebration” was a far cry from the one we had exactly one year go. Then, we were at Disney World in Orlando, and we celebrated by eating ice cream at the Boardwalk there. But even then, the signs were overwhelming that the coronavirus was about to change everything.
Disney World was in the process of shutting down. All the parks there — the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Adventure and Animal Kingdom — had already shut down. Our hotel — and all the others there — were telling folks like us to get out of town.
So we did, two days later — flying out of Orlando’s empty international airport — so empty that I filed a report for CBS Radio about it — flew into Phoenix’s just-as-deserted airport — and finally into San Luis Obispo’s passenger-free airport. By the time we arrived in Paso that night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom had announced that the state was shutting down, immediately.
One year later, we’re in the process of reopening around these parts — and the governor faces a recall election because of growing dissatisfaction with the steps the state took to try to keep the virus from spreading completely out of control.
It’s a crazy world, indeed. But here we are, ready for our state to spring back to life, and wanting to get back to going places and doing things. And here I am, one year older, and my best birthday present — aside, of course, from still being alive — was that coronavirus shot. Yes, I know how to celebrate my birthday in style, don’t I?