Saturday, January 8, 2022

We brought in the new year with COVID run in. Up until this time we have been careful and have avoided the pestilence. Then we went to Florida for Christmas.

We rented a condo in Fort Meyers Beach for a Christmas break. Molly and Mitchell planned to fly down for a couple days, then fly to Minneapolis, meet some friends, drive with them to Montana for a couple days of snowboarding. Then drive back to Minneapolis, get a ride to Chicago, stay with some friends, then fly back to Philly. A solid plan. Nothing could go wrong there, right? The best laid plans of mice and men.

Molly got her booster shot the day before they flew to Florida. She felt really bad at the airport, which she chalked up to the booster and a major lack of sleep. A day later Mitchell started showing COVID symptoms, so they got tested. Both were very positive. Like they got a positive result in about five seconds. Then Lise got symptoms. So, we all did a 19-hour, one day drive back to West Lafayette and they stayed here through the new year. Then they grabbed their original flight from Chicago back to Philly.

We all had vaccines and boosters except Molly who only got her booster the day before leaving. I never got COVID, despite close contact with multiple infected people. I felt fine the whole time and had three negative tests. The others had relatively mild symptoms, nothing severe or life threatening. We’re thinking Molly picked it up shortly before her booster.

All in all, everything worked out well. Staying at a condo made it easy to isolate ourselves from other people. We could still get to the beach or natural areas and avoid other people. Back here in West Lafayette we got to spend a chunk of time with Molly and Mitchell. Mitchell did woodworking in a shop instead of the trailer porch. Off quarantine Molly spent time with her grandmother. We all took turns cooking and ate extremely well. So, things could have been much worse.

Not too much else about the trip to report. Florida is Florida. A once unique place ruined by air conditioning, Interstate Highways, unchecked population growth, and gross commercialism. Not to mention a whole bunch of Northern and Midwest carpetbagging transplants and tourists like us. Kind of like Phoenix except with water. Too much water in a good hurricane.

Hoosiers in Paradise, Fort Meyers Beach. OK, let the record show that I’m not a Hoosier. I just live here. Only two of the three were born in Indiana.

The coastal area is overrun with people and development. Remaining are a few tiny fragments of unique natural areas and undeveloped beaches. Sure, we could stroll around on Christmas day in a tee-shirt, and it was delightfully green for winter. But I’m not so sure I would want to live there and put up with the traffic, tourists, and gated communities full of crazy old people hell bent in their golf carts.

Fort Meyers Beach on Christmas day.

I guess palm trees don’t have a wide enough trunk to hide with your radar gun.

Driving anywhere from Atlanta, Georgia south.

Florida’s future might be interesting. Its average elevation is something like 100 feet above sea level. A lot of the state is way close than that to sea level. I suspect that climate change is not going to be kind to Florida. Doesn’t bode well for those high-rise hotels right on the beach. You can’t seawall the whole state.