Iceland doesn’t want me

Ok, no surprise, but they don’t want any Americans right now, like the rest of Europe. I can’t blame them. They did have a small outbreak from a couple of tourists.

Now to the task of deciding what to do with my July. And seeing what of this trip is refundable, or recoverable through travel insurance.

Still Maybe

The Iceland trip has approached and receded.

Can I go?

Do I want to go?

The answers to these questions are still up in the air.

First, the NY Times reported that the EU will likely exclude the U.S. from ordinary travel when they further open their borders on July 1. This puts us in the same category as Brazil, which is only fair. It's based on the numbers. But, "likely" is the operative term there. Nothing has been finalized. And, Iceland is not a member of the EU , but is part of the Schengen travel area. Iceland might decide to go their own way. Again, there is nothing official from the government of Iceland. Just a news article saying that the EU is mighty mad at little Iceland for even considering such a thing. And quoting a minister in Iceland saying "we had hoped" to both open to Iceland and have the U.S. open to them, and they are very sad the U.S. wasn't letting Icelanders in. This was in an English language paper produced in Iceland. How much does one read into the exact wording, by non-native speakers of English? Is it a done deal? Earlier press reports had said to expect further news on plans for July and beyond by June 26, but that has come and gone with no news.

Meanwhile, my rescheduled lovely non-stops from here to Iceland have been cancelled. All of them, from anywhere in the U.S. to Iceland, for weeks, are cancelled. Icelandair is in financial trouble, and a significant amount of their business is actually from the U.S. to Europe, with or without an actual visit to Iceland in the middle. So if Europe nixes us, even if Iceland itself is open to us, they may not be able to make enough money to carry on. They are offering refunds, which I've applied for, but if they go under I'll be out of luck (see Wow Air).

So back on the internet. Canada is on the "ok" list for Europe (which can be considered the provisional list for Iceland). So I could book flights, 20 hours each way, from DC to Montreal to Frankfurt to Reykjavik and back again. Four airports versus two, and unknown exposure on each of six flights total. Multiplies the risk significantly, yes? What's the point of booking if I won't be allowed in, anyway?

I have not yet reached out to the sailboat people. I'm hanging here, waiting to see what is the official word from the government of Iceland, which removes all choice. But I'm not at all sure I want to pay a third time for flights that will be uncomfortable and put me at risk.

I've got a couple of days of full-time work Monday and Tuesday, the "outside expert panel" I'm serving on related to my former employment. That'll keep me busy and not thinking so much about this. By Wednesday, July 1, I'll either be told I can't or I'll have to choose for myself. Stay tuned.

Travel (Maybe)

I've been fizzing back and forth on a trip to Iceland in July. Like in three weeks, July. This year.

I signed up for this trip last August, so it's been on my horizon since then. It's ambitious: two weeks away, a week of it aboard a beautiful small classic sailing ship. A few days in a hotel in Reykjavik before the trip, a couple in the remote town on the northwest coast of Iceland afterwards.

I made the airline and hotel reservations in mid-January. My first choices were already sold out - July is the top month for travel to Iceland. Most of it is paid for.

Of course I assumed for the past couple of months I wouldn't be going. I originally signed up via a travel broker in the UK that specializes in booking passage on classic sailing ships. They sent an email in late March saying they were shutting down and they had turned all of the records over to the owners of the ship. I heard from the airline all my flights were cancelled.

Still I followed the voyage of the mighty little Tecla. I started following her after I booked the trip last August. She was in Greenland when first I found her, and she made her way through the melting pack ice of the Northwest passage in Canadian waters - the first large sailing ship to do so. She had a crew/passenger change in Nome, Alaska, and was off to the Galapagos. She visited Easter Island, rounded Cape Horn entirely under sail, stopped at the Falklands. Then, she was off to Antarctica. She got to Cape Town, South Africa, a few days after the country shut her borders. Allowed to anchor, and to obtain supplies, but not to disembark.  At first, it appeared the passengers wouldn't be allowed off, but after two weeks they were allowed to fly to their homes. (Quarantine, even though the passengers and crew had not touched inhabited lands or seen other people for the several weeks of the Antarctic voyage, and Covid was not known to have spread out of China when they set off from the Falklands.) The four professional crew took the boat home to the Netherlands, via the Azores, where again they were not allowed ashore (despite more than four weeks enroute from Cape Town) but they obtained fuel and fresh food. They got to the Netherlands last week.

The Tecla is owned by a family - bought by a husband and wife for this type of adventure cruising a decade or so ago (paying passenger crews subsidizing their Arctic yearning). Now, the ship is mostly sailed by their grown son and daughter. They usually have two family aboard, and two other crew. They can take up to twelve passengers, in two person cabins (that each have their own little water closet). This is a very similar size and arrangement to the Pride of Baltimore II that I have been on in the Chesapeake.

After a few days of the first time ashore since Antarctica and family reunion, the Tecla folks decided to go ahead and operate the Iceland trips in July. I vacillated mightily. But I decided Sunday I wanted to go, and if I can, I will.

Before you jump all over me, keep reading.

Iceland is a small island nation, an advantage in locking down and fighting the spread of the virus. They had a high tech international biolab company with its flagship laboratory there, and quickly they were able to ramp up testing to one of the highest rates in the world. The virus got ahead of them initially, but as of now there are less than a half-a-dozen active known cases in the country. They have implemented a government sponsored phone app for contact tracing, and more than half the country has put it on their phones. They are opening back up, and even are opening swimming pools and barbershops.  (Swimming is a huge thing in Iceland - they tap their greatest natural resource, hot springs, to provide indoor public pools everywhere.)

Iceland has had a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all visitors since the lock-down started. They are open for visitors from Europe, the Schengen area, and just started an option of, instead of quarantine upon arrival, getting a PCR test (the kind that feels like they are scraping your brain) with results in less than 24 hours. If no known problems surface in the next two weeks, they will open to the rest of the world on the same terms July 1.

My original flights on United that were cancelled involved domestic legs before flying on the seasonal non-stops to Reykjavik. After some time on the phone with the airline Sunday morning, I rejected what they would offer me, with circuitous routings and thus more airports - each airport being an additional potential contagion point. While on hold with them, I checked into Air Iceland's offerings, and this economically shaky (but extremely important to the Icelandic tourist industry) airline has put on a less than daily non-stop flight from Dulles to Reykjavik. I was able to book non-stops with slight adjustments in my schedules (one less day in-country before boarding Tecla).

So here's the deal with virus risk. I will need to travel, masked, through Dulles Airport and onto an airplane that is, I believe, selling every seat they can, not blocking any for infection control. But upon arrival, I will be tested, and everyone else on the plane will also be tested. Contact information will be collected and I'll download the tracing app and go to my hotel. Once I get my clear test result, I'll be free to travel in an infection-free country. I'll board a small ship with up to 15 other people. On board, we will practice hygiene as best we can, and everywhere we plan to sail is extremely remote and without any (or much) settlement. When I get off the ship in Isafjordur (I can spell this without checking now!) I will either drive with fellow passengers or fly internally back to Reykjavik, spend another night in the same hotel, and then fly non-stop back to Dulles. When I get home, I'll do a two-week self quarantine, relying on family to do my shopping and staying away from our crowded park trails.

So the main vulnerability is me or a fellow crew member catching the virus as we travel into Iceland, so it doesn't yet show on the arrival test, and then becoming infectious and later symptomatic on our little voyage. Likewise, the trip home is a risk, but the plane ride home not so much, since I'll be leaving a "clean" country.

So in my opinion, the virus risks are acceptable. But as I started to figure this out, I really agonized over whether I really even wanted to go.

This trip is a very big deal to me. It takes a lot of gumption for me to travel on my own. I love it and I dread it both. I do not meet new people easily or naturally. A day or so after being on the boat, I'll be fine with my fellow crew members. It's the days before and after that have had me worried - I don't want to lurk in my hotel with room service, but eating alone in restaurants in a strange country isn't so easy. I planned to book some guided day trips from Reykjavik after I got there. But all the time, on my own and figuring things out solo, I've got an edge of adrenaline coursing through my veins. Aside from the social stuff, I planned to train for this trip and be much more fit by now than I actually am. If I go, I leave in three weeks and I can't reverse several months of lying on the couch obsessively tracking the news in that period of time. The truth is, the more fit I am the better time I'll have. But they don't actually require me to work the ship if I don't want to. There will be hikes ashore in the remote fjords, but I don't have to go, or go far. I could hang out on the beach and pretend my passion is macro photography of lichen and rocks. 

The deciding moment for me was when I was sailing this past Saturday. The day was lovely, we were out in a nice wind in the middle of the day, and I realized I felt better throughout my body than I have felt in days. Of course I want to do this trip. And it'll be fine. The parts I'm nervous about will be fine. I've even communicated with one of a couple of relatively local people (mid-Atlantic region, anyway) that are also going on the same trip - I think we're even going over on the same flight!

There are a lot of "ifs" around whether I will be allowed to do this trip. But the question of "do I want to" has finally been answered in my head and I'll be disappointed if I can't go. Maybe a tiny bit relieved, but mostly disappointed.

Update

Oh, geez, things have been in such turmoil - and yet, almost none of it touches me, directly. Just my family and those I love, and the country I love... Me? I worry, I ruminate, I self-medicate with books, my body declares war on me so the dizziness, migraines, knee pain and digestive distress really multiply, and my nervous system is on high alert for any signs of the virus. But I'm fine.

Things started going south the day I finally went sailing. My brother-in-law (BIL) dropped by to pick up my girl, who had come over to take care of my old dog. As he got to my door and came in, he got a text from his employee, showing her positive Covid-19 test result. Still standing in the doorway, I told him to step outside immediately. We sat down outside, distanced. His assistant - who can't work at the pharmacy alone, only accompanied by BIL or BIL's one other pharmacist - felt ill the day before. BIL sent her home (after 3 hours together, though both masked!) and asked her to get tested. Here was the result. Gah. So worried. We discussed contingency plans, for the family and for the business. It's now been more than two weeks, and both he and his assistant pharmacist are fine. His employee is still out, but at home. From the moment the text arrived till now, neither he nor my girl have come close to me. (My only risk factors are being old and fat, but I'd like to avoid any unpleasantness.)

So then the issues of racial justice and violence against black people blew up. I spiraled out of control, feeling like the country was close to civil war. If it came to it, I would put my life on the line. If I thought it would be useful. As I noted, I decided at this point to give money - enough to feel it - and to re-engage on areas where I could be actually useful. My body makes war on me, so that I couldn't look someone in the face and answer "yes" to "Do you feel well today?". It keeps me from attending even local protests. When the going gets tough, Nan gets sick. It's a pattern that has repeated itself all my life.

My BIL's pharmacy, in the latest gentrifying area of DC, has been hit three times. Not looting, professional thieves. Folks who knew which drugs to take. He boarded up the big windows. He's talking to the landlord about metal grating. His insurance company is not happy with the situation, and they are talking.

My girl decided she had to go into DC. Of course she did. It is the right thing. But it scares me to death. She has not, so far, encountered any violence. She is on fire with zeal, and also has big feet blisters. I cannot see her, except from a distance, as I provide some practical support. She wears a mask, she says. But she is putting herself at risk. It's so different to contemplate this from the parent perspective. I think back to my own activism, traveling across half the country with people I scarcely knew to protest the Vietnam war, narrowly escaping arrest from the vicious Nixon administration. I was never scared, just mad. Or partying. My parents, separated from me by geography in the pre-cell/text era, heard almost none of this. Now, I'm terrified for my girl. But I also get regular updates.

My boys are fine. The middle boy lives in DC with his girlfriend, in a small studio apartment, and they both are working from home on things that require a great deal of tech equipment. For Memorial Day weekend, they went to an AirBnB just a couple of blocks away - a two bedroom with a balcony and a roof deck! My boy believes strongly in the science of virus spread and has not gone to the streets. No protests directly where they are. He has money of his own, however, and is also giving. We talk often.

My big boy seems to have sunk himself in math. He lives in his university town in a big house with six other guys, so he doesn't lack for company while still being isolated. For the past several years, his life has revolved around math and ultimate frisbee. He's lost the latter, and feels disoriented. And he was competing in ultimate at the top levels of the country - both as a professional (literally, but don't quit your day job) and as a nationally ranked amateur. He's not trying now to keep conditioning up, couldn't think of a non-math book he's read recently, and just geeked to the max. His well-educated, liberal, university town has had some well-bred protests which he hasn't attended. So safe and well, relatively speaking, but I long to see him.

So we're fine.

Something My Government Did Right

I’m kind of spiraling out of control on the news front, and finding how best to engage on the racial justice front is consuming so much of my energy that.  In the meantime, I thought I’d check in on the pandemic. Remember the pandemic?

The Washington Post had an interactive website updated almost constantly that showed various statistics — mostly cases and deaths - for the DMV. (That’s the local shorthand for the DC area: DC, Maryland, and Virginia.) It seems to have disappeared, though they still have the graphics for national and international data. (Because the WaPo is a national paper, I have started going to the Baltimore Sun for info on state of Maryland matters.)

But my county government has one of the best government dashboards I’ve ever seen! It shows a wide variety of pertinent information. (Remember, “information” is data in context. A number sitting out there by itself is usually not very useful.) Since the dashboard was first brought to my attention via our very active neighborhood email group, it has been refined and updated. It shows not just real time cases and deaths, but where our capacity to handle cases is relative to the load. Remember, the whole point of flattening the curve was to have the capacity available. Then, for re-opening, we need testing and tracing. I was thinking what a useful addition that information would be to this dashboard, when they added a couple of pages for testing (but not tracing).

I have a long time professional interest in how to use data to tell a story. It’s difficult, and this is an especially good instance where numbers are presented in a way that one can grasp the situation. I’ve given my rave review to the county (hoping the poor under-appreciated data nerds will hear about it) and will also provide the link to some data visualization sites I frequent.

Spoiler alert on the state of my county: as of this writing, we are getting better on almost every front. From the beginning of the serious local outbreak, “acute care beds” (versus ICU or ventilators) has been the big problem.

The chart I show in this post is a static screen shot, the link is to the live site. Each one of the boxes on the first page has a graph on following pages you can click through, with the documentation at the end. Sometimes, the site takes a long to load initially, but clicking through once it’s loaded is quick.

Anger Moves to Despair Moves to Engagement

This is the first anniversary of my first day of retirement. I've been a bit a reflective, and entirely too much up in my own head. It's report card season, and I've been pulling data to check on myself. But now isn't the moment for that.

My motto for the year is ENGAGE. So far, I'm not doing very well at that. I've shrunken in on myself, and disengaged by distracting myself with books. Current events broke in on me and pushed me first to anger, hot and red. As I read the news over the weekend, I fell more and more into despair, cold and blue. Family issues drove me a very rare panic attack. (The issues are real, but not panic level.) But I can't stay in this state. Finally, I'm very slowly moving towards action. The anger and despair are still there, but I'm prepared to engage.

The final push came from my wonderful long-time personal trainer. I've been vegetating, but last week finally worked with her to come with a new plan. I was quite diligent last week, and she followed up yesterday when my mood was at my lowest. I woke up this morning (to the most beautiful day ever) with the thought, "there is nothing that gets better by my solitary despair" and, it's personal corollary, "almost everything will be better with me if I work out". So not directly out of bed to the workout, but I got it done and I do feel much better. Moving all my body makes me feel better, and gives me energy. I've moved on to the rest of my day prepared to actually do something. Not much, not everything, but some things.

This moment in our country requires someone other than me to lead. My wise friend noted, the best thing for us right now is to give money and support the young folks in our lives. YES! That struck a chord. So, based on a tip from another friend, I visited the Obama Foundation page where there are links to at least a half dozen organizations I assume have been vetted to some degree. I couldn't decide between them, so I gave to all of them. Of course, my new favorite organization is all about using data science to inform meaningful policy changes in policing.

I've been reading a lot on issues, and am nearly done with How to Be an Anti-Racist. It is really really good at putting things into perspective for me. The author, Ibram X. Kendi, has a strong emphasis on the need for policy changes to effect lasting change. This of course works for me. But there are personal issues of change that are just as needed by folks like myself raised with white privilege. One of my Utah retreat leaders used to be a diversity trainer (before she became a sponsored athlete). She will be leading some workshops in a couple of weeks I am going to participate - along the lines of "anti-racism activities for white people". She herself is both Black and Latinx.

Since my mother died last September, I also have been ignoring the messages from all of the environmental organizations I sought out when first I retired. I can't, I shouldn't, try to lead in the fight for racial justice. But I certainly can usefully contribute more of my own physical and mental self to environmental policy issues. There is also intersectionality - I'll be attending a webinar on the troubled background between race and the environmental movement. But I'll also participate in a seminar on how to be an environmental advocate from your couch. I think this has a chance to play into my strengths! And, I've got some letters to write to my county councilmembers.

So I'm coming out of my stupor that pre-dated the despair. When I think about what is going on in the streets of our country right now, I'm terrified. I really feel we are on the cusp of war. But what can I do? I can do what I can do. It's all I can do. And I have to actually do it.