I went for my first run of the spring yesterday. It was really wonderful being able to go out and run on the newly-built Chicago riverfront walk. This particular segment wraps along the river between Irving Park and Addison, and there’s plenty space to avoid the other locals as they try and go outside to crush some physical activity for the week.
You can finally feel the timbre of the air beginning to move back towards the normal side of the pendulum. But something tells me that going outside won’t be the same again. In other countries that have experienced epidemics like MERS or SARS, the recovery has been slow. I wish things would go back to normal, but it doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon.
Later that afternoon, I basked like a lizard on a friend’s patio, enjoying the first trembling moments of 70º+ weather. I wished for more, and the sun has been shyly poking through the clouds as if to tease us all, but hopefully nicer days will be still to come in early May.
One unrelated benefit for the still-employed in this pandemic is that our vacation days have been racking up exponentially faster than they would in times when travel would have been easier. Already, I’ve cancelled 3 vacations, and will likely have to axe more. I wish I could say that I can ignore these cancellations immensely as they grant me more time to operate on the website, write more projects, and get in touch with people I would have otherwise been forgetting about.
The last part has been the most rewarding. I reached out to two cousins on opposite coasts to check on them and their respective spouses and children. We’re hoping to grab them all for some kind of big booze-and-share, which I think would be an excellent time. So far most of my Zoom meetings have been for work or with gaming buddies, which is kind of a narrow thread to be constantly communing with.
But a brief moment in the hot sun with a cold beer has started to crack the shell of morbidity and coldness that has gripped the city for so long. Soon, we won’t just be hanging out with our parents and neighbors. Eventually we might even party.