Time to Get Back On The Horse
As the ball completed its drop on December 31st, 2019, Huong and I raised and clanked our champagne flutes to big plans in 2020. We were excited about the prospects of exploring and documenting our planned trips to Hawaii, Italy, Switzerland, and Japan. We were also excited about expanding the reach of our network to the benefit of our food & travel operation. With the exception of Italy, the other locations would be first-time experiences for us.
Hawaii was first on the docket, and oh boy would it be nice to lay on the beaches of Maui in March when the New York City winter was summoning its last full court press of depression and sadness. Wait, what’s that? Something about a lot of people getting some unexplainable flu in China? Well, that’s pretty scary. So…anyway……I can’t wait for our Hawaii trip!
As January turned to February, I expressed concern for what would definitely be disrupted supply chains and impending shortages. By the third week of February, I came to grips with the levels to which this virus would upend all of our lives. I started making the difficult phone calls to other family members who might not yet realize what was coming, and instructed them to buy food and other resources that can last upwards of two months without the need for replenishment.
As for Hawaii, no way was it going to happen, even though society was still chugging right along as February turned to March. I tried getting ahead of things by cancelling with the airlines and with our Airbnb’s, and let’s just say they were not quite where I was when it came to understanding or accepting where this was all going. Eventually, after days of back and forth, the Airbnb’s came to their senses and canceled our reservations, penalty free. And finally, two days before our scheduled flight to Maui, Hawaiian Airlines begrudgingly refunded us. As for our planned trip to Italy and Switzerland in the summer and Japan over Thanksgiving, we could kiss that goodbye.
We battened down the hatches, focused on work and fitness, took up new hobbies like learning piano and Italian language, watched a lot of Netflix, and waited out the pandemic. And waited….and waited.
And waited.
During that time, we as well as a host of others…including you our dear readers….have spent some time reevaluating what is important in life. “Oh man. When this pandemic is over, I am going to….”. We’ve all said it. Maybe you declared you will meet with friends more often, or no longer take your community for granted. Maybe you said you will invest in the emotional currency travel offers.
Well, in only a few months, there is going to be a massive emotional release and a great deal of mobilization. To borrow from Robin Williams’ Professor Keating in Dead Poet’s Society, millions of people around the world will be hellbent on “sucking the marrow out of life” as soon as it is safe for them to do so. For Huong and me, never do we feel more alive than when we travel. We plan to make up for a lost year. So, it’s time to get back on the horse. It is time to start planning.
Reading the tea leaves of the vaccination schedule and the initiation of the Defense Production Act here in the United States, there is confidence that most Americans will have access to the vaccine by late Spring and life will once again begin to have a measure of normalcy by mid-summer. What that means for us is “hello Maui!”
A couple of weeks ago, Huong put together a great charcuterie board along with a fabulous cheese spread, and I uncorked a lovely bottle of wine. We then sat down with our laptops and began planning our trip. This is our big tradition and it felt so good to be doing it again. Even though we are still knee deep in this pandemic, for the first time in ten months we feel the promise of a post-pandemic world. We booked our flights and our Airbnb’s, rolled over almost all of the excursions we had planned for the year before, and solidified our trip. On May 5th we will finally venture out of our fair city and board a plane, fourteen months after we went into lockdown. Four….teen….months.
I cannot articulate enough the level of social distancing Huong and I adhered to this past year. Besides a handful of times when we rented a car for a day trip to hike in upstate New York, we have not gone anywhere except for places where our feet or a bicycle could take us. No travel, no overnight jaunts, no leaving our city. We have not met with friends. We have either been home or we have been outdoors exercising. That’s it. I joke that we are probably in the 98th percentile of social distancers, and that the 2 percent who have remained more conservative than us are those who have not exercised and are fully committed to a veal-like existence.
Maui makes sense for us as the first trip for two reasons. (1) It is a domestic trip, we will have been vaccinated by May, and it is therefore easier to predict that we will not be met with travel restrictions. (2) While in Maui, we will either be laying on a beach or hiking through the rainforest. We will still not be participating in any indoor activity. Restaurant experiences will be those with outdoor seating.
In the latter half of July, we plan to visit Switzerland and northern Italy. Once again, the focus will be on outdoor experiences. Lakes, mountains, sailing, hiking. Minimal indoor activity. This trip is no guarantee since there is still quite a bit of the unknown as it related to Italy’s recovery and Switzerland’s acceptance of American travelers….even those who have been vaccinated. But we feel pretty confident.
We will finish the year with a trip to Japan. We always get on a plane on Thanksgiving Day for a foreign destination and this year will be no different.
The one thing we have noticed during our planning is that there haven’t really been many discounts for flight and accommodation. This is probably because airlines and property owners need to recoup a lot of lost earnings, and they know demand will be high. So, we found it best to begin planning now, before prices go up and availability evaporates. And the biggest upside to doing it now? It is downright therapeutic.
