Seattle Forrest

It was a year ago today that people learned about what would come to dominate our lives. At first it was a strange sickness in China, a draconian quarantine, and in my naivety and ignorance I thought it would fizzle out. Then people started dying in a town I ride my bike through from my front door. Now it's everywhere.

What do you miss from the before times? What's better now? Of all the changes we've been through, what do you think will stick when we get to the other side? What will you tell your grandchildren about what we're living through?

Hondo Gravel

Science doesn’t care what you believe will be great advice for future generations. I would vent but it would be inappropriate on this forum too many expletives....

ooga-booga

in no way minimizing what has happened and how many have been afflicted and directly affected...but i miss beer rides.

DrIsotope

I lived like a hermit before, and nothing serious has changed now. I go to the store less. The wife works from home. The kids don't have to be driven to school every morning. We saved thousands over the course of the year not going out, no traveling, no mini-vacations. I put like 600 miles on my car in all of 2020.

So I racked my brain, trying to think of something to miss. Nothing of value is coming to me. Well, maybe endless shrimp at the Red Lobster.

rsbob 

I miss travel with my wife, eating out, gatherings with friends and relatives and holding my grand baby. What’s better now? Ask me again after Inauguration Day because everything now pretty much sucks.

What might be better? More people heading to the outdoors for recreation (hiking, cycling, etc) may lead to better future funding for Natl Parks, outdoor preservation due to more concerned people about the fate of the planet. Maybe more appreciation for science which brought the vaccine in record time, not thoughts and prayers.

What will I tell my grandchild? I lived during an era when science and facts were trivialized and denied for purely political reasons while one branch of government completely abdicated their responsibilities to abide by the constitution. I lived through a pandemic where close to half a million Americans unnecessarily died due to the limitless ineptitude and self serving needs of one pathetic individual.

Machka 

2020 was a great year! Definitely better than the 2 years before it. We're healthy. We're relaxed. We caught up on sleep. We are not being hassled. We enjoyed working and attending university from home. We didn't have to go out much. We didn't have to associate with people very much. I completed my Master's degree. The rest of the world got to experience the "shutdown" Rowan and I have been experiencing since March 2018 ... that has been fantastic! We're not alone!

I don't miss much from "before" ... in fact, 2020 made a number of good things popular like distancing and hygiene and going home when sick.

It introduced the possibility of working from home, and in fact, I did for 4 months last year ... here's hoping we do it again in 2021!

It introduced the possibility of attending uni from home, and I did for 2 semester. I don't need that now, but it's great that schools know what's possible.

And cleaning ... it's fantastic to get on the bus and have it smell clean!

It introduced so much potential. I can only hope 2021 follows up on all that potential.

Seattle Forrest

The top hundred things I miss are seeing people who are important to me. (I'm glad that almost all of my friends love the outdoors, it means I get to see them occasionally on the trail.) I miss hugs. A good friend of mine went through a rough period recently, she needed a hug. I miss smiles too.

I miss going to the gym. Not really. I think we get to choose what kind of old person we'll be, I want to keep doing things I love, I miss working towards that in ways that aren't part of daily life.

​​​​​​I like working from home full time. I was doing that for a year before the pandemic, but now everyone is, when I switched jobs there wasn't even a question. I hope this is outlasts the pandemic.

GadgetGirlIL

I miss interacting with my students in person. I'm so sick of Zoom. If I never had to use it again, that would be great. Unfortunately, I don't see much changing before the summer semester at the earliest.

I hate working off campus - I only live a mile from work so there is no commuting savings. Plus I need the distinct separation between work and home.

I miss the casual interactions with my colleagues and students. I have no idea what is going on with any of my colleagues. I didn't realize until the pandemic how much I do crave some amount of social interaction in spite of being an introvert.

I missed not being able to drive to Virginia in 2020 and seeing my dear friends. This had been an annual trip since 2016.

I'm grateful that I've always felt very comfortable cycling and hiking by myself. I did a lot of that in 2020 and have more planned for 2021.

I'm grateful that my husband and I are on the same page in terms of vaccinations, face masks, and being strategic about shopping trips.

mstateglfr 

- I miss my kids being able to hang out with their friends more frequently than they do right now.
- I miss my kids having time at sports and life camps,, both day and overnight ones.
- I miss being a mentor on our youth cycling organization since this past 5 month season was cancelled.

- I dont miss going to my office to work. If given the choice, Ideally I would go once or twice a week. Ends up I am just as inconstently productive at home as I was at work!
- I dont miss being as busy as we were a year ago...though I miss that at the very same time. Luckily, we all like each other and have made the most of the time together. I cant imagine the hell that would have been the last 9 months if our kids didn't like each other.

canklecat

I missed the weekly casual group rides and occasional spirited faster club rides. But not enough to take unnecessary risks.

I had already quit fast club rides in autumn 2019 when I developed a pesky respiratory thing that turned me into a phlegm machine. I was snuffling, hacking, coughing and spitting so much it was disgusting even to me. I didn't know if I was sick but I didn't want to risk anyone else. (It turned out to be a non-infectious chronic inflammatory disorder, mostly fixed with nasal inhalers and asthma inhalers).

After hearing about then pandemic in China in January I figured it was just a matter of weeks before it hit the US. So as soon as I heard about the first cases in the US I quit attending casual group rides around February or early March.

I did resume attending one easy group ride a month in July, just to touch base again with friends. I wore a mask and didn't draft anyone. But it still seemed risky and I'd wait a couple of weeks to evaluate myself. I also had several urgent care medical appointments last year and figured every visit was a high risk for infection, so I'd self quarantine for a week or so after every appointment.

Other than that, to be honest, 2020 wasn't a big change for me. I'm already retired. I had hoped to resume doing some part time work, but that was going to be from home. That was put on hold due to the economic slowdown, but I may try again this year.

The biggest strain has been watching so many family members and acquaintances get suckered by the relentless negative political propaganda, disinformation about the pandemic, and driving a wedge between our friendships if I didn't toe the line on every one of their pet issues. I've actually lost friends over the BS about "Plandemic," 5G phone service, "QAnon" and related bizarre myths about organized worldwide pedophile cannibal cults. It feels like losing friends because we disagreed over which Time Lord was the best on Dr. Who, or whether Star Trek or Star Wars was the best. It's hard to believe the childishness and utter credulity that has poisoned so many acquaintances.

Hondo Gravel

2021 is going to get interesting. I’m waiting for Bubba and Bubbette to start acting out when reality starts creeping in. Mr. Basketball Gut and wife caught covid. I’m not surprised with their Trump is God attitude. Rolling out the vaccines unfortunately I believe skirmishes will start breaking out.

genec

I do not believe Inauguration Day is going to be a day of new Gathering or open hugs or travel... I think it will be a solemn ceremony with minimal attendance... and it will be months before all that "travel, eating out, gatherings with friends and relatives and hugging" will be safe again. Maybe, just maybe... by mid summer.

genec

The one upside I see from COVID... Working from home. This has long been a promise made to me since I started focusing on design work in CAD vice site testing and installations (which always involved lots of travel).

For the last 15 years or so, employers have been telling me "oh you can work from home a few days a week... " Only I have never seen that actually happen. Even after wrapping up a project that involved long days and weekends... I was still expected to show up in the office... "just in case there are any questions." There never were... I always wrapped things up tight at the end of projects.

For 2019, I took on a contract that basically had me sitting in their office, and working remotely with engineers all over the US, via SKYPE. I honestly could have been sitting anywhere... my colleagues were. As 2019 wrapped up, I was offered a permanent position, which I took... expecting to work in their office at a different site... doing the same work. As it turned out, when I arrived on site, we were in full COVID lockdown, and I was handed a laptop and told to "Work From Home." Hey, same work, same Skype, but new site, new boss... the latter which I have never been to or met... as I am WFH.
Again, little difference from what I had been doing for the last year, or 15, except now I control the lighting, the temperature, the background noise, and the coffee machine. I still SKYPE with colleagues all over the country, I still do the same design work using various CAD tools... only now, my commute is measured in minutes vice hours.

And at the physical site where I was to report... well, due to COVID, and the need for some folks to be in the office... well, they have rearranged walls and desks and I now no longer even have an office space to report in to. Word has it "individual contributors" like myself should just expect to continue "Working From Home." I see that as an upside. Maybe some day I will met my supervisor face to face.

ooga-booga

here's hoping. the us national parks and forest service typically get the short end of the stick in regards to funding and pay.

locally, there has been much hand wringing and teeth gnashing about a 2-mile stretch of city road planned to have a dedicated bike lane installed.
detractors say it will result in the loss of dozens of parking spaces (it will) and make things generally more inconvenient for those that drive
(it will). what none of these detractors has commented on, however, is the fact that many of the restaurants/bars along this same stretch have constructed
"parklets "for dining that have commandeered many of these parking spaced slated to be lost and narrowed the road for automobiles. i haven't come
across any blowback from this development and the area still gets plenty of ped and vehicular traffic. cautiously optimistic that some people that have
become reacquainted with their bikes during this time will be less inclined to have a knee-jerk "no" reaction when it comes to local bike/ped improvements
in the future.

Biker395 

What do you miss from the before times?

Personal contact with the public. Going out to dinner. Travel.

What's better now?

1. More folks can work from home.
2. I’m walking more in the hood, and enjoying my neighborhood more.

Of all the changes we've been through, what do you think will stick when we get to the other side?

Working from home. It’s about time.

What will you tell your grandchildren about what we're living through?

To appreciate little things and contact with other people.

My addition ... biggest disappointment:

I’m frankly uber disappointed at humanity’s response. We all failed on so many levels. Lost opportunities, spreading misinformation, self righteousness, and hate. All that might have been worth it, if lessons have been learned, but there’s no evidence of that, either. Excepting the scientists and healthcare workers, we made the bad even worse.

One final thought: With all the emphasis on COVID deaths, this is just the beginning. Deaths due to inadequate diagnosis and treatment of other diseases are gonna suck, as are the economic consequences.

rsbob 

Very well said, Couldn’t agree more.

Hondo Gravel

I’m frankly uber disappointed at humanity’s response. We all failed on so many levels. Lost opportunities, spreading misinformation, self righteousness, and hate. All that might have been worth it, if lessons have been learned, but there’s no evidence of that, either. Excepting the scientists and healthcare workers, we made the bad even worse.

One final thought: With all the emphasis on COVID deaths, this is just the beginning. Deaths due to inadequate diagnosis and treatment of other diseases are gonna suck, as are the economic consequences.

agree ..

Trevtassie

Actually, would be about a year and at least couple of days since I first read mention of a weird virus in China on the Reuters and BBC websites in late December. Was notable because I was on the Ross Ice Shelf, sick as a dog with a savage respiratory infection. I probably only noticed because the only news I could get on my Iridium Go satellite internet was text based- using a web scraping site that stripped out most of the crap that would clog up the 2.4K connection, so I could mostly only get news from Reuters, BBC, NPR and ABC Australia, since their sites started more text based, especially
There was some speculation (AKA jokes) on site it had somehow got to us from China. Looking back, although unlikely, some of the symptoms were similar, fever, breathing difficulties, muscle pain etc etc, with not everybody getting it to the same severity. Biggest difference was the mad coughing fits we had, like whooping cough..They were flying people out of McMurdo base on oxygen on a daily basis.

Machka 

You realise that COVID is global right? The election results in one country is not going to stop COVID.

mstateglfr 

You realize that how people view and feel about covid is heavily dependent on their local circumstances, right?
Of course you know this because you reference it constantly any time you talk about how your life is back to normal and everything is open.

Maybe some in the US are hopeful that they will view things locally as better once Biden is in office. Seems pretty reasonable.
Nobody in this thread has said they think covid will be stopped due to the election and such an interpretation of bob's words never even came to my mind.

79pmooney

I miss going to a pub that sponsored a music jam every Sunday night. The blues, the music I love and have played for 50 years. Going on stage and playing for a woman that had been going through the hell of stage 3 breast cancer for two years. She loves to dance like I love to ride. Also told me many times she loved my music. Her cancer is as big as my head injury. She knows that while I have no idea of the details of her journey, I completely get the magnitude. I see her as a fighter, tough as nails, and one who dances like I rode the season after my head injury - because we both had to. (She came to the jam 10 days after her double mastectomy, near out of it on drugs, but she danced, Fell, probably tore a bunch of stitches, but she did it. While others were admonishing her (not to her face) I stayed quiet, I knew exactly why she had to do it.

I miss her hugs. I never had attraction to her (the connection pre-cancer was that her SO was a Harley rider my age and had a riding background as long as mine; a fellow biker!) but after our conversation when I told her of my journey, those hugs were from the heart. I was on stage as she was leaving early 2 days before the big surgery. Stepped down for the hug, knowing she would never be the same. (And the following hugs were a rather intimate sharingf of her reconstruction journey.) A year later, COVID. Never learned her last name. Think of her a lot but when all this is done, it is highly unlikely I will ever see her again.

I also miss the music. The jam was lead by Robbie Laws, a gifted guitarist. The drummer and bass player were both pros who could play anything. I never knew who I was going up with and sometimes it was bad but there were other times, both with that great house band and with others that you would never guess, we hit it off. The magic of music. Sometimes we hit it off when Tonya was dancing. The real gift; to me.

veganbikes

I miss certain parties we had at a friends house, she has a pool and hot tub and we would cook lots of food and people would bring food and we would have karaoke and just a lot of fun.
Eating out is missed but luckily plenty of places are doing carry-out/delivery so I can still eat the food but I did travel places to eat and explore the city and that was always a good time.

I do like the social distancing and while I am not a huge fan of wearing a mask it does allow facial expressions that I might not normally make or quiet whisperings to people I certainly wouldn't make with others around.
I also really kind of like the online board games we have been playing, there is one we played a lot in person but it was such a pain to set up and and play the online version takes care of a lot of it for you. Really cuts down on game time and ups the enjoyment.

I am of course disappointed by our herd stupidity when it comes to listening to medical professionals. I think our response was absolutely terrible and remains that way. I know early on for a short bit I was skeptical and a little dismissive but quickly learned how dumb I was. People thinking it is their personal freedom to harm others is always non-sensical to me. Also the dining in mostly enclosed tents is pretty disappointing, people actually thought they were dining outdoors when it really was just a smaller enclosed space than the restaurant in some cases.

However I am hopeful that one day probably next year (or maybe the year after) we can get through this and move forward.

genec

I don't believe you can lump all of "humanity" in your disappointment... Several areas of earth, filled with humans, have managed to do pretty well, under the circumstances. Let's just say that I find "local" responses varied quite a bit more than I expected. And that I was quite shocked at the extent of the failures.

Hondo Gravel

I’m going straight to dumbbell and barbell Hell. I will emerge at times for a bike ride then back in the dungeon aka the garage. I had a nightmare I was on a Walmart scooter hauling a giant bag of cheese puffs while being surrounded by Bubbas and Bubettes the year was 2023 a warning from the future KISS was promoting their 50th anniversary tour! With canes and walkers with tennis balls.

rsbob 

Seriously? It’s not just in the U.S.? Could that be why our fearless leader calls it the China virus? I never put that together. I wonder if other people know this too? Super appreciate the info. I feel like such an idiot.

Have a good day.