This week marks the 40th anniversary of the big Mt St Helens eruption, so it’s fitting that my next scheduled throwback photos are of a visit there in August 2003. #ThrowbackThursday
travel
Pictures of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse and Yaquina Bay Bridge, taken in April 2003 during an anniversary trip to the Oregon coast. (Hey kids, in the Before Times people could actually travel and stay places.) #ThrowbackThursday
We have a wall of old-timey-style postcards to commemorate places we’ve visited. Since we won’t be visiting anywhere for a while due to COVID-19, we added a “Surf Your Couch” postcard to mark this time. Prints of this and other designs are available from the artist.
From 2002, four pictures of the Grays River Covered Bridge in southwestern Washington state, built in 1905. #ThrowbackThursday
Sigh… if it weren’t for this pesky virus, we’d be headed to NZ today. With NZ requiring 14-days self-isolation on arrival, I bet the plane will be mostly empty, just Kiwis returning home.
As many people have pointed out, and I just want to note on my blog, New Zealand will be instituting very strict restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including requiring 14 days of self-isolation for all arrivals. So we are very glad that we made the decision to postpone our trip.
I just canceled my hotel reservation for San Jose for WWDC week. Another sad cancelation, not getting to do the usual meetups and podcast live shows of that week. But at least Apple has announced an online-only WWDC this year.
As previously mentioned, we were scheduled to visit New Zealand next week. After much agonizing, we decided to postpone our trip. It was a tough decision, but we feel we don’t have much choice given the current and developing situation, and the health risks to all involved, especially my mother.
After being on hold for about three hours, Jenn was able to reach Air New Zealand to get a 12-month deferment of our flights. Meanwhile, she canceled the hotels etc. We’ll lose about a grand in the process from more stingy hotels, but such is life.
We will reschedule the flights, and rebook hotels, probably for next year. Though the flight info is a bit ambiguous; we might have to do the flights later this year. We’ll clarify that later.
We’ve been planning and looking forward to this trip for years, so we’re sorry we had to postpone it. But we’ll still do it, once the world has settled down a bit. Better safe than sorry.
Help me out, folks. This time next week, my wife and I are scheduled to be in New Zealand, to visit my family and tour the South Island, celebrating our 25th anniversary. A trip (from the US) that we booked six months ago.
But with the COVID-19 pandemic going on now, we’re having major misgivings of the wisdom of taking an international trip at present. NZ only has five cases, but there’s risk of exposure in airports and planes, and other unknowns. But on the other hand, the risk probably is fairly low, and if we cancelled, we’d probably lose a lot of money, since many things couldn’t be cancelled.
What do you think we should do?