I have been remiss with writing. Like everyone we have been dealing with the sudden upending of our lives by the novel coronavirus. Our return flight to Spain was intially March 31st. But the pandemic took hold and we had to change our flight. We set it back a month naively thinking that would be enough time for countries to get control. Boy, were we wrong! Since, our return from Europe we had been in a hotel and I had returned to work for the winter. By February, we were so tired of cooking on a hot plate and eating out that we decided to buy a little camper for when we are in the US. We wanted our own little space complete with refrigerator, stove and oven. After spending some time looking we found one that would work and bought it. Michael spent some time putting new flooring in and then we moved out to the lake. It was beautiful... nice spring weather, lots of deer, campfire... and then the virus started wreaking havoc on the state. All in all we had one week at the campground before the governor closed all the state parks. Damn the luck. As it turns out though it was very fortuitous that we bought the camper when we did as the same week the governor closed the parks he also closed all restaurants... except for carry out orders. Worries about eating out and being in a hotel became non-worries! But there were other worries. My job is to administer anesthesia. At our hospital we quickly developed an intubation team. Our task was to intubate (put a tube in the trachea) all Covid-19 patients in the ICU and on our new Covid floor. So now Michael and I had new worries... big worries. We developed a system for cleaning everything brought into our space. When returning from work I would strip off in the doorway and bag my clothes separate from the rest of the laundry. I would then use bleach wipes on anything I touched before heading straight to the shower. Suddenly, just everyday life became much more difficult.
And then finally in June it was announced that the Spanish Prime Minister would allow folks from non-EU countries back into Spain starting July 1st. Great! We quickly got our return flight for Spain reserved. We are supposed to fly out on Wednesday - July 1st. But over the weekend it was announced that the EU commission has decided to ban US citizens from the EU due to the US infection rate for Covid-19. Their criteria is that a country must have either a lower infection rate than the EU or only slightly higher. Yesterday, the EU rate was 16 per 100,000 and the US rate was 122 per 100,000. Those rates are not even close. The US does not have a handle on this and we certainly understand their concern. But... unless they cancel the flight we will be on it. We have a letter from the marina verifying that our boat is berthed there. Our hope is that the letter will be our ticket. We do not know what will happen when we arrive but we are going to take our chances. Any good thoughts directed our way will be appreciated.
Rend Lake - Southern Illinois - USA
Even though we are willing to fly in order to return to our boat we are not throwing caution to the wind. Yes, we must be near other people but we will wear N95 masks the entire flight. We will wipe everything we touch with bleach wipes and keep our hands clean. No eating and no drinking on the flight. We are hoping that the international flight will not be as full as domestic flights and that we can spread out some. But if not, our backup plan is to just sleep and wake up in Madrid! We can rehydrate when we land. Its pure craziness for sure...but these are extraordinary times.
We are anticipating a mandatory two week quarantine when we arrive but that is okay. We have arranged private transport directly from airport to marina and will quarantine on the boat. There is easily two weeks of work to do on boat so its no problem. With any luck our next post will be from Spain!! Fingers crossed.
