John Wise

Wake up; we are not returning to normal anything. Amongst our leadership, we have a fatal complacency that is not allowing them to act in the country’s best interest; they are afraid and paralyzed. Nobody wants to call out our president, federal or local officials, or our business leaders for their failure to do something, anything. We leave it to the same old talking heads on the same old news media outlets as though Americans have lost their voice. The same voices on the right are still blaming the left while the drama of squabbles appears to be Nero’s fiddle. The world is on fire, and we don’t have a bucket to help douse the flames.

We just want tomorrow to be yesterday so we can get on with our lives as though nothing happened. That’s NOT going to be the way it is.

At least in Europe, they are already recognizing that streets are going to be repurposed for bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Without airplanes working, there’s a great rail network that will still get people around the continent. Even if we were to add to our rail service, it would be decades before we could overcome the bureaucracy and failure in vision to give us a working high-speed system that would whisk us across America. Any spare commercial space over there can easily be converted to residential space, as there’s always the need for that. But what is New York City going to do with all of its high rises?

So here we are, and we know full well that it’ll be years before air travel returns to what it was. We know that this will impact hotels, restaurants, other services, and elements of the gig economy. Real estate will take a hit if too much commercial space becomes available due to more people working from home. More of us working from home means we lose a lot of the reason behind owning a car; even in Arizona, we could rely more and more on a bike or delivery. High contact crowded workspaces will operate how? I’m referring to meat processing, in particular; I’m guessing we’ll see robots in that space sooner than later. Sporting events? Ha. Then the really big question, what about school?

School cannot be the same for at least a good while unless a vaccine is found, but then everything changes with that. Meanwhile, New York is seeing kids with something akin to Kawasaki Syndrome that appears to be coming from COVID-19. Even if we insist that kids return to the classroom, we exponentially increase the risk of killing their parents and creating those social issues. Then, if we do figure out social distancing and, temperature checks and proper hygiene for students, there will be the issue of allowing children to participate in sports such as basketball, football, and baseball. If high school and college sports are upended, where would the pros recruit players from?

When real estate, sports, travel, transportation, education, and cultural sharing are all set off-kilter, we have a looming crisis that is going to require imagination that pushes hard into a new vision. Our current political and business leadership has FAILED us in that department, and yet they will be who society turns to as the masses are afraid of the unknown, and they are about to learn just how primitive we are. Leaving us all in lockdown would have been the smart thing to do as at least then we were waiting for the return of normal but by leaving that cocoon, we are accelerating the masses, seeing just how unprepared we are for our new lives.

Sure, to me, it’s all quite easy because I’m an uneducated idiot unschooled in the fine art of political waffling, but I certainly have ideas of how to address most of it.

First and foremost is education; we must enhance our online education to embody virtual reality learning in order to maintain social gatherings. Within that virtual space, or maybe with some type of augmented reality goggles, we could even create new online group sports. To build this virtual world, we’d have to employ hundreds of thousands to build and decorate such a world, make books, lessons, and props, and create the mechanics and physics of how things work in a world meant for education instead of shooting.

Commercial real estate will either be converted into residences, though working with high-rise buildings might never really work again when elevators are dangerous places to contract a virus, so maybe we would have to mothball them. The problem is that we have scavengers and hooligans who would see this as an opportunity to steal, deface, and burn these properties in a society that sees this kind of anarchy as “giving it to the man.” Tear them down? That might be the alternative.

Travel could be made better with a combination of rail, car, and bicycles, with the added benefit that walking and bicycling are good defenses against diabetes and heart disease, two comorbidities that contribute to fatal outcomes for those who become sick with COVID-19. If we can materialize $5 trillion in 60 days to deal with a bad situation, we can also materialize $15 trillion to rebuild the framework that connects us to our country and each other.

Work, cultural sharing, and elements of travel and sports could be reckoned with by moving some of these activities into virtual environments. By moving jobs into the virtual space, we are inviting people to learn skills, practice a new type of crafting, make videos, create art, and have an environment where a lot of people can gather, share, and conduct business.

We could address land use, the environment, and city density while services and luxuries are delivered to the home no matter where people are geographically located in the United States, but all of this requires those who are most afraid of change to let go of outmoded ideas and help guide a new generation to taking the reins while making a serious effort to improve our nation.

That, or we can wait until we are all beggars.

Maybe not today, certainly not yesterday, but maybe tomorrow we will all leave the cave. By a trick of nature, its invisible and unseen hand shoved us back into the cave this year. Most were unprepared for such a primordial act and could not understand that there was a cave to be shoved back into, though I often believe that many of them never left the cave in the first place. The modern sheltered world had become a new form of Plato’s Cave with HD moving pictures on the walls, and even though the masses thought they saw daylight, they were still cowering near the flickering light of fading embers that barely illuminated their existence. To leave the cave again requires a strategy, but we are stunned that we must negotiate this exit that is so unfamiliar. The door we entered through is gone, closed by a seismic event called COVID-19. Yet we can feel the wind blowing in from somewhere, so we know that out in the darkness, a path must exist which we may be able to negotiate ourselves back into the light of day.

Our minds should be washed clean by this isolating power and safety found in the shelter of the cave, but it will require extraordinary strength to expose ourselves to the danger of being among the elements of a changing world that requires new tools to navigate our path forward. The gatekeepers of the old way were few, while the masses representing the bulk of the tribe wandered within the darkness of the false luminance of our artificial world. The controllers stood hidden at the edges, obscuring the exits; they are our politicians, the wealthy, the 1% we trusted to stand between our exposure to the larger hostile world and our safe harbor. Celebrities joined them as dancing jesters, asking us to avert our gaze from finding something within ourselves. The jesters have shown us their foolishness, and the politicians have put on display their decrepitude, their calcified minds, and spirits, which grew comfortable while keeping others from navigating between the known and unknown.

Nature, oblivious to our tragic plight, ransacked the stage on which the same old show had been playing well beyond its best by date, kicked the actors off their platform, and showed the people that these privileged few were fragile just like us. We are now witnessing that their amassed wealth offered an illusion of power, propelling them to tower like fanged beasts on gilded thrones over those who dare challenge their status. The rules of life, though, are not a complex of arcane hoops and treacherous passages; they are observances of graciousness, respect, cohesion, collaboration, and, above all, love.

We lost love. Our minds and hearts have become machines that do what we are told. We find our purpose in adopted personas that are contrivances of the mediocre within an echo chamber that affirms benign affability. The creature of discovery, music, and poetry has been rendered useless, a prop in the servitude of a system that cannot reward the unknown, the difficult, the other. Pledge allegiance to your brand, your team, your colors, or your colored ribbon, but do not give to your mind and soul.

Twenty-four hundred years ago, Plato warned us that society decays and eventually becomes a tyranny, but we blurred that image by throwing up caricatures such as mass-murdering lunatics with funny mustaches or evil overlords in the movies as being the perpetrators of mayhem, not the benign fatherly figures of polite men who are refined non-vulgarians. We were massaged by our media until this point today, where we are being bludgeoned with a total uncertainty of what is real. This frantic grasping at deception is because the cave door exit was beckoning, and the politicians themselves have become the jesters trying to ward off the commoners. We, humans, must once again pass from darkness to light and rebalance the roles of society due to the abdication of our souls and love. Those trusted to govern are frightened tyrants in love with the luxury rendered out of an insipid culture of idiots.

Think back to the days, if you are old enough, when we were convinced that love was old fashioned, sappy, ephemeral, new agey, gay, pedophilic, betraying, and impossible to find in its true form. Love, you were told only exits on the ethereal plane between you and your creator; it isn’t available to those who are unclean and still walking the earth. Love was being diminished and relegated to the afterlife while substituting career, money, and obligation to the state as the cure-all for the gravity of existence in an uncaring, cold world wrapped in fear and potential war. This was and maybe still is the fabric that those in power would like us to cling to, but who among us doesn’t feel right now that our politicians and celebrities look nakedly ineffective and inept? Have they become largely impotent as we are being asked by nature and a virus to reconsider just what it is we are doing, who we are, and how we want to continue?

There are troglodytes among us who are unevolved and afraid of life in the light of the mind and discovery. They are begging for a return before we’ve even left the cave, as watching the shadows on the walls is enough reality for their liking. Sadly, we have a media that is in step with power, trying to convince us that we do not understand enough about self-governance and money to be trusted with living our lives. Maybe they are right? Maybe with our current level of education, we would act like locusts and decimate all remaining systems on our planet; we have seemed bent on doing just that. So either we recognize our shortcomings and start elevating one another with the encouragement of finding knowledge, or I guess we’ll just have to sit back and watch this redundant and boring shadow puppetry we are all so accustomed to.

Well, that’s enough for concern; time to prepare ourselves for wholesale death by the bucketload. Sixty days of the masses being bored were enough for the armed thugs who supposedly had all been prepared for the apocalypse to demand and gain their release from lockdown. Of course, there’s the other part of this: how can our President get out and campaign if his voters are told to stay at home? Finally, if their fearless leader doesn’t need no stinking mask, obviously, they will be immune to this fake virus with fake deaths created by the fake media.

If you’ve not picked up on it yet, I’m a fake writer, a bot put here by Hillary but meant to look like I’m a stooge for George Soros and the global elite. Everybody knows the truth: those who are protesting are patriots looking out for their grandmother’s social security and will take a hit if people aren’t working. The nice thing about being a fake blogger is that I can write anything here (and often do) that not only nobody reads, nobody cares about, and nobody even sees. These words don’t really even exist right now. They are electronic representations of fantasy meant to convey nothing meaningful in any meaningful way, and yet they blink into existence on your screen and will just as quickly give way to the void, just like those protesting for their freedom by joining large groups of like-minded idiots not wearing masks.

Sixty days of having to watch spring giving way to summer, though when you live in the desert, it feels more like sorta warm, giving way to the season of really hot. Sixty days of getting used to cooking at home all the time, except those days we picked up In & Out Burgers, had a pizza and wings delivered, had Mexican food on our only drive more than a few miles from home, and the take out we grabbed from a friend who operates HEK Yeah BBQ just down the street. Sixty days of spending nearly 24 hours a day together and still smiling at one another and complaining that we still don’t seem to have enough time for each other. Sixty days of feeling like we are not part of the potential problem might have been helpful in not contributing to the premature death of someone we may have never known.

Sixty days of wondering where our vision is and why nobody has told the nearly 40 million recently unemployed to sign up for online classes of any sort and that the educational institutions should bill the government. Sixty days of wondering about our next travels and sixty days of exploring our hobbies nearly every day. Life’s been good from our perspective.

During these days of reflection and skill honing, I’ve now walked 952,972 steps, or 443.85 miles, and climbed 744 floors, or 8,928 feet. This means I average about 7.4 miles a day, 12.4 floors a day, and 15,883 steps. This was the equivalent of walking from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina or from Kansas City, Kansas, to Minneapolis in Minnesota. Regarding all those floors, I’m about 1/3 up Everest by comparison. For my friends in the metric world, I’ve walked 719km, which is nearly equivalent to walking from Velika Kladuša, Bosnia and Herzegovina, across Croatia and Slovenia, climbing over the Alps of Austria and up the road into Pilsen, Czechia, for a beer.

Back to the bucketloads of death: Arizona saw its first infected person back on January 26th; on March 20th, the state had its first death, and now we have 12,674 cases of people infected with COVID-19 and 624 deaths from it. So in 55 days, we went from our first death to averaging about 11 a day, and now that we are seeing between 20 and 30 dead Arizona citizens every day, our Governor has decided that things are as good as they’re gonna get and that it’s time for us to get busy again.

Tomorrow, everything will be normal, and it will be like the virus never even happened, except for the 85,000 Americans who didn’t die from not-COVID-19. Funny how we were involved in Vietnam for 11 years between the Cold and Hot War, and during that time, we lost 58,000 servicemen, which was considered a NATIONAL TRAGEDY. We have a government that, by inaction and wishful thinking, is in part responsible for the death of 85,000 Americans in 60 days, and that’s just the way it goes. Yes, we are that stupid, but in 60 days, I was able to walk the equivalent of going from Nouakchott on the coast of Mauritania out to Tintane, Mauritania, on the edge of the Sahara. That’s in Africa, not that this has anything to do with anything but that’s just the way it is, kind of like tomorrow.

Today’s photo is the wretched view from a Self-Isolation Prison that I must stare at when searching for words I claim as my own.

Yesterday’s entry was not even published before I started writing this post, which was supposed to be that one. I wanted to talk out loud about travel and its disappearing event horizon. I think travel, to some extent will return, but the industry is in for a convulsion that will have ripple effects that seriously damage many areas across America.

Consider the cruise industry: who in their right mind will venture onto the seas? Sacrificial lambs would be my answer. The number of people flying right now is down 95%: who thinks those numbers will recover this year or next? Thirty-three million Americans have lost their jobs in the past 60 days; if a second wave of the virus hits, which is almost certain, there could be another 10-35 million Americans losing their jobs. For those who continue to be employed, I doubt many of them will be thinking about dropping a few grand on getting away when another run on toilet paper, sanitizer, and various food items will be with us over the winter. Thus begins the cascade of cruise ship operators and airlines ceasing operations; with them we’ll see a wave of lodging operators having to shutter their businesses, which will have a follow-on effect on restaurants, coffee shops, and gift shops. This then will all add up to consequential financial impacts on tourist spots that will trigger yet more layoffs which has an impact on local tax collection that pays for local services.

The idea of supplying each American a couple of thousand dollars a month in income from the government would likely save many of these businesses as I could see a point where the risk of harm outweighs the advantage of using this found money to purchase some experiential time outside of quarantines. The trillions in debt will be nothing compared to the infrastructural carnage of trying to rebuild communities we allow to wither.

Over the previous 20 years, Caroline and I have made 214 trips out of Phoenix, Arizona, which equates to at least 952 days on the road. On average, we have traveled 48 days per year or 4.5 days per trip, but that is just our average. Sixty-two of these vacations were a minimum of 5 days, and more than a handful were a few weeks. Of these, only five were outside the United States leaving us with 846 days that were spent exploring America from coast to coast.

Our busiest year was 2003, when we were out almost every other week. We took 23 trips that year alone, but consider that each adventure was just under three days on average. We traveled cheaply as money was tight, but we had moved into an inexpensive apartment and picked up a Kia so we could afford to do more. Seventeen years later, we are in the same apartment, and we are back in a Kia.

That year, we visited California numerous times, along with New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and Oregon. Nineteen states in 12 months, and not one of them involved flying to get there. In our Kia with an ice chest in the backseat, we packed up our food and map and drove. We stayed in sketchy motels that raised the eyebrows of most everyone we knew, but we were having adventures at the rate of nearly two a month.

This year was supposed to be a return to form where we were going to try to replicate the frequency of 2003 regarding our getaways. In early January this year, we spent three days up in and around Winslow, Arizona, and then two weeks later, we were in Duncan, Arizona, near the New Mexico border for a few days. February was supposed to see us on the road, but COVID stopped me in my tracks as I saw what was going on outside of America. By March, we were self-isolating

Things are going to be reopening soon, even if the convenience of visiting places has changed. We now have to consider that some of our favorite locations may not be accessible at times we’d like to visit. This creates the imperative that Caroline and I will have to venture out every chance we can from now on. Some of the luxuries we’ve indulged in the past years might be in short supply, or we simply may not want to risk being in busy locations. Sure we’ve enjoyed apple strudel late at night at a famous cafe in Vienna and had grilled rib-eye on the shore of the Colorado River after two weeks of white water rafting in the Grand Canyon. We’ve walked in the White House and went canoeing in Indiana, rode bikes in Portland and went snowshoeing in Yellowstone, so we certainly have a broad taste in experience, but even our most recent visit to Globe, Arizona, for some Mexican food after taking in wildflowers earlier in the day ranks up there with the most amazing trips ever.

We will once again pack an ice chest into the backseat of the Kia and go somewhere, anywhere, for the sake of enjoying our limited time. Gas is cheap; we expect the prices of motels will be cheap this summer, too. We may not feel comfortable eating at restaurants, but we can always get our food to go as everyone is now prepared for that, and in some instances, we have favorite places where we can eat outdoors, such as at the Mexican Hat Lodge in southern Utah that is the “Home of the Swinging Steak.”

The point is that Caroline and I have taken advantage of our opportunity to go out and away even when the circumstances were less than ideal. That ability to adapt and make compromises has allowed us nearly 1,000 days of travel from our mid-30s to our mid-50s. We used to think that at some point in our old age maybe we wouldn’t be comfortable traveling anymore and that we’d be able to find appreciation that we did it when we could. Now, with COVID in our midst and a future that could be restricted due to environmental concerns, there’s a potential reality that it won’t be old age, but it could be damaged lungs from a virus that limits our activity or another lockdown. What if pollution is tied to the risks surrounding this mutating virus?

Nothing is certain at this time; nothing ever has been, but using this rare thing called free time to venture into our life and novel experiences is something that requires serious intention. We owned that intention and found ourselves alone at sunrise in Hawaii as lava spilled into the ocean. Where was everyone else who was free to be there? They were self-isolating in their hotel rooms or at breakfast. We’ve spent many a November on the blustery coast of Oregon, walking alone on a windswept beach while others must have been in lockdown watching TV. How was it that we were able to afford rafting the Alsek River from Canada to Alaska? Shouldn’t the demand be so keen that we couldn’t afford such a luxury? No, we could afford it because so few are interested in pulling away from their boring routines.

As long as good health, maintained roads, services, and facilities are available, we’ll find ourselves back out there returning to places we’ve been again and again. We’ve been lucky that we recognized 20 years ago that we should never count on being able to do what we might dream of at some future date; we changed how we lived and took advantage of the moment, letting others make plans for an uncertain future. Sadly, that uncertain future is here, and I must admit a kind of melancholy at the tamp down on spontaneity but also gratitude that we never hesitated to get out there.

The photo that accompanies this entry is from Travel Day #470 experienced on November 26, 2006. We are at Meyers Creek Beach in southern Oregon. The day number comes from a project I’m working on here where I’m sequentially cataloging our trip away from Phoenix into one extremely long blog post so I can see a highlight from every trip we’ve made in the past 20 years.

The abominable preoccupation with placing the dumbest amongst us on a pedestal in order to titillate the masses and each other has got to stop. We elevate mediocrity to the front of our American culture in order for the average person to feel empowered that at least they are not as stupid as that person. The problem is that we’ve normalized the absurd, and now they are the measure of normal; they are the heroes, leaders, and mentors.

Instead of elevating those who are worthy through accomplishments and intellect, we besmirch the learned and curious by insinuating that maybe they’ve done something unfair (cheating) and used advantages (bought) to gain their positions. If these “easy” gains were available to the average person, then things would be fair or at least that’s what some want to believe.

We thrust a bizarre kind of celebrity into the limelight as it’s easier to celebrate the strange anomaly than spending effort to recognize the greatness of the average person, which is far too common. During this time of global self-isolation, we are seeing heroes in the people who have to report for work in hospitals, grocery stores, law enforcement, farms, and those people who work in factories making our food, along with the truckers who deliver it. From the gig economy, we can be thankful for those who are now delivering to-go food and groceries; imagine having to ask a politician to bring you your food.

What the impetus will be to force a wake-up to the damage we have done is an unknown, as maybe there’s no shock too big to knock us out of our obsession with stupidity. After the pandemic passes, maybe all people will want is a return to the banality they were comfortable with. But to me, it is this relegating of any intellectual rigor that has exacerbated our becoming the most infected, least prepared bunch of troglodytes to suffer from COVID-19.