It is May the 4. We are still in lockdown, so to speak. Andy has been out three times since the middle of February. Once to the podiatrist and twice with me to Fred Meyers. What excitement. Yawn.

I could write about current events. People are getting restless. The right wingers, the libertarians, the rednecks are complaining that their civil rights are being trampled. If they want to mingle in public they should be able to do so. This is what they are screaming about. And they have at state capitols and various places. When they get the virus I wonder if they will change their minds. In the meantime they shout out vulgar words, wave swastikas, argue for states rights when it is their state that is enforcing social distancing and business closures. They carry guns. They are very, very scary people.

Meanwhile, in a fit of desperation I signed up for a virtual 10K. The Devil Mountain Run. I had never done it while living in the Bay Area because I was always in training for a marathon. Now was my chance. It was fun doing the training. Not nearly as rigorous as training for a marathon but it was good to get into that mindset again. Of course now with MapMyRun and Fitbit my training is much more targeted. I know exactly how much I have run and how long it took and how hard my heart worked. I still use my runner’s watch for the interval timing but it is really just a quaint relic of the marathon days now. Rebecca signed up for it as well. Originally we had planned to run it simultaneously, her in Vancouver and me here in Tigard. We had a couple of weeks to do it. Whenever we wanted. So we chose the original date of the real run. May 3. We decided to run really early. For Rebecca because she can’t run with a mask. It is hard with her asthma. This way she would be running with very few people on a trail that winds around False Bay in Vancouver. She has done it before and knows the distance from the door of her building around the Bay and back is 10K. Perfect. I flirted with a couple of routes. I could start from home and do an out and back. Out would be fast. A lot of downhill. But coming back would be slower and more arduous. I could run in circles around Washington Square Mall. I’ve done it before. It is relatively flat but there are a few sneaky uphills. And going in circles in a mall parking lot is  boring even if it is a huge setting. And I would have to be very alert to the cars that travel through there.  I could do Cook Park. A beautiful place to run but again it would involve doing circles and I wasn’t sure if I would be allowed to park there early in the morning. I ended up deciding to run starting from Portland Running company at Nimbus and Scholls Ferry. The Fanno Creek Trail is just a few steps from there. The trail is pretty, lots of birds and greenery and if it isn’t flooded it would be easy to navigate. I would have to run into downtown Tigard but even before COVID it never is crowded. I figured at 6 in the morning it would be pretty quiet. So it went pretty well. Of course the trail was flooded almost as soon as I set foot on it. So I ended up running back up to the road and running across the road to the other side of the overpass where the trail runs right next to the creek under the roadway. At 6 in the morning there was not a car in sight. Along the way, once I was on the trail, I didn’t see anyone except for a few families of geese and some other birds that I cannot name. I really should learn them. Rebecca had started a half an hour or so before me in Vancouver and had a good run. I managed to dodge the rain and also enjoyed my run. I kept thinking how much easier it is to run when you weight 122 instead of 180. Duh! My time wasn’t spectacular. But it was fine. Perhaps next time I will try to beat this time just to make it a little more interesting.

Other than that we are still socially distancing. Andy spoke to our local Chabad Rabbi the other day. Rabbi Orenstein brought us some challah and gefilte fish and a few other goodies. He left them by the front door, rang the bell and then took many steps back. They had a nice conversation but he was in a hurry to make his final deliveries before the sun set and shabbos began. That is the most outside conversation Andy has had, I think, except for his doctors visit, since the quarantine began.

I realize we aren’t officially in quarantine but it for me it seems close enough that I shall refer to it thusly. Since I do go out from time to time it truly isn’t a quarantine for me but for Andy it pretty much is,

We don’t watch the news. Too depressing and annoying. I do not want to see our evil dictator’s face or hear his incoherent ramblings. It isn’t like we are unaware of the outside world. We stay connected via the internet. If I chose to read about the virus, which I often do, I can read CNN, NYTimes, Chicago Tribune or BBC News and see what they have to say. I do not watch FOX. I do not read anything having to do with FOX. And for a real slice of life there is always Facebook. Ha ha.

That is all for now. Stay safe, stay healthy.