I’m going back to the Valdez Theatre Conference in Alaska next month. I’ve been making travel plans since last November, including booking my hotel room, and re-booking the flights that were cancelled a year ago. The conference is taking all the necessary precautions, and so am I. One of the reasons I signed up early for the vaccine in February was to be assured that I would be fully vaccinated before I traveled. The state of Alaska had imposed stringent protocols on travelers arriving from out of state, including mandatory pre-arrival testing and quarantine. Those have been relaxed, and I have proof — real proof — of vaccination. So, the show must go on, and it will. (Just so you know, we will be doing my play “Home-Style Cooking at the Gateway Cafe” on Wednesday, June 23 at 9:00 a.m. Alaska Daylight Time. That’s 1:00 p.m. EDT. It will be Zoomed.)
This won’t be my first trip during the pandemic. Last October I went to Cincinnati to see my mom for the first time since my father died, and we went through all the protocols, and I’m planning another visit later this summer. But for a lot of people, this coming Memorial Day weekend will be their first trips out of isolation. Airports are getting busy, rental cars are hard to find, and as is the case in this farkakte country, there are those who, in the name of “freedum,” refuse to go along with the CDC and FAA guidelines on wearing masks. And they are finding out just how much that rebellion is costing them.
I hope that those folks are nowhere near my flights in June; I have tight connections to Anchorage and I don’t need the disruption of some MAGA maskhole grounding my flight while he strikes a blow for liberty and gets perp-walked through DFW.
How about you? What are your travel plans, if any, this summer?