Boundary Bay Herons

Blue Herons out at Boundary Bay.

It’s so hard how to know what to feel right now. Angela and I are trying to make the absolute best decisions we can, because we’re genuinely anxious, nervous, even scared about whats happening in the world right now. We both have family and friends who are at risk of death, death, with exposure to the virus. I’m certain everyone does when they take a minute to think about it. We’re lucky that Angela is currently able to work from home, but I’m unsure of when I’ll be able to be employed again.

Employment comes up because it’s the real, personal threat to my life as it is. The impacts outside of the Hospitals of this worldwide epidemic has no way to even be calculated yet, we all have no idea when getting back to ‘normal’ will be a possibility.

So we went for a drive today. We tried to take advantage of at least one thing: the Ikea parking lot was completely empty. Angela is learning how to drive stick and somehow she has the perfect environment to learn. No cars, big enough to get into third gear, lots of weird angles and stationary things to downshift around.

We planned on driving around after to find somewhere outside empty enough to go for a walk near the water. We drove around Westham Island because it’s pretty (we saw the sign saying Reifel Sanctuary was closed), then looped through to Boundary Bay. We made the call there that open spaces, with lots of sight-lines meant we could actually keep our distance from people. Though it did mean we were constantly in the grass, being as cautious as we could.

We don’t know yet whether or not we’re doing enough. We were prepared to just flip around and drive home. Even last week we were in Deep Cove for one thing, with plans on going up to Quarry Rock. Even without the announcements last Monday we saw the crazy number of people there (even without a pandemic it was a lot) and just walked down the empty road, then back to our car.

We see social posts from friends riding bikes in groups, we’re trying not to preach, but can’t help wondering if they ever want to see bike racing start up again. It daily makes us question if we’re doing enough so that I can get back to work. We constantly just don’t know.

We do know, that when we got some groceries today, it was next to the liquor store. We got a box of wine and a bottle of tequila, it seemed like the responsible thing to do, one less trip out of the house, less time around people we don’t live with. And hopefully a bit more time having drinks with friends via the internet.