We have some gnarly decisions to make very soon. We’re scheduled to begin a shit-ton of travel next week: a week in KY, then a long weekend in NOLA (just me), then a week in NC, then a week in Cabo. A short hiatus at home for Christmas, then a month in the Southern hemisphere, then another week in Cabo. (We have house-sitters, so I’m not concerned with publishing the fact that we’re traveling.)

The gnarly part of the decision is that COVID stats are way up again, and traveling is questionable. Pre-vaccines, this would have been a no-brainer. We would stay home. But now it’s all hard to quantify risks and probabilities.

The S America trip is the one that concerns me most. (1) It’s hard to really know the state of infectiousness there. (2) Variants. And (3), the thought of getting seriously ill that far from home is frightening. What’s the health care situation at the tip of Argentina? How long will it take to reach good medical care from a ship near Antarctica? These are gnarly questions (I know, I’ve used that word in each of the three paragraphs, but I like it.)

Traveling post-retirement was the reason I started this blog in 2018, and I’ve done a fair amount of travel posting here since then. Along with a smattering of random commentary and musings about the world. So the next 3-4 months should be a cornucopia of travel stories and pictures. Unless it becomes a cautionary tale about travel during a pandemic.