The World on Two Wheels

The first couple of days of springtime have given us a welcome relief from the cold and bleakness of winter. It was a welcome experience to be able to go outside, without being enclosed in a multitude of layers of clothing. Everywhere in the neighbourhood the blossoms are decorating the streets and gardens. If it wasn't for the gale force winds, it would actually be almost perfect.

The other unwelcome feature of this time of the year is that many of the local birds go completely psycho. Why is it that tiny feathered creatures suddenly take on the behaviour of demons ? As if the COVID 19 was not bad enough, now when we leave the house for our 60 minutes a day of freedom, we have to run the risk of having our ear lobes ripped off.

This morning I headed off on my bike for a short ride to Pakenham East and back. That is as far as I can go at the moment, without incurring the wrath of the 5 km bubble police. Although the wind was blowing at about 40 kph, it was actually quite helpful for about half of the time. I was actually feeling quite good until I heard an ominous sound coming from somewhere behind my right shoulder.

A shadow of a large bird appeared on the ground in front of me. I was instantly gripped by an irrational fear of all things avian. I decided to look the evil attacker right in the eye, even though I am pretty hopeless at looking behind me when I am riding. For a fleeting instant the approaching magpie seemed to reconsider its intentions and changed direction. I felt like I had scored a minor victory.

A short distance further along the path, the entire sequence was repeated. Once again the attack was aborted. but by then I was rattled. For the rest of the ride I could not get it out of my head that the magpie was going to return, accompanied by about 20 of his psychomates. I did not finally relax until I had ridden into my own driveway.

The other news today was that the day's count had risen to 113. This was a disappointing result, when we were all wanting it to go down. There have been rumours of what the next stage of restrictions will entail, but the Premier has claimed that they are all false. If they are true, we will have very little to look forward to, other than a possible increase in the time allowed for daily exercise from one hour to two hours. After such a long period of separation from our family and friends, we are really longing for human contact again. Czytaj więcej

It is very true that we often don't appreciate many things in life until such time that we no longer have them. This morning I decided to punish myself by having a look at the Ghostriders Calendar for 2020. It was going to be a very exciting year, now it just served to remind me of all the things that didn't happen.

According to the original schedule we would have been setting out on our Annual Seniors Free Train Trip today. It is the chance to utilize our free travel passes and enjoy some great time of fellowship on a train trip to somewhere in rural Victoria. Now we can't even go to Fountain Gate Shopping Centre. How times have changed.

I would have also had my bags all packed and ready for our 2020 European rides. My original flights were booked for this week. In just a few days time a group of happy Ghostriders would have been enjoying a bike/barge trip along the Moselle River in Germany. Now we can only look at Google Images. It is a little depressing to say the least.

On the bright side, at least all of our family and friends are still well and healthy. Although we are confined to our homes for 23 hours of every day, we still get one hour of freedom to walk or cycle around our neighbourhood. Although it is uncomfortable to wear a mask, I am sure it is a lot more uncomfortable to be lying in a hospital connected to a ventilator. We still have adequate food and toilet paper and the Internet is still working. So it could definitely be worse.

Yesterday was a dreadful day as far as the weather was concerned. It was freezing cold, windy and rainy for almost the entire day. But we did have one exciting event to look forward to - the weekly delivery from Woolworths On Line. In some respects it is a bit like Christmas every week, even though many items were unavailable or on restricted supply. Fortunately the chocolate was not removed from our order !

To add even more excitement to the afternoon, we discovered that we could track the delivery from the store. Maggie and I spent several minutes watching a tiny dot creep its way across the map to our front door. It was a like having a secret viewing of Santa's movements on Christmas Eve.

When the dot stopped outside our front door I was able to open the door, before the young delivery man even rang the bell. Technology sometimes really is amazing.

Of course the delivery is only part of the story. Maggie's excitement at getting all the new goodies is always tempered by her belief that COVID particles would have certainly hidden themselves on every item. To her the groceries are like some sort of Trojan horse, just waiting to spread their evil occupants throughout our safe environment.

She begins an elaborate ritual of sanitizer spraying and unpackaging at arm's length. One by one each item of grocery is carefully ushered into a special quarantine section. I am sure that the workers entrusted with removing the deadly waste from Chernobyl never acted with more caution that she does every week.

Eventually the groceries are safely in quarantine. ("Don't touch them for at least 3 days", she instructs), the contaminated bags are secured, and we can finally rest. It is both exciting and exhausting in equal measure.

Of course, another constant in this crazy time is the daily release of the new COVID infection numbers. These are usually announced at 11 am each morning and I think that just about the whole of Melbourne awaits them with some sort of morbid fascination. Although we keep hoping for a steady downturn, they have remained stubbonly high over the past week. Although it is now over three weeks since compulsory mask wearing became the law, so far it has not brought about the drop in numbers that we were all hoping for.

Each day an increasing tired looking Premier appears at a press conference to threaten that the situation could have been much worse. It would be nice to hear an apology for all the errors that were made along the way that put us into this predicament in the first place. We are told that the current lockdown in Victoria will deal yet another body blow to our nation's economy. It's already so far in the red that Australia will likely be a banana republic for about the next 300 years. International travel looks unlikely to resume at any time in the next two years at least.

There are a couple of glimmers of light in an otherwise dark period of history. Apparently some of the vaccine candidates are showing very good prospects and have moved to the next stage of testing. According to the most optimistic predictions, there is some chance that we could have an approved vaccine within 6 months. If so, that could prove to be a game changer.

The weather looks marginally better today so we will try to enjoy our 60 minutes of time outside our cells. One day we will look back on this period and wonder whether it really happened. Czytaj więcej