Lessons learned from travelers stranded because of COVID19

Every time I've prepared to travel abroad, for work or for fun, something dire has happened somewhere: an epidemic somewhere, a civil war somewhere nearby, a terrorist act right where I'm going, the US invading some country far away in the name of its own national security, etc. Every time, at least one person will ask, "Are you worried? Should you still go?" And every time, I access the situation and, so far, I've still chosen to go. And it's been fine. Lucky me.

We crossed the border on our motorcycles into Baja, California, Mexico on Sunday, March 8. The New York Times reported on that day that the USA had counted at least 539 cases across 34 states. But there were no travel restrictions. Not one person said, "Don't go." No flights were canceled. Cruise ships were still booking trips and launching voyages. It didn't seem any different than other times (and if you are now smugly thinking I should have known, I challenge you to go read your own social media messages before March 8).

Things changed drastically in the two weeks we were in Baja. On March 20, I checked the US State Department social media account, as I did every day, and there it was: Travel Advisory Level 4: U.S. citizens who live in the United States should arrange for immediate return to the United States, unless they are prepared to remain abroad for an indefinite period.

We were already heading North and we could get back to the US-Mexico border in Tecate two days if we pushed it, but we decided to head back more slowly, taking one extra day, knowing that we could still get over the border to my country - the country where my husband has legal residency. And it worked out just fine for us.

But so many travelers had left weeks or months before on even longer trips, and were FAR from the border of their own countries when things changed so quickly. Many had sold their homes, or rented them, or given up their apartments:

• We have friends who had embarked on a Round the World cruise in January. No COVID-19 cases ever occurred on their ship, thank goodness - but the cruise ended months prematurely, in Australia, and they had to get back to San Francisco. It was not easy. Plus, they had rented out their home - they can't kick their tenants out. They are lucky: they have a second, simple home up in the mountains (that didn't burn down in a recent fire).
   
• "Itchy Boots", a motorcycle traveler from the Netherlands who was riding from the Southern tip of South America to Alaska, got stuck in Peru. She started her trips months before COVID-19. Her situation turned dire suddenly, within 24 hours, with guesthouses being ordered to turn out all foreigners, and foreigners told they were not allowed on the roads - but her being in a town that was a two-day drive from the capital city (and airport). She made YouTube videos of what happened.
   
• Jeremy Kroeker and his riding partner, Elle, motorcycle travelers from Canada, are stuck Uruguay for the foreseeable future.
   
• As of March 20, there were US citizens stranded in Ecuador, including Eve Largent. “Yesterday, I heard that nobody’s really getting out of here.” Largent told KIRO-7 she and several other travelers from the US paid an extreme price for their only chance to leave by air: a charter flight, offering seats starting at $6,000 each.
   
• This March 20th story from Deseret News tells of various US citizens from Utah trying to get out of Ecuador - and how the US State Department and various embassies and consulates did not help. "They boarded a van at 4:30 am on Thursday with four other Americans, flouting emergency laws that made it illegal to travel in groups of more than 5. When they arrived, the border gates were closed, but the guards let them walk across to Mexico where they caught a taxi to the Tapachula airport."
   
• Marcus, a retired banker from Cologne, Germany, has been traveling in South America for the last two and a half years. He was in Argentina in March 2020. “Within hours, foreigners became enemies here [in Cafayate, Argentina,] as a lot of people are afraid that we are bringing death,” reads his (@slowtravel4x4) Instagram post. “It started with…some vendors refusing to sell food and water to foreigners…the police started hunting foreigners to tell us we are not allowed to stay, but we haven’t been allowed to travel.” What ensued was 48 hours of confrontations with frightened locals and police, who insisted on escorting Marcus and his group of travelers outside city limits, but offering no long-term solution for where they should go. More about Marcus' ordeal here, as well as profiles of other travelers living full time in RVs who are stranded in Europe.
   
• This March 27 story from El Universal talks about Mexicans stranded in different nations, many of whom who have taken to social media to denounce the indifference of the Mexican government to help them return. A group of 22 Mexicans shared a video through social networks noting they are estranged in Peru and the Mexican embassy in Peru has not helped - and even questioned their Mexican nationality.

I saw motorcycle travelers in Mexico posting to Facebook saying everything was fine in whatever city they were in, but then, in ONE day, highways and local roads were closed, curfews were instituted, consulates closed, the populace started not being very friendly, and guest houses and hotels closed to foreigners.

It's not just foreign travelers: in the USA, all those people that live in their RVs year-round, that go from campground to campground, that have no homes otherwise, got screwed when city, state and national campgrounds closed because of COVID19 - hundreds, maybe thousands of people, stranded with few options (though I want to give a shoutout to KOA, whose campgrounds, as a tent camper, I loathe and avoid - but some KOAs, while shuttering cabins, yurts and tepees have kept campgrounds open for RVs).

We ourselves had a big problem in the USA, as we traveled over three days on our motorcycles from the Mexican border to our home in Oregon; hotels were still open, but all restaurants were closed, and the freezing rain and snow took it's toll on my fingers and hands to the point that riding, at times, was unsafe. My travelogue about the trip talks about how we handled that (yes, someone ended up threatening to call the police).

What I've learned as I've read all these and other accounts, and what we experienced, is:

You have to stay up-to-date on what's going on. If you hear of a political situation (strike, armed conflict, a dispute between world leaders), a natural disaster or a health situation that relates in any way to your own country, the country you are in or the country you might go to, stay up-to-date daily on developments via reliable news sources, NOT friends on Facebook. Read not only news sources from your own country about the country you are in, but also local news sources (Google Translate can help). In fact, check twice a day.

Just how suddenly things can change. You can be told by officials that there are no plans for a lockdown and, the next morning, be told by those same officials there is a lockdown. The lesson I've learned in all this: if you are fearing a lockdown, start planning for what you are going to do if there is a lockdown, no matter what others around you are saying.

Don't count on your own government to help. This was a lesson I already knew because I work internationally. The US State Department will NOT help you leave a country except in the most dire of circumstances, and even then, only if you can be at a particular airport at the time designated - and they will NOT help you get to that airport. While I register any foreign travel with the US State Department, I also don't ever assume consulate staff will be of any help at all. In fact, it was because of outcry from US Senators, who were hearing from their constituents abroad, that the US State Department did anything to help citizens stranded abroad.

Know local rules. If there is a curfew, adhere to that curfew, no matter what locals might be doing - but also be prepared to board a van at 4:30 am with a larger number of people than emergency laws allow in order to get to a border that you will then walk across.

Locals may turn on foreigners. This is something that happens frequently during local epidemics - I talk about it here. With COVID-19, it was often people from the USA who were bringing the illness to Mexico, and I've seen some really angry posts by Mexicans about this on various social media. One person said, "There is an undercurrent of feeling that this all coming from the US." Even state-to-state travel can turn ugly: The governor of Nayarit in Mexico, inflamed local hostilities when he said in video published on Facebook that people from another Mexican state, Jalisco, had brought COVID-19 in his state and he asked people in his municipality not to interact nor serve them.

Build local relationships if you are going to be in a town for more than a couple of nights. Motorcycle travelers: go visit a local motorcycle store or shop. Just walk by, start a conversation, say hi. The people in that shop may end up saving your butt. I will reference Itchy Boots again: she got to Lima within hours of the government completely locking foreigners down because of a connection through a local motorcycle shop, who helped her find a driver and truck, and the paperwork the little town's local police commandant gave her - you see her driver use this paperwork at one point in a military checkpoint, and it absolutely made a difference in getting her to Lima.

Cash is king. The moment you think things MIGHT change for you, however remote the chance feels, get to an ATM and get plenty of cash. You will need to pay guest houses, you may need to pay someone to trailer your motorcycle and YOU to another place, you may even need to pay bribes. Carry your cash hidden in a money belt or in something under your shirt, along with your passport, and have it with you at ALL times.

Can you stay where you are right now for 90 days? You need to ask yourself this question the moment you think things MIGHT change. In fact, I've read some advice that says you need to be prepared to stay for six months if you decide not to do everything possible to get back to your home country. Remember: most hotels will close, at least to foreigners, most campground will close, and an invitation to stay with someone "as long as you need" could be rescinded as fears rise.

Is there a better place to hunker down? Small towns might feel safer, but they are also farther from key government officials, airports, hospitals, medicine, and other foreigners who might be able to help you, and Internet access may not be great - and Internet access is EVERYTHING when you are abroad. If you are going to stay abroad, consider your options for the best place to stay for six months in one spot.

Think about storing your motorcycle and flying back to your home country. You might be able to store your motorcycle at a shipping company, at a motorcycle shop or a motorcycle mechanic's shop. You will need to be prepared to pay storage fees. You also need to check about how to extend your carnet (temporary import document).

You may be better off abroad. This article from Foreign Policy explains why.

I have no idea what to advise if you've sold your house or rented it out, or if you gave up your apartment back home. I hope you have family you can move in with indefinitely - after your 14-day quarantine in a local hotel in your own community. If you have ideas, please leave them in the comments.

There are already many people who say, "You shouldn't travel internationally," who have said it long before COVID-19. Some say it because they believe it's dangerous - they think crime in any country other than their own. Some say it because they are racists about people in other countries or about people from elsewhere visiting their country. Some say it because of the negative effects fossil fuels have on climate change. Some say it because international travelers have harmed natural resources. Now all of those folks will have another reason to add to list. And I'm sorry about that, because I believe passionately in the importance and benefits of travel - for both travelers and those that host them.

Demanding "unity" is a HUGE turnoff

I will vote for whoever gets the Democratic nomination for President in 2020. And it looks like that's going to be Joe Biden.

Am I disappointed that that's who I have to vote for? Hugely. Even more than I was when Hillary Clinton was the nominee.

Yes, Joe Biden, as President, will be a massive improvement over Trump. He will, I think, put together an amazing team in the White House. But I worry about Biden's regular confusion when giving public speeches, his insults when anyone asks him a tough question, his attitudes about women, and most of all, his dismissal that there are millions of people who need a LOT more than the Affordable Care Act - the ACA, Obamacare - in order to get the healthcare they need AND to avoid bankruptcy. I worry that, like Pete Buttigieg, he's more focused on "reaching out" to Trump supporters than to millions of Democrats like me, or reaching out to young people. He's so focused on appearing non-threatening that I doubt he'll champion any of the critical - CRITICAL - reforms this country DESPERATELY needs.

He keeps referring to his primary results as a "movement." Nope - it's millions of scared people who are so desperate to get rid of an aspiring despot, they've been convinced that the only person who can attract more votes is "the moderate."

I have gone to public meetings by US Senators and my US representative, as well as those by my state representative. I've gone to city council meetings and local election debates. I've worked some voter registration events. I've written my representatives about issues I think are important. I've gone to public events at the local cultural center for Latinos and the mosque a few towns over. I'll keep doing that, once the COVID19 drama abates - but honestly, I've scaled back quite a bit, long before any lockdown. Because I just feel so incredibly alone - I don't see you posting on social media about what YOU are doing. And I can't do this alone.

I went to three meetings of the local Democratic Party. It was horrifying: Clinton supporters spend most of the meetings trying to oppose anything the Bernie supporters are asking for, Bernie supporters want to hear that you are one too or they won't talk to you, and nothing gets done except a lot of shouting. I gave up.

Yes, I'll vote for Joe Biden. Yes, Biden as president will be an improvement over what we have now. But I am going to continue to criticize and push. I'm going to continue to try to amplify what Elizabeth Warren has been calling for in particular. Don't ask me for more unity than that.

We toured Baja, California, Mexico by Motorcycle!

My travelogue about our March 2020 Mexico motorcycle adventure. It featured rain, roads in great condition, rain, very helpful PEMEX employees, rain, great food, rain, a motorcycle breakdown, rain, wonderful experiences, rain and lots of signs & consequences related to Coronavirus (2019-nCoV, or COVID19).

I reviewed all but two of the Mexico hotels on Trip Advisor.

The photos of our trip are here.

And here are some videos from our trip:

• The loading of the motorcycles.
• Departure from Los Angeles, heading for Tecate.
• Parking the bikes on the last night in Mexico.
• Goodbye, Mexico.
• Snow and puppies in Weed, California.

Friendships aren't forever and pettiness is silly

Friendships end. It's sad when they do, no matter the reason and I wish they didn't have to, but sometimes, they have to. Sometimes, they need to.

When a friendship ends, for me, it means I do not want to hear from that person anymore, in any way, and that person does not want to hear from me. There are various reasons friendships end, and I'm not going to get into those. But when the friendship is over, I might go through a mourning period, and that mourning of what was may always be there, even a little bit. I might need to take time to heal from a hurt. There might be anger. But what there never is, is retribution.

When a friendship ends, all I want to do is to get away from that person and the memories. Vengence requires keeping a person in your life, in thoughts and maybe even in actions. I don't want anyone I am no longer friends with to take up any space in my life, and seeking retribution would require that.

Plus, most retribution seems petty.

I always assume the person on the other end of this former friendship would feel the same. And often, I'm stunned that they aren't, even when they are the ones that ended the friendship: they're revisiting our time together in conversations and repainting it as something contemptuous, or something to show how others shouldn't trust me. My capabilities and even my ethics suddenly get called into question. And, worst of all, my confidences are shared.

I don't violate the confidences of friends - and that includes former friends. Secrets end with me. While a friendship may end, my values regarding what a friendship is haven't, and if someone I now loathed shared something confidential with me during our friendship, I won't share it - I just can't do that.

This is all one big vague post, I know. I'm just stunned today to find a former friend, a former work colleague, is going out of her way, months after our relationship is over, to undermine me. I cannot imagine spending time and energy to do that, I really can't.

I'll leave you with this: that really good friend of yours who runs down a mutual friend or colleague when that person isn't around? That same person does that to you when YOU are not around, you can count on it. Think about that VERY carefully when that person is sharing their "true" feelings about that mutual friend, and reconsider having that person in your life any more than you have to.

Lesson learned. Again. 

How do I get to insouciance?

I subscribe to an email newsletter called Word Genius. A few days a week, it sends a word with its definition and examples in a sentence. As I've noted in another blog, when I was a little girl, the other little girls in my neighborhood loved to bully me for reading, and liked to call me the Big Word Mama as an insult. So be it.

A word this week was Insouciance. It means Casual lack of concern; indifference or Cheerful feeling with no worries.

Two examples of Insouciance in a sentence:

"I admire my partner’s insouciance toward traffic and other things that annoy me."

"On the last day of school, the children ran out of the building, riding high with insouciance."

I have decided that it's not ignorance that's bliss. It's insouciance.

And I long to feel blissful...

Also see: not anodyne.

March 2020 Motorcycle Trip in Mexico!

We're going to Mexico! We're going to tour Baja, California, all the way down and all the way back up, on our motorcycles.

Our bikes will be towed down to Southern California by someone we're paying to do so and will be with a friend for a few days, then we fly down, stay overnight and head out the next day over the border. We'll go all the way down to Cabo San Lucas and back up to Oregon. 21 days, 4000 miles.

I will write about the trip on my web site when we're back.

I have already started posting photos of our trip preparation.

And I'll tweet from the trip when I am able.

Lesson learned. Again.

In more than 30 years of working, I've been fired from one job:

It was at a nonprofit (of course). I had moved more than 1000 miles across the USA for the job. Then Executive Director who had hired me quit several weeks after I started, leaving me with a PR disaster to solve at a time when there was a vibrant local press and their voice carried tremendous weight. I consider my strategy to avoid that PR disaster one of the greatest professional accomplishments of my life, but I never got to celebrate it: the new Executive Director loathed me from even before she started, calling the office before her first day to chew me out because a senior manager had given an interview my second week of work where she said some really indelicate things about lack of donor support - apparently, her words were my fault.

For the next 11 months, I was convinced I could win that new Executive Director over. Three months in, the Executive Director from my old job called to offer me my old, summer-only job back, telling me they just couldn't go on without me. And it was tempting to move back across the country and go back to what I had been doing... but, no, I was staying and I was going to turn this experience around! I made sure everything that came out of my mouth was a supportive and complimentary. If I got blamed for something, I just apologized and said I would do better and never offered any explanation or defense. I worked nights and weekends to make sure absolutely everything in my charge ran smoothly. I even socialized with some of the Executive Director's allies just to show what a good, fun person I am!

And I got fired anyway: she decided I did something a day before I should have done it. Yes, seriously. When I went to the unemployment office for the first and only time in my life, the agent said, "THAT's why you got fired? You want to fight that?!" No, thanks. Just give me a check until I get a temp job (got one starting the next week that paid WAY more than unemployment and turned into a two-year job that paid better than anything I'd ever done up to that point - even got profit sharing!).

The reality is I was doomed at that nonprofit from the start, and I had behaved like the adult child of an alcoholic that I am, thinking I could fix this toxic situation through plucky optimism and constant compliance. Months later, when I could finally think back on it and not cry, I realized that not only was I doomed from the start, but it had been a mistake to be so acquiescent. I wasn't just deferential - I was servile. I looked back on that time and was deeply ashamed of myself: if you get fired, it should at least be for who you REALLY are. It would have been so much better to get fired for speaking out than to get fired despite putting my tail between my legs and conceding in the face of every demeaning comment and criticism.

I don't regret getting fired from that job - it was inevitable and there is nothing I could have done to stop it. I regret my behavior leading up to the moment - my be-agreeable-at-all-costs-don't-upset-anyone walking-on-eggshells behavior.

I never behaved that way in a job ever again. Until recently. And the consequences were ALMOST the same - I wasn't fired, but my last day got moved up four weeks.

I should have spoken out immediately about the bullying and degrading comments and mismanagement. I should have said, "I know that this isn't something you really want to hear, but I have to bring this to your attention..." I didn't. I covered for the mismanagement and sometimes took the blame, just to get through the impending, urgent deadline and show a public-facing success. I held my tongue. And the consequences were almost the same. Once again, I regret far, far more what I didn't say than anything I did.

It is better to be criticized for doing something honestly and deliberately because you believe it is the best action to take for the benefit of the organization and per what your job description says you should be doing, than to try to avoid conflict. It is better to say, "This isn't working and here's the data to prove it..." or "Here is a problem that will need to be addressed..." than to sugar coat everything, or to just not say anything at all and hope for the best.

I did finally speak out. And if, as a result, I burned a bridge, so be it - I feel far, far better for saying what I have than for all I swallowed in pursuit of "Let's not upset her..."

And, as usual, it is amazing to me that my honesty and frankness, which would be celebrated and rewarded in a man, is criticized as "I don't like your tone" by a woman. And it also amazing to me that what one employer loves and rewards, another will reprimand.

Anyway... lesson learned. Again.