Covid casualty

Well I guess I should begin at what feels like the beginning.  Prior to my last vacation, which is now going on two years ago (Christmas 2018), the change meter was sitting at a total of 2655.79, since then the total has more than doubled, with me collecting another 3129.98 since then, so if we add the numbers together, which I hear you need to do in order to get a total sum, the change meter now sits at 5785.77.  While it has been more than a minute since I have been on this page, I am back to at least report on a Covid casualty of sorts.

Since my last entry, many moons ago, a pandemic broke out.  Perhaps you heard about it, lots of people wearing masks or throwing temper tantrums for being asked to wear a mask.  Schools closed, businesses closed, there was a big write up on it in the news.  As for me, I have been biding my time through it, furloughed from my part time gig, picked up a couple of temporary full time gigs, brought back to the part time gig, they were all time wasters until my summer vacation, which of course would be a return trip to Vancouver.  Thankfully I had everything paid for prior to pandemic 2020.  Or so I thought.

I went looking at my bookings, both flight and hotel as I wanted to be in Vancouver for the Honda Celebration of Light, it is along the lines of a week long festival and on three of the nights there are fireworks displays out in English Bay.  The competitors come from three different nations and are judged with one nation being the overall winner, based on presentation, synchronization with the music etc., etc.

Anyway I double checked my flight with the festival dates, all good, then i checked my hotel booking and it was a couple of days later than day one of the festival.  Apparently i got the wrong date stuck in my head when it came to booking that piece of the puzzle, so i went and booked a second hotel room for the missing dates.  This was partially solved through the jobspotter app (now deceased) where I racked up enough Amazon gift card cash where I could purchase a hotels.com gift card to alleviate the cost of a second hotel.

That was until the hotel I originally booked was sold.  I wish I were making this stuff up but it is true.  The cool thing was the company that owned them owned a second hotel in downtown Vancouver and they were letting people rebook at the second location, which I took advantage of, so crisis averted there.

Then along comes the pandemic, at first it closed the US-Canada border until March 21st.  Little did I realize that living in a country being run by a full blown retard, 6 months later that closure would still be in place with nary an iota of leadership coming out of Washington DC.  State governors have been left to fend for themselves with varying degrees of success, in part because some places wanted to do nothing and others wanted to hurry up and return to the status quo of prepandemic days.  Meanwhile I am watching days disappear from the calendar, and things get worse here, not better.  It is now at the point where the rest of the world is telling Americans to basically “Fuck off!”.

Where that was readily apparent for me was in the flight booking.  Flights to and from starting changing on an almost weekly basis, departure times would change, then destinations would change.  My return flight was to be Vancouver to Toronto (at night, so I could get some shut eye on the plane), then Toronto to New York City and from there New York to Pittsburgh.  Then the changes started rolling in, I would go from Toronto to Atlanta to New York to Pittsburgh, then it was Vancouver to Seattle to Atlanta to New York to Pittsburgh to when the border closure was extended on Tuesday I would be on the ground in Seattle three hours after I was to board a plane in Atlanta.  Heck while I was in the air from Seattle to Atlanta I was also supposed to on a plane from New York to Pittsburgh.  Needless to say, that was still a work in progress.

I checked how things were going in my destination, they were racking up about 100 Covid cases a day, or what would pass as a typical day in Pennsylvania.  But as I was looking I saw the Honda Festival of Lights was one of the things that was cancelled.  Social distancing and all that jazz I am sure, but I still had the plane ticket (sort of)and hotel, I think I could amuse myself for a week if need be.

Then Tuesday rolled around.  I finished a book I started reading (it is on top of goodreads to the right) and I was just heading into a eye appointment ( which took about a month to get, thanks again Covid).  I sit down in the waiting room and crack open the phone to see what is going on in the world and that is when I see the border closure has been extended to Aug 21, well after my bookings.  Not that I blame Canada, if I could keep my people safe by denying entry from a nation of fucktards, I would do it too.  Every day it seems there is another video from someone who is throwing a tantrum like a 5 year old over being asked to wear a mask.  Literally like grow the fuck up or do us all a favor and get sick and die already.   I am cool with culling the gene pool of these obvious living defects.

Anyway before I get more ranty, I spent this morning cancelling my hotel reservation and my flight, so yeah, I guess I am still a little pissy about it all.  The hotel was easy because I had paid for the rebooking yet, they were to take their money two days prior to my booking (they have my card info) and the airline, while not refunding cash, did issue me a credit for the cost of the flight that I have two years to use.  Hoping to try again next summer, but relying on my fellow Americans to take responsibility in getting a handle on this pandemic is probably foolish so good thing the credit is good for two years.