The Elephant In the Room - Look Mom, He’s Planning a Trip During a Pandemic!
I totally get it. Some of you are wondering, “how could you be considering a trip during a time like this?” As I hide in my apartment, oscillating between “overwhelmingly anxious,” and “trying to be productive,” I wonder that myself sometimes.
If I had to leave today, I wouldn’t. With less than a handful of exceptions since March 2020, I don’t go to public places where I have to be inside with people. I wear a mask. I social distance. Sometimes I don’t even interact with my brother, whom I live with, because his job requires him to leave the house.
So, what’s my thought process around a 3-month bike trip that will take me across the nation?
A trip like this requires advanced preparation
If I want to see as many designers as possible along this route, I can’t wait things out until May. There’s a lot that I need to have figured out well in advance if I’m going to make this happen. I have to decide on my stops, plan my route, obtain supplies and gear, figure out the kind of content I want to produce, get some feedback, and probably a host of things I haven’t even considered yet. Waiting to figure all of that out isn’t really an option.
A notebook of plans and ideas I started for this trip back in July 2020.
If I start planning now, and we get to June and things are horrible, it’ll be a matter of cancelling or rescheduling something already in place. That’s a lot more feasible than trying to put together a trip from scratch in May.
The landscape of June will be quite different from now
Right now, we are rightly concerned about ICU beds, available ventilators, and the life-threatening effects on our elderly and those with underlying medical conditions. We are keeping distant from each other in an effort to protect those people and ensure that they have the resources available to them should they be needed.
I HOPE, however, by the time we get to June vaccines will have been administered to millions of people, starting with our most vulnerable populations. While socializing in June will perhaps still carry a degree of personal risk, it seems less likely to have any implications beyond that.
Add into that the changes in social dynamics that come from warmer weather (the ability to socialize outside, for instance), and June starts to look like a time where travel and gatherings could be possible again.
Biking is a fairly isolated experience anyway
I spent a lot of time last summer biking, and I can say with confidence that people weren’t interested in approaching the gross, sweaty man with the silly helmet. As far as activities to take up during the pandemic, biking gave me both the feeling of being out in the world, but also being isolated and socially distant. I won’t be packed into a train, bus, or plane filled with people. Instead, the majority of this journey will be just me, alone and outside. Not exactly a superspreader event.
Mental health is part of human health too
Let’s be real. We’re not just “feeling cooped up.” Our brains are starving for social interactions, for a return to normalcy, for striving to better ourselves, for reaching for our dreams.
I need a little optimism right now, and so I’m planning this trip so I can nurture that part of myself.
I don’t have all the answers
Some people might think I’m crazy for shutting myself up as much as I have this year, and some people probably think I’m reckless for planning a silly board game trip. I don’t fault you for that at all. I think a lot of us have done the best we can during this horrible year, and sometimes our best has sucked. And that’s ok, and I hope we can cut each other a little slack for how we’ve dealt with the fear, disappointment, and loss of this year. Outside of a few very tough old people, no one has had to deal with this before.
So if you’re a designer who isn’t comfortable with seeing people in person until 2022, that’s totally fair and cool. I’d still love to try out your games. If you’re on any of the Discord playtesting channels, let me know.
