The new normal

A visit from Dr. Schnabel, Plague Doctor

Anxious is the new normal. Suddenly everything is different. Things you are accustomed to doing without thought now take a lot of concentration. Things you took for granted no longer are. What makes us strong now makes us weak and what makes us weak now makes us weaker. Some things you just don’t do anymore. Go to the office. Go out to dinner. Run down to the store. Everyone is paralyzed, waiting – waiting for something to NOT happen. If we are lucky.

Right before everything was cancelled, the Managing Partner and I had tickets for a modern interpretation of Waiting for Godot at one of the local theaters. Sorry we missed it. Though it may have been somewhat redundant given that we all now find ourselves characters in a similar absurdist drama. Waiting for Corona, perhaps? As Beckett forced us to ask the existential questions, so does our current drama.

What is important? What do we believe? What is even real? Is there actually an invisible virus infecting and killing tens of thousands of people around the globe? Can I actually get it by being within six feet of someone else who’s infected? How are we to understand such a thing? And if it is true, how does it change things? Is anything different? Is everything different? Does it matter? And what are people doing with all the goddamn toilet paper?!

Of course our collective reality had already been undermined by our current leadership, with just shy of half our population living in a separate universe that has an entirely separate set of alternative facts. Our equilibrium was already off kilter, undermined by a constant stream of calumny and hubris. But nothing is new there. Just one more brick in the [border] wall of lies.

I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would live through such an amazing time in human history. Since I was born well into the second half of the last century, some of the most amazing things have happened. Big things. Historic things. The moon landing. The computer revolution. The genetic revolution. Amazing things. Glorious things. But also horrific things. 9/11. Forever war in the Middle East. Climate change. Global pandemic. I mean, what the actual fuck? What’s next, complete economic collapse? Societal breakdown? Station Eleven?!!

The current situation with the covid-19 pandemic is unfortunately not fiction as far as I can tell. At least it feels real. The anxiety is real. You can see it in the empty store shelves. In the empty streets and closed businesses. In the volatility of the stock market, the 2 trillion dollar bailout package just passed into law and in the 3.3 million Americans who just filed for unemployment. All news seems to be a continual stream of discussion about the corona-virus.

You can see fear in the faces of everyone you encounter - even from six feet away. There's a combination of amazed disbelief and low level dread. The expression seems to be kind of ubiquitous at this moment. Though it should be noted that this observation comes from a necessarily narrow sample, since I am engaging in some serious "social distancing" just at the moment. Oh, right, you can see it in the new phrases that have suddenly appeared in our vocabulary. No doubt German speakers already have one of their great concatenated terms for it. Unglaubenfürchtenangst or something.

So here we are in a state of suspended animation. Pacing through the house, looking out the windows, popping out for a quick bike ride in the park - vaguely worried some over-eager roadie will launch a viral snot rocket at me - and generally just waiting for this thing to be over. We muddle through the work-from-home days glad for the distraction. But it's hard to concentrate. Hard to care about meetings and reports and websites when for all we know our world will never be the same again. Or maybe it will. Maybe this will pass and we'll go right back where we started. A little older, a little poorer and not one bit wiser. Too early to tell.

Nothing to fear

Spring has sprung

The covid-19 lock-down has come. Everybody who can is working from home. Many who can't are
unemployed. Pitty the waiter, the house cleaner, the librarian. Schools are all closed, as are most public institutions.

Some are voluntarily "self-quarantining" while others are quarantining involuntarily. Everyone else, notwithstanding young people who are, by definition hyper-social idiots, is practicing "social distancing". My brother, an electrician, was sent home because he had been in the presence of someone who has now reported some symptoms similar to the flu. No actual contact; they were just on the same job site.

No one knows how bad it will get. No one knows how long it will last. Everyone is just kind of waiting to see what happens.

No one knows how to behave. Store shelves are bare of toilet paper, flour, sugar, beans and pasta. Something has snapped in peoples' minds and they are panicking. There has apparently been price gauging of hand sanitizer and local distilleries, unable to operate tasting rooms, are now using their facilities to make artisanal versions of Purell out of the waste from their usual distilling. Hmm, oakey with notes of butterscotch and vanilla. I'm sure they're happy they have something, however small, to help keep the wolves from the door for even a little while.

In what seems a paradox, Spring is springing. The cherry blossoms are in full, magnificent bloom and our part of the world is flushing vibrant green as the days get longer and the regular afternoon rains bring life back to what has felt cold and dead. Walkers are stopping to photograph our tulip tree which is exploding with an intense profusion of pink bracts, and daffodils are peaking like a deadhead full of blotter.

How, in the midst of such a colorful, life affirming season, can our lives have become defined by a virulent infectious virus? How can the zeitgeist be defined by fear when so many signs of hope surround us? The contradiction is inescapable and jarring.

Daffodils - rebirth is in the air

But just as the daffodils fill me with optimism and anticipation of the season to come, there are moments of hope. In the midst of this quiet horror, with the global death count around 11,000, the number of reported cases closing in on 300,000 and most of the world's economy at a near standstill, my windows are open and I hear the sound of children playing on the bike path next to my home. I hear their parents cautioning them as they approach the street crossing in front of my house. They are home all day with each other and these outings, if only to run or ride up and down the path, to get outside, to burn off some pent up energy, are probably necessary survival mechanism.

But what would usually annoy my childless ears - the exuberant shrieking of a child as they descend the little hill by my house on a bike, a skateboard or their feet - strikes me today as a promising sign in what could otherwise by a time of darkness. Let 'em yell their little heads off. I know the feeling. I might just go outside and let out a bloodcurdling yell myself. Might do me some good. 

The end of the world as we know it

There's no toilet paper!

And I feel fine. Probably because I don't yet have the novel coronavirus, aka, COVID-19, currently sweeping the world. Italy is quarantined as is the Hubei province in China along with a growing number of communities. All public events are being cancelled, including Dweezil Zappa playing Hot Rats, for which I had tickets. Grocery stores are out of toilet paper, hand sanitizer and a whole raft of other items people presumably think they will need as civilization comes crashing to a standstill. The stock market has spent a couple of weeks gyrating wildly, so I'll probably have to work another ten years to recover economically. And it's still just the beginning of what has now been officially declared a global pandemic.

I'm not the type to panic about this sort of thing, and though I read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and have occasionally entertained the odd Robinson Crusoe fantasy, I'm no doomsday prepper. But we seem to be entering a period in history when there will be increasing volatility, whether from the climate, the economy or good old fashioned social unrest. So, I figure it doesn't hurt to put aside some extra supplies in preparation for what increasingly seems the inevitable disruptions to our comfy suburban life.

I've picked up a few bottles of water, some germicidal bleach and a few bags of dried beans. I've shelved a big ol' bottle of lamp oil and some extra candles. Nothing that would last more than a couple of weeks, max. After that, we'll be relying on the kindness of strangers, I presume. But this post isn't about any of that. This post is about something with which I became reacquainted as I prepared for the end of the world.

As I considered what might be useful during an extended period of deprivation, I thought back to my youth during which I spent a bit of time hiking around the Appalachian mountains, living on what I could carry on my back. I could survive for a week on what today seems like very little - as long as I could find a source of water periodically. Ramen noodles cooked over a backpacker's stove? Nothing better.

Svea 123 - made in Sweden

First I dug out my old Sweetwater water purifier. I had it before MSR bought the company. They make a very similar pump, so I can replace it if need be. If the tap water stays on, or if we just find ourselves hunkered down in the house with our stored water, I'd probably use the Brita pitcher to "purify" water anyway, but the Sweetwater would be good if I find myself on the move. Similarly, if we are simply quarantined at home, which seems most likely during the current troubles, I'm most likely to use the propane fueled Weber Spirit II grill for cooking in the event of a power outage. But the Weber won't fit in a bugout bag, so I kept digging until I [re]discovered my trusty old Svea 123 backpacker's stove.

Let's go campin' now, everybody's learning how...

It's always delightful to rediscover an item that's been abandoned for decades and find that it still works perfectly. I have a 1986 Fuji Allegro that's like that. And a 1942 Swedish Mauser. Both are testaments to thoughtful design and quality craftsmanship. Apparently the Swedes excel at that combination, and are still known for the quality and beauty of their axes. And maybe their Volvos..? I don't know.

I remember my backpacking buddy at the time went to REI and bought himself a super whizbang Primus stove that was waaaayyy more powerful than my little teeny Svea. You had to move some swing-arm into place, pump it sixty times, switch a lever back and forth, and then the whole thing went up in flames like a Saturn rocket run amok. Meanwhile I just held my little brass stove in my hands for a minute or two, lit it up and I was eating by the time his got going. Once he finally figured it out it proved to be much more effective at genuine cooking, but it was also substantially bigger, heavier and fuel inefficient. I stuck with my Svea. 

The design of this stove, made entirely from brass with only about two moving parts is just about bombproof. Even the white gas I put in it in the eighties still functioned perfectly without fouling or sputtering. I spent about ten minutes burnishing the old thing back up to a bit of a shine and it's as gorgeous as it was the day I bought it. As frankly is all my old equipment, much of which has traveled miles on my back, has been blackened and dented and pounded back into shape and just like their owner they bear the scars from those miles, but they are more interesting for it. I cannot imagine ever needing another backpacker's kitchen set, and when the zombies come, as now seems inevitable, I'll be out on the patio with a gallon of white gas, a thirty year old Svea 123 and some of the fifteen pounds of low sodium doomsday pasta I just bought. I should have enough to share.

Oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen

I don't think it really needed it, but being over seven years old now, and spending most of the daylight hours in a very sunny room or out on the open road, I decided it was time to give my Acorn Boxy Rando handlebar bag a coat of wax, as much preventive maintenance as anything. I rarely actually find myself riding in any sort of serious downpour, but I love this bag and want to make sure it can stand up to the elements and will pass the test of time. So I dug the can of Martexin wax I purchased when I bought the bag and set about to provide a new protective layer to the canvas.

Acorn Boxy Rando before: ashy but still very beautiful after seven years

Instructions for waxing canvas basically boil down to: rub some wax on it, heat it with a blow dryer, and voilà you're done. And that does mostly cover it. But there were two issues about which I was unsure as I rolled up my sleeves and got to work - how much wax and what sort of applicator is the best? I had actually bought a couple of small paint brushes in anticipation of melting the wax and "painting" it on. But as I looked at the rather small quantity of wax in the 1.5 oz. (42g) tin, it occurred to me it would never stretch that far. 

I had seen some instructions suggesting using a sponge or cloth, but it didn't seem like that would work well either. The wax is kind of clingy and when warmed tends to absorb into cloth, so I thought the piece of t-shirt I might employ would likely soak up as much wax as the bag itself. So ultimately I elected to just use my fingers, and in the end I think that's the approach that works best. I started by warming the bag with a hair dryer for a minute or so before scooping a bit of wax on my finger tip and starting to rub it in, one small section at a time. But that approach was extremely awkward and the Managing Partner's Conair was getting pretty sticky before too long. 

Acorn Boxy Rando after: oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen

Ultimately I decided to just rub the wax on cold and go over the bag with the blow dryer afterward. That proved to be, in my estimation, the best approach. I probably went a little too heavy, especially at first before I got the hang of it, but I would say the bag is now ready for another decade on the bike. In addition to making the bag water resistant, I feel that the wax provides kind of structural reinforcement as well. I have no actual proof of that, but it seems that having the fibers coated in a protective layer of gooey wax is bound to make them more resilient.  

Acorn's FAQ page recommends against waxing the edging, since it's apparently synthetic fiber of some sort. But I did it anyway. I can't imagine how it could hurt, and couldn't figure out how not to get wax all over it. Hope I don't void the warranty!

Acorn Boxy Rando, saddle tan, newly waxed

Acorn no longer produces a bag called the Boxy Rando, but it makes a pretty similar, and in some respects probably an improved version called the Medium Rando Bag. Available colors include black, gray and brown. The black is black - none more black. The gray is reminiscent of the classic glue/gray bags by Giles Bertoud. And the brown is a nice, medium hue with contrasting dark brown accents. The leather appointments really look great on this one. Acorn bags are no longer available in Saddle Tan though, which was kind of a greenish loden color. I'm sure the brown complements the color palette of Brooks saddles and bar tape better than Saddle Tan, but I really love my boxy rando as it is. Should I get another I guess I'd get the brown, but I'm counting on the Martexin wax to see to it that I don't need another for a long time.