Two Weeks Inside

Getting kind of long.

It's hard to believe it's been two full weeks since "the crash" and at something around eleven days since I've been out of the house. Before the Red Bluff Gran Fondo I was already badly in need of a haircut. I hate getting haircuts, but I was planning on getting one the next day. Well, obviously that didn't happen since I spent that day in the hospital with a plastic tube sticking out of my chest. So now my hair has gotten pretty long. I mean, like 1970s long. All I need is a pair of hip-hugger bell-bottoms and peace symbol neck medallion. This morning everything seems particularly achy. Maybe it's the slight change in the weather? For the record, my main complaints, in order of severity, are (1) the still significant pain in the back of my ribcage near the spine on the left, (2) something near my sternum on the right around ribs 2 or 3 where it was swollen for over a week, and of course (3) the pelvis. Surprisingly, the pelvis is causing me the least trouble, although I am by no means ready to be walking around without crutches.

That printer! Why?

It was fortunate that I already had a pretty complete home office in place, thanks mainly to the years of cycling-related work I've always done at home. All I needed was my backup external drive from work, and the VPN client so I could get to the financial data, and I was pretty much fully functional for Tulane work. Candy, however, was a different story altogether. She was full-time at her office at the Tidewater Building all week, which I guess spared me from hearing her complain about how nothing was working right on her little laptop at home. She was always using her laptop via a remote desktop setup which was just a constant problem, especially since it was all running through our low-cost home wireless setup.

A "mandate"

On Friday afternoon the mayor held this big press conference where she offered "further guidance" related to the "proclamation" from a few days ago, adding a "mandate" that residents stay home except for essential needs. It's pretty unclear if that constitutes an enforceable law or not, although I wholeheartedly agree that the city should be doing everything possible right now to slow the spread of the virus so that we don't overwhelm our healthcare capacity. No doubt we will be seeing a huge increase in "confirmed cases" over the next few days as all of the new testing starts to yield results. It will look alarming, but of course that will just be because we had such a bad count of cases before testing was widely available. The city has a few drive-through testing sites set up thanks to the CDC, test kits are becoming more available, and Tulane is setting up to run an initial 5,000 PCR tests at the Medical School building.

Louisiana confirmed cases and deaths as of yesterday

Anyway, the Mayor's "mandate" finally convinced Candy that she would actually have to work from home. On Friday she decided to bring her entire desktop computer, and an enormous printer, to the house. Everything is kind of packed into the "back room" office putting more strain on both my borderline OCDness and the hundred year old wiring running through the walls.

The update from Tulane's morning conference call reported:

• Tulane Hospital, 24 positives, 58 PUI (people under investigation)
• UMC, 29 positive, 9 ICU, 65 PUI
• VA, 11 positive, 15 PUI

That doesn't include other large hospitals like Ochsner, East Jeff, etc., etc., just the ones in the downtown medical district. They are starting to see some supply chain problems for personal protective stuff, as expected. As a whole, the country is still on a trajectory that looks a lot like Italy, which is not a good thing. I am already beginning to seriously doubt that Collegiate Road Nationals and the Tour de La will happen. I'm thinking it may be September before things settle down enough. It's entirely possible it will be longer. The only people who are immune are the people who have been infected, and survived, so either those numbers will have to get very high, or we will need to have a safe vaccine ready for deployment.

The dog and I have been spending a lot of time on the front porch lately.

Meanwhile, I've been spending a lot of time looking out the window at the nice riding weather, wondering how my bike, which I haven't seen since the crash, is doing all alone at TUCA headquarters, and occasionally hobbling out to the front porch which is covered in Oak pollen. The past week, and likely the next three or four, has provided probably the best opportunities for training I've had since college, so it's particularly frustrating to be stuck in the house right now. All of the local group rides have been basically suspended for the duration. It looks like there was a handful of riders who did the Giro Ride this morning. I have mixed feelings about that. My gut feeling is that the risk of contagion is pretty low among a small group of five or six moving through the air at 20-28 mph, but on the other hand, it's probably not zero. My main risk is that Candy will bring the virus back from the grocery store.