Went for a Walk

Taking a walk in this neighborhood has its challenges

It is looking like it will be a very busy week here at the home office. COVID-19 related news, good and bad, has been coming at us from all sides. There's federal legislation, there's lots of fast-developing research, there's city issues, state issues, Facebook issues - you name it. It's like trying to drink from a fire hose at times. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. I'm excited to have a nice solid task list, actually, and frankly I love reading the research reports that have been coming out one on top of the other. There have been some interesting models over the past few days that look at various scenarios using various assumptions to hint at the likely evolution of the pandemic. Here on the local front the news has been slightly encouraging, although it is hard to get too excited when "encouraging" means it's not getting worse at a logarithmic rate any more. I have noticed over the past few weeks that the reporting of both deaths and infections has obviously been lacking over the weekends. Today the Governor said that the state had shown its highest increase in deaths. Then he kind of backpedaled, stating that the dates when the deaths are counted isn't necessarily the dates on which they actually occurred. In other words, the Monday numbers are usually playing catch-up for under-reporting over the weekends. Anyway, however you look at it, here in New Orleans it's not as bad as it could have been, and that is being attributed to the quick action to shut things down a few weeks ago. Not that that means the virus had magically disappeared, of course, but at least we have thus far managed to avoid completely overwhelming our healthcare system. Also, it looks like the treatment options for the most seriously ill have been evolving. People are not staying on ventilators as long, for example.

Yesterday I spent about 30 minutes on the trainer on Zwift, which left me a little achy in the pubic ramus area, so I decided it might be wise to skip today. I still have about five more days to get to the magical six-week mark where, at least theoretically, there should be some actual bone holding things together. Not a lot of it, but at least some. It's been pretty frustrating to see everyone training, either outside or inside, while at the same time I'm just sitting around gradually losing whatever residual fitness I might have.

A cool front came through last night and so it was around 60 this morning, which made for a very nice day, especially in the afternoon when the sun finally came out. At that point I decided it was time to go for a walk. I've been getting around fairly well for about a week and walking slowly hasn't presented much of a problem, so I figured, what the hell? Taking a walk in my neighborhood isn't quite as easy as you might assume. All those hundred year-old oak trees, together with a hundred years of deferred maintenance by the city, has resulted in some pretty difficult to navigate sidewalks. Fortunately, I didn't have any problem with them and got in a nice little walk, being careful to take shorter than normal strides just to be on the safe side. I'm still having some difficulty sleeping, partly due to the broken bones and partly due to the worn-out bedroom mattress. By about 3 am my back is killing me and I can't get comfortable, given the rather limited positioning options I currently have available. What I have discovered, however, that the little single bed in the back room office, the one that used to be my daughter's bed when she was young, is way more comfortable than the soft one with the dip in the middle in the bedroom. I ended up sleeping there for a couple of hours last night.

Anyway, perhaps I'll try and get back on the trainer in the morning before my first Zoom meeting.