Friday April 2nd 2021

Ok the actual name of the survey is the “Canadian Longitudinal Survey on Aging” or “clsa” for short, but I have always just referred to it as the Old Fart Survey.

No this is not something that I just made up, I have been actually been answering these surveys for the best part of a decade. The surveys are simular each time, they are designed to test our memory capabilities and our ability to perform simple tasks such as counting backwards from 98 by 3s, so basic enough tasks but also challenging enough to make you think, they also ask about our living conditions as well as our social interaction and our quality of life. So when asked if I would like to participate in it and I thought what the heck how long can a survey take?

Well I have since learnt that some of their surveys can take up to two hours and can involve multiple evenings to complete, as I was still working when they started calling. In fact their surveys take so much time they actually call to book hour long appointment times for the sessions.

And as I get older they seem to call more frequently, we are down to usually getting a call every year as opposed to every three and four years like when the first started. I usually receive the call late May or early June depending how many times I ignore their calls before picking up. So I was surprised to see the name on the call display of my phone in March, but being somewhat bored and captured here for the winter, I was looking for almost any outside communication so I picked up. Because my first though was maybe their just doing a head count, to see how many of us old farts they had lost so far during this pandemic, I know that may sound a little morbid and crude but I’m not in any way well known for my politically correctness.

But apparently they are now working on collecting data, to see how Covid has effected us old farts, and they were asking to see if I would like to participate in a survey to check our blood for possible Covid antibodies, and to take blood samples both now and then again in three months, so I said sure (it’s not as if I’m too busy doing much of anything else) so about a week later FedEx dropped off a package with lots of neat things. To help extract enough blood to fill the supplied collection unit, so the kit came with a sheet of instructions, the sample collection unit, a couple of alcohol swabs, two band aids, a package of gauze, and a couple of sharp cutty things to puncture my finger. Along with a return envelope from FedEx to get the collection device back to a laboratory in Hamilton.

Of course there was another phone survey to answer a whole new list of questions regarding the collection of the blood sample, as well as questions, related to my health, my travel, and how well I had obeyed all the pandemic restrictions over the past year. A large part of this testing is to test our blood for antibodies to the coronavirus and how much they will have changed in three months, mine will hopefully change quite a bit as I just received my first Covid vaccine shot yesterday.

As I’m finishing this blog, Ontario in about to enter into another restrictive period as the Covid case counts have continued to rise in the Toronto area, and with most cases now having the VOC (variant of concern) first discovered in Great Britain we are running out of ICU beds. Now there calling this a four week “emergency brake”, it is not a lock down with a stay at home order like was imposed in December but it is what many areas refer to as a “circuit breaker”.

Ontario had designed a colour coded system of different restrictions for each area of the province, they were GREEN, YELLOW, ORANGE, RED, and GREY. And while the idea was maybe a good one and the areas colour code was based on the infection rate in each health board area, it didn’t stop people from going from their more restrictive area to a more open area. And of course in highly populated areas one side of a street could have different restrictions that the other.

So some one in an area with grey restrictions which has no indoor dining wants to go out for dinner they just drive to a zone that that has yellow or orange restrictions that allow indoor dining. So while Toronto had remained in the grey highly restrictive area, some areas like ours here in Goderich were in the yellow restrictive area which was a close a possible to being back to the new normal of face coverings, social distancing, but all businesses open with some restrictions.

So the province had little option other than shut down the whole province down by placing every one back in the grey most restrictive zone because people are just not obeying the guidelines, we see it everyday, whole families going shopping with no regard for anyone else’s safety. The most annoying thing is that we are getting so close to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s still a few months away.

Now it’s a wait and see if the hot spot areas can be brought under control, and how many vaccines can be delivered, as to whether we see these restrictions lifted for May 1st just four weeks away.

As Always, Be Safe, Wear you Mask, and get a vaccine when it’s your turn!

April 1st 2021

So just how does a retired Canadian couple that live fulltime in a 40 foot motor coach, and that are used to wintering in the southern states to avoid the Canadian winter cold, cope with being grounded during a world wide pandemic?

Well one might assume that we would just drown our sorrows with some good Canadian rye whiskey or some of the great craft beers from this big country. And that might have happened if the times were a little different. But we are more social consumers of alcohol, in other words being locked down by this pandemic, and not being able to have any social interactions has found us actually consuming much less alcohol than normal.

Oh we still bought a bottle of Baileys for our Christmas celebrations, and we have added a bottle or two of Forty Creek Copper Pot rye whiskey but with being able to count this winters social interactions on the fingers of one hand. We have found this social isolation very difficult, Miss Laurie has been working through the winter at the local Walmart. But while being around people it has become very obvious that people either don’t understand the lock-down guidelines or just don’t care.

So I have pretty much abstained from alcohol for the whole month of February and other than a couple of glasses of wine with a few nice dinners. Much of the craft beer that I had purchased before Christmas is still chilling in the breeze way of the house.

As we move closer to the start of spring (at least on the calendar) our thoughts are of moving back to our desired way of life. We have committed this summer to Richard & Bonnie at Lake Huron Resort. It was the obvious choice that made sense to all of us last year when we could see that the world as we knew it was going to be turned upside down.

Who among us would had believed that the Canadian / American border would has been closed to everything except essential for more than a year? Not I for sure, but it has been and there is still no serious talk about the border opening anytime soon.

Most of our social interactions this winter were made with the use of electronics and apps like “FaceTime” or “Zoom”, and while these were great ways to touch base with people, they just don’t come anywhere close to filling that void that has been with us for almost a year.

It is starting to become obvious that the vaccines that are slowly making their way into Canadian arms will be our only ticket back to any sense of reality. As we watch the vaccine that has made into the arms of other nations (Israel for example), we can see actual life as we knew it coming back. Stores are open, masks appear to be disappearing, movies, theatre, social events like concerts are coming back to life.

And of course now we will have the “anti vaxxers” telling us how the vaccines have microchips from Bill Gates in them or some other line of true stupidity. To the anti-vaxxers, just step aside and let the people who want to restart their lives get in line to be vaccinated. While you dream up some new reasons why the world really cares what you are doing, because the world actually doesn’t give a crap what you think or what you are doing. Neither Bill Gates or myself need a microchip to tell that you are looking way too hard to make yourself feel special (and God knows you are special in so many different ways).

I think with the blizzard warnings that we had on the first day of March along with the snow streamers off of Lake Huron will qualify as March coming in as a LION, so hopefully it will leave as a LAMB. We also have had to change the clocks ahead as we swing into “Daylight Savings” a week before the official start of spring.

As I sit here writing this morning we are getting some more flurries, just a little more of that lake effect snow, which we have grown to hate. As much as I have reading this winter completing a few of dozen books, I’m starting to find this has been a very long winter. I have tried to walk on the nicer days, but found walking with the ice and snow on the sidewalks just a little too close to suicidal for my liking. While the sidewalks are plowed by the town, the actual job done is very poor and most people walk down the sides of the streets, and most drivers in this area drive way over any speed limits.

We will not be wintering in Canada this coming winter for sure, I don’t know what might be involved in getting across the border but we will be somewhere warm next winter.

While looking ahead we hope to winter in Arizona and Mexico and are looking for work camping jobs in British Columbia for the summer of 2022, although we are much too early for any formal plans. We had hoped to have new couple to work with us at Lake Huron Resort this coming summer, to help and someone to take over the following summer. But as of yet there have not been any candidates for the position.

And that brings up a whole new sad state of affairs, the amount of negative feedback, by what appears to be nothing more than trolls, to the ad for the job opportunity. Work camping in not for everyone, in fact most people just don’t understand the concept. And that was obvious by some of the comments, people just sounding off to try to get a response, these are the same people that are ganging up on Mr. Potato head and Dr. Seuss. Most work camping positions are for two people, and because most opportunities also include a campsite they are advertised as a couple. There was no stipulation on what couple make up has to be because nobody really cares, there is too much work for one person therefore, a couple is needed.

And of course there are always the age of the camper issue. It’s not so much the age of the camper as much as how you have maintained the camper. I would say that half of the campgrounds that we visit have age restrictions, but most just want to see a picture of your camper to make sure you aren’t moving in an eyesore. And there are lots of those and we have seen many, some parks seem to collect them. Our coach is more than twenty years old but we have had very few rejections to campgrounds, so when a campground asks for a photo it to the benefit of everyone else in the park.

In any case the people making the comments were just flapping their gums as neither one were interested in work camping in the first place. So know as spring in upon us we are enjoying warm sunny days, oh I’m Canadian enough to know we will see more snow, but I’m going to enjoy the warm days while I can. And my next step will be to get the coach ready for our return in April to prepare for the park opening in May … this damn pandemic and our next lock-down being our only unknown.

Be Well, Stay Strong, and Wear your Mask