Category: Opinion

Friday 13th!

Here is the question that I just have to ask, what is the deal with hoarding all the toilet paper?

As the United States is being shut down by the coronavirus, and the pandemic fears are running rampant, the American people are lined up at Costco to buy more Toilet Paper. All the major sporting leagues are shutting down NHL (National Hockey League), MLB (Major League Baseball), NBA (National Basketball Assocciation), the PGA (Professional Golf Assocciation), and even NCAA has cancelled March madness.

The MGM group in Las Vegas has shut down all the buffets, all gatherings, venues, conventions, are canceled. Even Disney is shuttering both amusement parks, Universal Park, Broadway shows cancelled, yes America is grinding to a halt, the stock market has given back all the gains since the financial collapse and recession in 2008, New York City is on the list of cities that are declaring states of emergencies.

We are in a number of Facebook groups, that are snowbird groups, Canadian boondocking groups, and the like, and everyone is heading north to Canada before the borders close … like seriously. Our plans are not changing we will be crossing in five weeks as scheduled, we will be boondocking till then, so it is hard to be much more isolated than that. Common sense that does not appear to be very common anymore, but other than some small gathering with friends, we plan avoid unnecessary outings.

Most of this fear is fuelled by a lack of leadership, all the denials, the failure of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) to provide real good guidance or be allowed to, the whole process has been so poorly presented by the people in charge, that it is no wonder that people are panicking. It’s like watching a poorly orchestrated soap opera, with no one being in control and every player having their own agenda. And the country’s leaders making fun of the problem whether it’s a senator wearing a gas mask in Congress (and now that jackass has the virus – can you say karma) or an NBA player touching all the microphones and recorders at a news conference (and he now has the virus – now he’s sorry – too little too late – he is a jackass as well), or the administration saying there are all kinds of tests available while none are. Yes I can understand the panic that is racing across the country, here are my suggestions to the administration – just give people the true facts for once, quit lying, quit downplaying the severity, quit telling everyone what a great job you are doing because you are not, simply get your head out of your ass and deal with the reality you have royalty screwed up till now – be a leader for once!

So what action are we taking, well today we are going to the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge this afternoon, then on to happy hour with the Bannon’s, then dinner at River Run in Ehrenberg for fish and chips. Oh we will be aware of our surroundings, we are boondocking in the desert, a couple of hundred feet from our closest neighbour, our next move will be to State Land the other side of Phoenix on Sunday. We expect to stay there till the end of March and hopefully go kayaking with the Savino’s, I received a text from the Ward’s that they are headed home from Florida ahead of schedule. But unless the situation changes we sticking to our plan to start our trek back to Ontario the first of April … until then please use common sense and be safe!

No union here!

Well that went well…NOT. How very sad for both parties…on one hand you have a full blown campaign speech full of inaccurate facts and figures, then you have the childishness of teenagers with not shaking hands and tearing up the copy of the speech. But it just looked like another day in Washington, as seen by most outsiders. Oh Facebook is full of jabs back and forth and most of them the truth, which is better then a number of points in the speech, which normally would be a “State of the Union” not a campaign stop speech talking about planting a flag on Mars…like seriously.

I know the stock market is strong and well, but I’m wondering how many of the working homeless would be in agreement, like those people living in tents in Seattle that have jobs but can’t afford to rent a home because of inflation, even a postal worker but homeless. And that’s just one example, there is a huge homeless issue in the States.

There were other touching moments with ties to education and people being terrorized, we have personally seen the wall and it is an impressive undertaking that has been installed in some easy areas, the tough part is still ahead as they move into more remote areas.

There were many well choreographed things like the service member reunited with his family, beautiful and touching but seen almost weekly on most local television stations. Recognizing well deserving retired service members was a nice touch, possibly tarnished a bit by honouring an out spoken radio host.

I guess that I was confused about the purpose of the address, I thought it was to give a report on the state of the union, and try to unite the country, how foolish of me…let’s face it both parties have some real jewels, Mitch and Nancy being perfect examples of how not to act…if your kids carried on like they do there would be a lot of time outs, or kicks in the ass if you were from my era. It looks like it’s going to be a long noisy summer through the next eight months in the States, the name calling, the tweets, the lies, the promises, or just US politics as usual. We will be heading back south just as it’s coming to an end, but at least we will be missing over six months of the rhetoric between candidates and parties.

We have met some amazing people as we travel through the states, we have Republican and Democratic friends, and in most cases they all against the partisanship that is so obvious across this great country, so much time and money wasted with so much to be done. This is not a new thing and maybe because spending this much time subjected to it as opposed to a week or two we get a closer picture of how disfunction the Congress and Senate has become. What we have noticed is that as we spend our third year in the middle of it, it is getting worse, I think that it is time for our American friends to take a long serious hard look at who is representing them…it may be time for a change…just saying.