As most readers here are aware, I have spent most of my adult life on the road, roaming the world and telling jokes. Travel was a fact of life that I didn’t think about too much until I had been doing it for a very long time. Several years ago, I began doing a lot more freelance writing and staying close to home. It was a nice change of pace.
Like anyone who has traveled a lot — whether it be for work or play — the wanderlust returned, and in a big way.
Unfortunately, it hit me hard at the beginning of 2020. I traveled to CPAC in late February, and had three other trips planned to Michigan, Los Angeles, and New York City in the three months that followed that.
Then the stupid Chinese Bat Flu arrived and harshed everyone’s mellow.
When it looked like we were just delaying plans for a few months it wasn’t so bad, was it? By the time summer rolled around, however, I think we all knew that the entire year was in the cosmic toilet.
The Michigan trip was scheduled for March 13, 2020. You all probably remember that that is the weekend the COVID-cancel-panic began. Heck, we weren’t even calling it COVID then, it was still just “the coronavirus.” My daughter was going to fly into Michigan from NYC and we were going to spend a few days with my mom and my sister’s family. When we canceled the flight, we talked about rescheduling it for the summer.
It would be a year before I saw any of them again.
By the time the Year of Our Lord 2021 showed up on my calendar, I was more than antsy. I didn’t travel anywhere until March. It was a makeup trip for the one that was canceled in 2020. My enthusiasm was immediately dampened by the experience of having to wear a mask for an entire fligh—where they were no longer serving me any booze. It was the sexless, loveless marriage of travel.
After that, I decided to stay home for a few months to see if the relationship could improve. Then along came Delta.
It’s nigh on impossible to plan ahead now, especially given the fact that the places I want to go to are all run by commies. Even if I did decide to go somewhere that was freer, I’d still have to deal with the airport and in-flight mask insanity.
Last year I publicly stated that I was more than willing to wear a mask in order to support businesses that had been shut down for too long. It didn’t bother me at all. Now, the thought of putting one on for two minutes makes me want to star in a true-crime show. I’m fully vaccinated. Maybe the microchip they gave me is telling my brain to resist the tyranny of the mask.
Or maybe I just like breathing.
While talking to a good friend a couple of weeks ago we both agreed that, despite being vaccinated, we didn’t want to go anywhere that wanted us to prove it.
Whatever overwhelming urge I had to get on a plane and go far away has been murdered by the mask fetishists and the vax Nazis. I’m perfectly happy to stay home with my books, video games, and alcohol delivery.
Yeah, I may die here, but at least it won’t be from suffocating in a mask.
