Life in Trumpistan, season 4, episode 3 : Fleeing Jawja

I'm up, starting to get ready to hit the road.

What got me going was Putin's idiot who - with the help of his basement Nazi - surmised -correctly- that the most xenophobic way of infecting the maximal number of people living here would be to announce that all flights from EU will be shut down the next day. Worked like charm. On Saturday, all major US airport international arrivals looked like this:

with everyone already infected made to stand together with the yet uninfected, stewing side by side for anything up to 8 hours - Mein Gott!

(Hartsfield Delta check-in looked like this still on March 22 - there is no hope for this country). 

For the next step, I did not wait for Georgia Tech's president who listens to the self-elected, vote-suppressor governor Kemp who follows Putin's idiot who watches Fox Channel 24/7 to close the campus. I believe in exponentials. I teach exponentials.You cannot beat exponentials. This might be a vacation on planet Fox, but on this planet it is the worst pandemic since 1918, exploding at the same exponential rate, everywhere. And you cannot beat exponentials, unless you work very hard to decrease the infection rate : the difference between 100 and 1000 infected is only 10 days. Then it is 10,000 and then it is 100,000 and ...

Exponentials said that in a week Chicago would be shut down (correct), and in two weeks we would leave Italy in the dust behind us (correct). I immediately rented a car, packed it with contraband:

and March 17 I left. Atlanta. Wagner's Götterdämmerung would have been the right music for the drive- but instead I went for country while driving through Nashville, otherwise talking-head podcasts. I particularly liked the one about our "Inner fish" (S had bought me the book, enjoyed it as well)

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/03/16/88-neil-shubin-on-evolution-genes-and-dramatic-transitions/

It took driving 12 hours straight to meet S at a sketchy south Chicago gas station and transfer the contraband into the trunk of our Chicago car. I got tenderized into minced meat :) Every time I got out of the car to stretch legs - very socially distanced from other seniors going in big circles around each other - I felt the ground moving around me and the engine buzzing under my. For hours after getting out of the freaking car I was like a sailor on solid land - the ground was swaying under me, and I could feel the engine rumbling throughout my legs and ass. Persisted at home the whole evening until I fell asleep. Is this normal? I'll take a 12 hour bike ride over that, any time. 

On a positive note, I was not held up by 2ndA vigilantes, even though I had packed a very visible load of toilet paper on the back seat.

Now S has me where she wants me - we are cocooned in for a long wait, starting with the wait for the D'Artagnan duck that arrives today. Our Marie Antoinette moment :) Here is the view:



I have not been out of the apartment in weeks. It's a small disruption on the life of last few years, where S had mostly worked from our Chicago apartment, and so did I, in long periods (she had both knee replacements over past few years).


PS from Steve McDonald, reporting live from the lowlands: Just remember you cannot have the Corona without a lime.

PPS Getting to Chicago seems like eons ago, so I have to write the date down: March 17, 2020.

PPPS For you, who read this, but do not live in US, and do not have a woman prime minister: If it is any consolation, our idiot is more incompetent than your idiot.