Notes from Quarantine 

Week 2

I’m sitting in the kitchen listening to an episode of “Prairie Home Companion” from the 90s (surreally enough, the episode features an operetta titled La Influenza) and watching Nancy make kardemummabullar (Swedish cardamom rolls).  Yep.  Things are pretty desperate at our house.  Fortunately, today is the last day of our CDC sanctioned quarantine.  Unfortunately, under Governor Brown’s executive order 20-12, confining all good Oregonians to their homes, our situation really won’t change that much tomorrow.

Nancy making kardemummabullar

It has been a pretty good week here in Tumalo, my home town. (Ok. So I’m not Garrison Keillor, and my home town is really probably Anchorage, Alaska, but we do live somewhere in unincorporated Deschutes County near the village of Tumalo.)

We discovered that Newport Market would shop for us and bring the groceries out to our car, so we were able to get food without violating our quarantine, and we didn’t have to eat frozen burritos all week.  And we figured out how to use Zoom (well, Nancy figured it out), so we could attend virtual dinner parties.

Yellowknife Wireless, our internet provider, generously gave us an additional free 200GB of data streaming, so we’ve been able to have parties as well as keep up with the progression of the virus and the multiple viral internet memes and song parodies.  (My favorite so far: My Corona by Chris Mann, google it).

The dogs have been happy to have us in quarantine.  They have been gracious enough to invite us along on their daily walks in the woods.  Our neighbors to the east have 80 acres of undeveloped juniper stands that they kindly let us walk on, and across the road is thousands of acres of BLM ponderosa pine forest to wander in, all while staying much more than 6 feet away from our fellow vectors. 

(Thankfulness note: I give thanks for living in a place that I can take a walk while still maintaining social distance.)

Holly and Cody, our brown mongrel rescue dogs, feel it is their mission to help the woodland critters stick to an exercise program.  Bunnies are chased back to their holes and squirrels are run up their trees.  On a good day, no one gets hurt.

Holly encourages the running (and high jump) career of a local squirrel 

Cody enjoys a well deserved rest after the hunt

Aside from internet surfing and walking the woods, I’ve been trying to get a jump on my spring chores.  We have a little more than 3 acres of pasture that alpacas graze on in the summer.  The irrigation water gets turned on in 2 weeks, so this week I’ve been getting ready.  I picked up the pine cones (pine cones in alpaca fleece, messy), trimmed the lower branches on the pine trees and cleaned up the weeds along the fence line.  Once the water gets turned on, I’ll be busy fixing irrigation heads and getting fertilizer laid down, so the alpacas can come in May.

Alpacas in the summer pasture

Oh. And then there’s the training thing.  It was announced this week that the Namib Race would be postponed until November. Disheartening, I'm sure, for my fellow desert racers in training, but definitely the right call given the current status of the pandemic.  I’m signed up as medical director for the Gobi March in Mongolia at the end of June, and I am cautiously optimistic that it will be safe then to travel and hold this race.  And I am hopeful that the Atacama Crossing will take place in September.  How hopeful, you may ask.  Hopeful enough to train for it.

As I write this, it’s snowing in the hills outside, a good thing, but unfortunately the ski areas have been closed by executive order 20-12 and the cross country trails are no longer being groomed, so Nordic skiing is no longer a training option for me.

So it’s down to biking and running 

I’ve taken the bike outside twice this week.  And gotten snowed or sleeted on both times.  Given the blowing rain and sleet at the moment, I’ll probably ride in my garage today.  (I used to be hard). As mentioned in earlier posts, I’m hoping to get some if not most of my fitness doing lower impact exercise.  When I do feel like a little bit more impact, there are miles of trail and logging roads literally out my door.  I’ve been playing around with running with a 6kg pack.  Have to say:  Not really pleasant.  But I guess I’ll have to get used to it.  I haven’t been able to meet with my coach, Jaime Dispenza, of Laughing Dog Coaching, but he has been putting an entertaining and challenging program onto my TrainingPeaks app.

But before training.  Fika.  Swedish noun and verb for coffee break with snacks!

(Thankfulness note: As always I give thanks for my lovely wife who makes me treats and Fikas with me!)

And then on Monday it’s back to work.  Oh, yeah.  The work thing.