Pedaling around Peoria during the Pandemic - February 2021


It's February 2nd, 2021, and if you're the kind of person who believes what they read in the news, there's a pandemic going on right now. It's called COVID-19, which means Corona Virus Disease 2019 (the year that this all started, although it really didn't affect me here in the Phoenix, Arizona area until April of 2020). And today, like I've been doing every day, I'll be out pedaling around Peoria, which is a suburb of Phoenix.

Doing this is part of my exercise program, and I also find it comforting for my nerves. My pace is slow, I don't stop very often (unless I need to, ahem, because I drink a lot of coffee out there), and I'm usually noodling through neighborhoods, which have always been quiet for as long as I've lived here, but are even more so now.

It's still kinda chilly, so wearing the nice cloth mask that the Woman in my Life got for me feels good. I've been wearing a mask since way before there was any legal requirement for it (the way I used to wear seat belts going back the 1970s), and since I am in Arizona, I do get some disapproving looks, and I've even gotten a snarky remark about wearing a mask from someone when I stopped into a Burger King in Peoria for some coffee. And as a history adventurer, I think about people who are, if I may put it bluntly, on the other side of the equation from me.

And as a history adventurer, and someone who has been intellectually curious since I was a kid, I haven't turned my back on people who are now very unhappy with the current political situation. As I pedal around, I've seen flags hanging upside-down (a symbol of distress), and also political posters still up for the presidential candidate who lost recently. I don't see any Confederate flags anymore (which used to be very common around here), but I do see the "Don't Tread on Me" flag, which in combination with the American flag, still sends a clear message - this person is not happy, and you'd be wise to keep your eyes front, and keep moving. They see me wearing a mask, and it reminds me of the glaring looks that I would get for wearing my hair long in the 1970s.

I do wave to everyone I see, and I do a special greeting for dogs. I'm not seeing the old MAGA hats anymore (MAGA was a slogan that stood for "Make America Great Again"), and I really don't even see people wearing red hats anymore. I'm a patriotic American, always have been, but I keep my colors neutral, mostly wearing my school colors from ASU (Maroon and Gold).

When I'm not out pedaling around, I spend a fair amount of time on TikTok, and what really caught my eye was a young woman (she may be in her thirties but everyone looks 12 to me now) who asked older people (like me) if we had experienced anything like this in our lives. I gave it a lot of thought, and I gotta say that this isn't like anything I've ever seen in a long life. I know that it's something that the young people of today will someday tell their grandchildren about.

These are interesting times.
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