As many of you reading this can probably attest, it is hard to keep up with time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and my idea of writing this piece in early September, somehow only came to fruition two months later. I hope the message still resonates, as we get ready to enter what some experts call the winter lockdown phase of the virus, where concerns surround the spike of COVID-19 cases in some states, mixed with the arrival of the flu season. I initially started writing this from 39,000 feet above the clouds after spending a week away from my home in Atlanta, Georgia on my annual birthday vacation in late August in Washington State. In July I wasn’t sure the trip was going to happen. Cases of COVID-19 were rising in Georgia and across the country, matching masks to our outfits had become the dreaded reality of our lives, and to make matters worse, I started to know more and more people who’d been diagnosed with COVID-19, and in some cases, some had even passed away from the virus.
I initially planned to visit the New England area, but with so many restrictions for travelers, I had to pivot locations and ended up selecting Washington for its mandatory mask mandate, and selected Bainbridge Island, in Kitsap County as home base since it was a smaller town that I felt had more control on its cases.
I thought long and hard about the trip, whether I should still take it, would I get sick, how I would protect myself, and the list goes on and on…
