Return from the City of Elms

Over the last few days Natalie and I made an assault upon the East Coast. Thursday and Friday night were spent in Princeton, so that no day of driving would exceed 8-9 hours, and we could stay in only one hotel room. On Friday we went to New Haven. Yale had given us two hours to get Natalie's stuff out of her dorm room, which seems pretty tight but actually proved doable. It was done like that so that it could be staggered over months and no two kids would be moving out of the same entryway at once. In fact I only saw one other girl and her family moving out of Natalie's residential college at all. It was like a ghost town.

It was sad. There's no getting around it. It appears unlikely that kids will be coming back to campus in the fall, or at least not a full cohort. And instruction will be done remotely in any case. So when Natalie and I sat in the Branford courtyard and looked out at it, it was with a great deal of uncertainty as to when she will be back.

On a positive note, we saw friends. We stopped in Bethesda and Natalie went for a walk with one friend (despite her seemingly broken toe). In New Haven she saw another. Both very nice kids, one Indian, one Pakistani. In Princeton we sat on the porch with Ella, Zoey, Ted and Kirsten, then we stopped in and saw George and Rob in North White Plains. Even more importantly, while we were on the road I heard from one of my oldest friends who had been stricken with the Bug and has had a pretty tough dance with it -- a regular reader of the Grouse -- no less. After not responding to my texts for a disturbingly long time, he got back to me. A very good sign.

Up and down the East Coast we saw very mixed adherence to COVID best practices. Most people wore masks, yes. There was very good compliance from food service organizations large and small, from Subways and Starbuckses to the taco truck in Bethesda and the little grill in Kingston, NJ where we got breakfast sandwiches on Friday.

But amongst the lay population it was pretty mixed. At our hotel in Princeton, despite the signs on the doors mandating face masks, a lot of people weren't wearing them, including populations hit hard, amongst them African-Americans and orthodox Jews. Both of those surprised me. In the hills of Pennsylvania and Virginia as we came down 81 on the way back, I was less surprised to see the Trumpers flouting their prerogative to both Live Free and Die.

In general traffic was pretty light. The only significant backup we experienced was on the span of the George Washington Bridge, where we could feel the bridge shudder while we were absolutely still. Neither of us said anything while we were sitting there, but I mentioned it to Natalie the next day and she agreed that it was scary as fuck. The GWB is an awfully big thing to feel shudder beneath you.