Love in the age of Coronavirus

With one week to go here at HAWSEPIPER's floating mobile gas station/hot dog emporium, I'm starting to think ahead about  going home.

      I have been blessed with the gift of introversion. In the past 3 weeks I've been ashore to go buy groceries twice, and that's it. I have practiced social distancing religiously for the past 11 years. I was warned that becoming a tankerman in a brown water (coastwise) operation would make me misanthropic, and that was half correct, turns out. I was already misanthropic. Now I am more so, even before the pandemic.

          I'm happy to be in Philadelphia today. Apparently New Yorkers are NOT welcome in Florida anymore, as  funny-talking snowbirds have fled NY and brought their plague with them and now all flights home from NY require the passengers self-quarantine. I haven't been to get food in a couple of weeks now, so I'm doing well. I'll have been out of NY for over 2 weeks come crew change day.

 I worry about going home. If I drive (I reserved cars in both Philly and at home on either side of crew change in case the airlines shut me down) as much as a 20hr drive might be unpleasant, it might be better than flying, exposing myself AND possibly getting stranded or quarantined.

 But here's the rub. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife works with the elderly. She absolutely can't be exposed herself, or she could kill her patients. My coming home is already a managed risk. My coming home after spending all day in a flying leper colony is a less-managed risk, so I believe I'm road-tripping it.

 So it goes. In the meanwhile, the HQ is a pretty good place to be at this point.