Now that all of the regular activities here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort are stopped, a lot of people have packed up and left. I guess for those that have regular sticks-and-bricks homes and family elsewhere, it made sense for them to head home while they can. Talk of restrictions on travel to and from some states have created a sense of urgency for some people. Of course, the Canadian visitors had their reasons for leaving as well.
Empty sites to the east of us
More empty sites to the west
Donna has been staying active, riding her bicycle and doing strength training three days a week with our friend and neighbor here in the park. Ginny comes over on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and they do their socially distanced training routine on the empty concrete pad east of our site. Ginny and her husband, Joe, were in my refined skills pickleball class last year. They’ve come a long way with their pickleball game. It’s too bad we’re not allowed on the courts here at this time. Like us, they’re planning to stay through the end of the month in their park model.
Lately my activity levels have really fallen off. We go out for a walk most evenings, but that isn’t much. We see a few people that are socializing in their sites with friends, some of them are still having fairly large gatherings. We’ve decided to avoid these situations and keep our distance.
This whole social distancing thing has been somewhat controversial, but I think we can’t ignore it. One of the statistics that really sticks out in my mind is the number of COVID-19 cases in New York. New York has approximately 20 million people and as of 3pm yesterday, they had over 92,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. California has approximately 40 million people – double the population of New York – but they have only about 9,200 confirmed cases as of yesterday. That’s only 10% as many cases with double the population.
Why is that? That’s the question everyone would like the answer to. Here’s my thought on this social distance thing. Whereas New York has high population density in New York City, it also has heavily used mass transportation – subways, trains, buses and taxi cabs. Californians have large population centers as well, but they are much more likely to travel alone or in small groups in their personal vehicles. People in New York are more likely to spend time indoors – sharing space with others – while Californians are more likely to be outdoors and not in close contact with strangers. Maybe that explains why New York has so many cases compared to California – that’s my theory for now.
Since last weekend, the only time Donna and I have left the RV park was to go grocery shopping. I’ve done most of the shopping, but today we both went. I dropped Donna off at Sprouts where she likes to get fresh produce and some specialty foods while I went to Winco foods to buy a few staples and beer. It worked out good, I was able to buy some needed foods at the lower Winco prices while Donna found everything she wanted at Sprouts. With our limited refrigeration and food storage, I go out to shop a twice a week.
Speaking of limited space, Donna’s been doing some re-organizing. Our bathroom has a closet space that holds our Splendide 2100 washer/dryer and cleaning supplies. We also had a basket for clothes that needed to be washed on a shelf above the washer dryer. Donna wanted to use this space as additional pantry space. When you live in about 300 square feet, finding space for a clothes hamper can be a challenge. Donna came up with a solution. She found pop-up mesh hampers online from Bed, Bath and Beyond. She ordered two of them – one for whites and one for colored clothes. These hampers are very lightweight. She put them in the shower so they don’t take up any usable space. When we shower, we just pull them out and temporarily leave them on the bathroom floor. Then we dry the floor of the shower and put them back.
Colored clothes in the black hamper, whites in the white one
You would think with all this time spent at home and not going out for happy hour that we would be saving money. Well, I’m doing my best to keep the economy rolling. I find myself in front of the computer screen placing orders online. Donna, too. So we’ve had Amazon deliveries almost daily!
We didn’t dine out very often anyway – we’re used to home-cooked meals and only went out to dinner once a month or so. Here are a few meals from the last week. First is pan-seared mustard flank steak with roasted garlic cauliflower and corn.
Another dinner plate was creamy lemony orzo with shrimp and peas. Delicious.
Last night, I grilled a pork tenderloin that Donna prepped with her mojo marinade. She served it with fire roasted sweet potatoes and steamed asparagus.
I bought a 2.5-pound London broil steak today (top round) to make beef jerky. My last batch was the best so far – I’ve made small improvements with each batch. I’ll prep this steak later today and smoke it tomorrow.
We’ve had excellent weather for the past week with temperatures reaching the upper 70s and low 80s. We topped out at 85 on Wednesday. The week ahead should be more of the same.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!