The Cruise Week and the Coronavirus Era

Without consciously having intended to do so, I noticed that I had been cooling it lately on articles about our recent February cruise from the 9th to the 16th...the coronavirus outbreak and presidential politics seem to have replaced them.  But my memories of the excursion are still very fresh...it was only a month ago, and it seems as if I were living in a completely different universe then, what with all the social distancing and restrictions going on now.  Melissa and I were on a ship for a week along with more than five thousand other people...many of them belonging to vulnerable groups for the virus...and oftentimes found ourselves in pretty crowded conditions, including daily sessions of presentations promoting marriage enrichment, concerts, restaurants, crowded hot tubs, and a balloon-release event toward the end that packed more than a thousand together for a prolonged period like sardines in a can.  And to top it off we were crowded and jostled along in long lines at Port Everglades as we disembarked...and then rode on a crowded shuttle bus back to our car.  I kept waiting for days...and then weeks...for some news about someone testing positive from that cruise, but nothing came of it: we figuratively dodged the bullet, the last coach out of Dodge City, so to speak...

Now, of course, we exist in a world of social distancing...six feet between people and incremental restrictions from day to day.  I expect the intensity of this all to only worsen as the numbers of infected and resulting hospitalizations and deaths rise, along with reports close to home of people testing positive for the coronavirus.  So in light of that, please forgive me when you get to this blog some days and discover an article about our cruise, which happened so recently but seems like from an completely different era...yes, in those days gone by folks really did have large assemblies and hung out together, if you can believe it...