Tier Tuesday. Airline Mask Mandate Ended.

It's Tier Tuesday so time for my weekly check-in on Coronavirus statistics. This week's check of the data at The New York Times Covid in the U.S. (retrieved 26 Apr 2022) finds that yet again reported Covid cases are increasing week over week. Last week there was a 21.5% increase from the week before. This week's average daily new cases of 49,423 is an increase of 26% over last week. In 2 weeks the number has risen 54%.

Given what looks like it could be the start of a new surge, what is the U.S. doing to prepare? Why, we're dropping precautions! Last week Monday a federal district judge threw out the CDC's mask mandate for travelers on airplanes and other commercial transport. Most airlines dropped their company policies requiring masks. Countless local and regional transit operators did, too.

There are so many things that are wrong with this situation. I'll list just FIVE, briefly:

1. Like I noted above, the numbers don't support loosening restrictions. The numbers indicate we must remain cautious.
2. The judge's decision was not at all about data. She ruled on the law.
3. Her ruling on the law was that the CDC has no power, at all, to enact policy to prevent any threat to public health.
4. Most district judges would be circumspect in their rulings throwing out a nationwide policy, and place a stay on their own orders. Not this radical-right true believer.
5. The Biden administration has failed at communication following this ruling. Will the government appeal the ruling? How swiftly and on what basis? What should people be doing in the meantime?

Regarding the last item, polls indicate that a majority of airline travelers will continue wearing masks, voluntarily. I'm traveling cross-country next week and I absolutely will wear a mask. And yes, I've seriously considered cancelling my trip as a result of this public health setback. I wish there were clearer communication from the governing wing of the federal government on what we should be doing.

UPS Finally Delivers, Verizon Finally Works

Finally. Finally today UPS, aka FuckUPS, delivered. Though it took me taping a note like this up on my front door:

I AM HOME.
PLEASE KNOCK!

...And keeping an ear cocked to the window all morning long to listen for the sound of the UPS truck driving up to the end of the terrace.

Finally around 2:30 the replacement wi-fi router for Verizon Home Internet arrived. ...The router for the service I ordered 26 days ago. ...The router I've spent countless hours on the phone trying to troubleshoot with a parade of tech support agents for the past 21 days. The replacement router I've been waiting a week to get.

And now it works. It just fucking works. Oh, it's slow powering up; it seems to need, like, 5 minutes to boot. But once it's going, it goes.

This feels anticlimactic. After weeks of agony and frustrating hours on the phone with helpless customer service agents and managers, it seems like this success ought to be accompanied by drums and trumpets. Or at least the opportunity to personally punch in the face the next person who suggests, "Turn it off turn it on."

Ultimately what this exercise with Verizon shows— which a similar ordeal with T-Mobile also showed, but now it's 2/2 so a pattern is clearly emerging— is that technology companies have built systems so complicated they can't be fixed. Not at the level of an individual customer, anyway. Sure, if it's some PEBKAC thing like connecting the device wrong or forgetting the password, customer service can troubleshoot that. But if the device itself isn't working, or if the network configuration on the provider's side is bunged up, forget it. It's too complicated to fix. All support can do is press "Launch" again, send out a whole new device, and hope that the automation built to launch boxes out the chute works properly this time.

Stairs Blasted into the Rock of Memory Lane (Pinnacles part 2)

As we were driving to Pinnacles National Park and starting our hike to the High Peaks Loop I was thinking about our past visits there... which stretch back 25 years! Our first visit to the park was in April 1997. Back then it was Pinnacles National Monument, or just "The Pinnacles". (Its upgrade to National Park status came years later, in 2013.)

Cast your memory back to Friday, April 4, 1997. We were reading the weekend section in the Mercury News. They had a big front-page article— well, it was the front page of the D section, but it was big and had color pictures— and yes, it was on paper. We're talking some serious memory lane shit, here!

Anyway, on page D1 there was a big article about The Pinnacles, 2 hours south of us. We loved hiking then, as we do now, and we were ecstatic for the info about the park. We planned to go the very next day, Saturday.

That Saturday the park was crowded. It was so crowded we had to park in an overflow parking lot, which added extra distance to our hiking just to get to the trailhead. The trails were crowded, too. It was like walking at the mall. And I swear every second person had a copy of the dratted Mercury News tucked under their arm.



We're pros at the park now. We don't need newspapers tucked under our arms, or even their modern equivalent: blogs and maps on our smartphones. We know several of the routes by heart.

Just before I took the picture above we passed another pair of hikers at a junction. They were first-timers. We recommended which trails they should take to have the most memorable hike. It reminded me of when we were first-timers. I wish we'd gotten slightly better recommendations about what to hike first. BTW, in the picture above we're on the High Peaks Loop. In the distance is the Salinas Valley. In the far distance are the coast range mountains of Big Sur.

On our first visit we didn't make it up here, to the High Peak Loop. We started with a trail lower down, the Balconies Cave hike. That was what the author of the article recommended to start. Of course, the writer was a body nazi who could hike 14 miles a day over a mountain with one bottle of water and probably no shirt. We weren't in as good shape, and it was a hot day and there was extra hiking due to the overflow. We were spent just doing that hike. It was a good hike; just not the signature hike.



The signature hike at Pinnacles is the High Peak Loop. It's the standout trail not just because of the amazing, far-off views from the high peaks— of which there are plenty— but because of the tough parts of the trail, where you climb footholds blasted into the granite.

Usually when I want to remember where I hiked and when, I consult my pictures. Oddly my pictures from 1997, my analog pictures on 4"x6" prints, are inconclusive. Some of them look like the high peaks... but there definitely aren't any pics of these footholds blasted into the bare rock. I don't think we made it up here until probably our third visit, which I think may have been in Spring 1998.



Plus, come on, once you've crouched over to climb through narrow spaces you remember it. At least I remember it. Especially when on the other side of that metal rail is a 1,200' drop to the valley below! That's where I'm practically certain we didn't make it up here until much later.

These tricky, stair-steppy parts of the trail aren't just one stretch but several, probably 4 or 5. This isn't a trail for the faint of heart! Though that said, it's also not a dangerous trail. The stairsteps in the rock make a huge difference. The metal rails do, too. It's just that they're both intimidating until you get used to how to use them.



By the time you get to the last rough stretch you might feel like a pro. Or you might feel like you've been put through the gauntlet. Or both!

And you'll probably start thinking ahead to the next time you can come back here.

In beauty I walk.

UPDATE: Up next: Up close with a California Condor!