Anybody else hunkering down for a few weeks

[DFW]

46. We've just been on a 5 week trip to New England

Specifically to the Outer Cape (Truro). One town over, Provincetown, experienced a drastic upswing in Covid cases after celebrating July 4th rashly, i.e. crowded bars. Although about 75% of the new cases, just about all Delta, were in people that were fully vaxxed, and I don't think any fatalities were reported.

We stayed mostly in our area of Truro, and mostly in the house or on the very uncrowded beaches. It was fine. Instead of our usual restaurant-hopping, we ate dinner out maybe three or four times the whole time we were here. My wife is a gourmet cook, anyway, so we just went to local shops and farmers markets, bought what she needed that day, and cooked in, pretty much what we do when we're home.

We drove back to Boston this morning, ditched the car, went to our hotel (wild Uber trip, I'll explain further down), and crashed. We got almost no sleep last night due to packing.

Tomorrow, my wife flies home, Boston to Amsterdam, and then on to Düsseldorf. We miss the days of Air Berlin, who had the only nonstop flights from Boston to Düsseldorf for all of two years. The Germans, always slow in their bureaucracy, have not yet re-classified the USA as an unsafe country, so she (so far) only needs her EU vaccination certificate. We got her tested yesterday just in case. I'll be in the USA a few more weeks. The real world starts again, and I have to earn the money for next year's trip here. It's always a pain to travel from Düsseldorf to the outer tip of Cape Cod, but we've been doing it every year since 1984. We were 32 then. We're 69 now. The world has changed, and even Cape Cod has changed--but not so much that we would ever want to stop going there.

**when we left our rented car at Logan Airport, we had to get to the hotel, and my wife said let's get a taxi, I just can't handle bringing all our stuff to a shuttle bus to a terminal and then waiting for a taxi there. So, I looked to see if my Uber app still worked (I never use it in Europe), and it did. The driver got out and he barely spoke English. From his accent, it was obvious what he DID speak (Spanish), and he was VERY relieved that I spoke it, too. He was from Guatemala, said he'd been in the Boston area for about 5 years. i didn't bother asking him how he got here 5 years ago, and was allowed to stay and drive an Uber if he could neither read nor write English. We joked around some, and then he told me he had failed several grades of school back in Guatemala, and had to repeat some grades more than once. He said he just wasn't wired for school.

Now, my wife and I know several people bordering on brilliant who can barely read because they suffer from dyslexia, not stupidity. I asked him if he was dyslexic. He had never even heard of the word, let alone the affliction (!!!!). I told him dyslexia was not only common, but recognized, and though there was no cure, there WERE programs to help people suffering from it. He was amazed, and made a note to get himself checked for it. From our conversation, it was clear to me that the guy was very bright, so I implored him to get tested for dyslexia, and maybe there was some program available to him to help him deal with it. He left with a very contemplative look on his face, and gave me a big stare of amazement when the bell staff came out and greeted me by name and shook my hand (I've known the guys at this hotel for years, and always tip big because they are always so helpful, and their jobs are such drudge work). I had told him we come to this hotel once a year, so he figured I must be some kind of VIP (wrong!). I'm not, but if the driver from Guatemala finds out he's a genius dyslexic, that will have made my day. I'll never find out, but I'll just hope.