Canceled hikes – A dearth of passengers on Metro – An eerily quiet Mall – A new conspiracy theory – Evening statistics
What a disappointment! The MLK hike scheduled for today was canceled – not on account of politics, as was the case last year, but on account of the weather. The wind level was predicted to increase to such an extent as to make driving (and crossing bridges in particular) during the evening inadvisable, gusting possibly as much as 55 miles per hour. We are going to try to do the hike some time next month.
I went to the MLK monument nonetheless, as I always do at this time of year. I took the Metro, using it for the first time in about 15 months. It did not, in fact, appear to entail any particular risk of infection, for the cars were nearly empty. There were a few more people on the return journey than in the morning; but even so, everyone had at least three or four rows all to himself.
The city, as well, seemed empty. Normally the Mall is quite crowded during a three-day weekend, no matter what the season might be; but that was not the case today. After visiting the monument I went around the Tidal Basin, where I encountered only a few other pedestrians and no bikers. From there I went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and wended my way through Georgetown and Rosslyn before returning. Throughout my wanderings the traffic was a great deal less dense than one might expect. I crossed several major traffic arteries without the slightest difficulty, even for those that do not have traffic lights or crosswalks. I’m not sure what the explanation is. The city was not so sparsely occupied when I took an urban hike on December 26th. The weather, to be sure, was not ideal, but it was in the 30s, cloudy but not gray, and not especially damp – quite reasonable for this time of year, in fact. The wind advisory may have discouraged people from driving in from Virginia, but normally the in-town residents and the guests staying at hotels provide plenty of visitors who throng the Mall area at all times of the year. Even at the MLK monument I saw only a handful of tourists this time, which is practically unheard of on the day of the year that is named in his honor.
The weather has interfered with another hike as well. Tomorrow I was supposed to hike with the Vigorous Hikers. But there is too much snow on the originally proposed hike, which is in higher altitudes, and even the backup hike that the hike leader had prepared is unavailable because the parking areas at the trailhead are currently unusable, being covered with ice.
Since conspiracy theories are in such vogue these days, I’ve decided to broadcast one of my own. It is my firm conviction that Ty and Charlene Bollinger, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph Mercola, Sherri Tenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper, and Kevin Jenkins, the “dirty dozen” collectively responsible for issuing about 65% of the anti-vaccine posts on the Internet , are deliberately manipulating the weather for the express purpose of interfering with all hiking activities in the area. Proof, you say? Who needs proof for a conspiracy theory? I think that mine reads pretty well on the whole, considering that I’m a mere novice in comparison with the aforementioned experts.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 331,128,123; # of deaths worldwide: 5,563,112; # of cases U.S.: 67,494,969; # of deaths; U.S.: 874,213.