Weirdness prevails. The world we live in (the one with 24/7 bad news, tumbling share markets and disappearing toilet paper) has gone fairly crazy.
Many things we like are cancelled.
Lucky for us the things we love are not cancelled.
Just to make sure they were still out there, we went and checked.
Main beach at the Mount: sparkling in the early autumn sun, plenty of people out acting more or less normal, and by careful manoeuvres we kept them all at a distance of at least three metres.
Tauranga cycleways: a quite amazing network with everything a fat road bike could desire. Gravel, dirt, some cooch grass, even a long and twisting boardwalk over a mangrove wetland. The trails are nearly impossible to find so I had to ask directions from another bike rider, which required face-to-face discussion. So not completely risk-free. By the end of my outing I was giving directions to others, with more close proximity. Still, a nice sixty kilometres of discovery, mostly people-free.
The local patch: a slight chill in the air, dreamy dirt, and it being a Monday, nobody much around.
The only personal interaction I had was with an e-biker, riding a trail the wrong way, looking for his mate. They had entered the trail together, I hadn’t passed anybody, his mate had entirely vanished. I left the e-biker to it, and carried on down. A fair distance later I find his mate, looking for the e-biker. He owned up to having taken a short cut, and passed the e-biker, who didn’t register what had happened. The short cut is one of those inexplicable things that turn up on well-travelled trails, I guess for people who hate mountain biking and want to get home twelve seconds earlier. Anyway: instant karma. Cell phone reception out that way is pretty dodgy, they may still be looking for each other.
If you are going to self-isolate, your local trails are a good bet.