Driving Again

I haven’t driven a car since 2010.

The last time I drove went badly, partially because I was used to driving a manual, but the rental car was an automatic, so I made mistakes, so I got flustered… yeah.

Next year, I plan to rent a car again. But this time, I’ll by the only driver.

I don’t like driving, I’d hoped to live the rest of my life without it. It’s the damn pandemic.

The only safe alternative was not traveling at all. I’m not ready to say why I’m traveling, so I’ll just it’s a unique opportunity, one which I probably won’t have again. So I decided it was worth a little risk, but within limits. For this trip, I need some kind of car, and if I don’t have my own, that means sharing a vehicle with someone who might be infected.

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(I’ll need to take a few taxi trips to get to and from the rental car agencies, but a few short rides are less risky than spending many hours in a car with someone else).

I wish our society had done a better job of controlling covid so I didn’t need to shape so much of my travel plans around avoiding covid, but this is how things are, like it or not.

I plan to take a refresher driving lesson. Yes, I’ll need to share a vehicle with someone for that. It’s easier to insist on an instructor wearing an N95 mask with me during a planned lesson than when I’m need a car ride immediately. If the instructor won’t wear an N95, I won’t get in and I won’t pay, simple as that.

It might even help that it’s been so long since I’ve driven a manual, since I’m no longer in the habit of using my left foot to hit the clutch.

For all the reasons I dislike driving, solo driving has advantages. I choose the timetable. I can easily carry all the stuff I need for the trip. I can go to places without public transit or even reliable taxi service and see a different part of the land. And maybe, just maybe, by choosing a mode of transit I’m less comfortable with, I’ll grow a bit as a person.

Thank goodness I still have my driver’s license.

I Happen Upon Other Aros and Aces in Still Coviding Communities

One thing which has really changed about being asexual in the past 15 years is that it’s much easier to run into each other ‘in the wild.’

This year (2023) I’ve gotten involved in groups which are specifically covid-cautious because, well, it’s getting harder to find those people if you aren’t in a group specifically labelled for that. As recently as a year ago, I could count on various local people I spend time with to practice some level of precautions against covid. Thus, I didn’t see a need to seek out communities specifically because they take covid seriously.

Well, that’s changed. I’m “lucky” in that my parents are still covid cautious, so I’m not as isolated as many other ‘still-coviding’ people.

The Drama of the Immune System versus Pathogens

One of the most surprising things about immunology and clinical microbiology textbooks is… they are fun to read.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re so dense they require a lot of mental attention. I can’t devour them like a novel.

It’s like watching a game. You need to learn the rules first, but once you understand the basics, you watch the immune system fight pathogens, and wonder who is going to ‘win.’ Both sides can use many tactics, so the variety is endless. So are the plot twists, such as when the immune system sabotages itself, or a pathogen succumbs to infection by something else. That can happen to cholera by the way—some cholera outbreaks end when certain bacteriophages (viruses which infect bacteria) appear and kill off the cholera.

That’s right. Some viruses are good for human health—without those bacteriophages which bust cholera, it’d infect and kill even more people. Some scientists even want to use bacteriophages as therapy, especially for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Some scientists oppose that because they fear the viruses will get out of control.

It’s little details like that which keep my intellectual curiosity going.

Save Everyone You Can

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales is still one of my favorite books ever. To this day, I continue to see its lessons play out in life and in stories.

Two principles of survival are:

1) Save Everyone You Can

2) Some People Don’t Want to Be Saved

These may seem contradictory, but they aren’t. To save as many people as possible, you can’t let the people who don’t want to be saved drag you down.

If you can save the people who don’t want to be saved anyway, great, go ahead and save them. But be ready to cut them off if they put others in jeopardy.