Time to cancel my plans, Stan

Before you get confused there’s no Stan involved, it’s just a word that goes with plans! So with my positive RAT test I couldn’t ignore it, sadly I had COVID, I had to make plans accordingly. Step 1, start cancelling. Wednesday afternoon was spend cancelling almost everything upcoming. Thankfully, most stuff I could cancel for free, or given the circumstances place were willing to waive the cancellation fee. I lost my airfare from JFK to SFO but I knew it was unrefundable. I also lost a small amount on the rental car which I new about – it wasn’t much but the airfare was $500 so it’s time to say thank you travel insurance!

I called AVIS and went through at least 3 people before they sent a tow truck to pick up the rental car that was supposed to be returned to JFK on Thursday, I’m still not sure what if any costs are associated with that. I emailed my AirBnB hosts, they were sympathetic but booked so I had to find somewhere else to day. I looked up the Massachusetts rules – it’s 5 days isolation, by myself not contact. Then it’s another 5 days of masks in public before I’m allowed to travel. 10 days is a big chunk of my trip. Symptoms started Sunday, so that’s isolation until Saturday and no travel until Thursday (23rd). I fly home on the 26th. So tentative plan; find hotel to isolate, find AirBnB to stay in til I can travel. Fly to LA have a couple of days at Venice Beach and fly home. Well the hotel was an expensive exercise – you really don’t want to try and find on the day before. US$1200 for 3 nights to get me through to Sunday and end of my isolation – ouch. I had two nights booked in Venice Beach so I only needed to extend that by one but I left that for now. I also needed to book a new flight, it probably make sense to leave out of Boston now. Partially pack & sleep.

Thursday, finish packing & leave. I found a hotel that I could walk too, but check in was 3 o’clock, so I walked slowly with lots of breaks – 500m was really taking it out of me. I wore a mask and kept my distance from everybody else. I checked into my hotel at 3 – a couple of days isolation to go.