“In London, theatre worker Tony Beckingham and his partner decided to use their daily exercise to cycle into the centre of the city one evening. “We thought it’d be really fun to see no-one around,””
I did that here on the San Fran peninsula and LOVED it. There were no planes in the sky. The 1,400 acre Foothills Park in Palo Alto was completely empty and I had it all to myself. I was out hiking every day and had all the parks to myself. I would tear all the stupid yellow “Caution” tape off the park benches wherever I found it. Whoever thought you could impact the spread of a respiratory disease by putting yellow “Caution” tape on the park benches. The hardest part was parking. I’d have to park a half mile or mile from the park and walk to it because all the gates were closed and locked.
I split time between Idaho and California. California was absolutely nuts and neurotic (and still is — masks still everywhere!) and Idaho was laid back and relaxed. Guess what the results were? Same per capita cases, hospitalizations, ICUs and deaths.
Yep, in Coeur d’Alene people locked down for about two weeks and then decided “to heck with it” and life went back to relative normal except for the constant Fauciganda. Masks were only required at Costco. Few locals masked and you didn’t see it really until tourists and snowbirds started coming back in the late Spring/early Summer of 2020. Most locals didn’t mask unless forced to at work or at Costco. North Idaho was generally a bastion of relative sanity in a sea of stuipidity, especially up in Bonner and Boundary counties.
Like you, I was expecting some worry-free cycling on the scenic bike trail close by where I live, but the local poobahs directed the cops to put police line tape across the entrance to all the parking lots and trailheads.
I parked on the side of the road a couple of times being a lowly scofflaw, but was concerned that I might come back to no car or a serious ticket, so I stopped.
It was getting silly — people stopped riding together or even following another rider because that virus might fly off and get ya. I still can’t believe people wore masks while riding!