Cancel Everything

 What a bummer of a decision. 

April 5th marks 10 years of working full-time at my post-Mega-Bank employer.  One of the amazing perks is the sabbatical program, whereby after five years of employment the employee is encouraged to take a four-week sabbatical.  This is on top of the normal accrued vacation.   Now, we aren't allowed to take weeks of vacation and then the sabbatical, they don't want us to burn out our co-workers while we are away doing the lounging thing.

One of my favorite things to do is to plan trips.   When we took the cruise to the Panama Canal, I researched wonderful places to eat near our hotel in Miami, had lots of information about the places we would visit and enjoyed that part almost as much as the trip itself.     Therefore, knowing I had a sabbatical coming up in 2020, I've been planning and dreaming for a while.

We have enjoyed the two cruises we've been on and I thought taking one from the east coast would be fun.   I booked the three of us onto a 7 night New England/Canada cruise leaving NYC on Sunday, August 30th.   We would fly into NYC on the 25th to be tourists.   I've explored the neighborhood around our hotel, found a historic steak restaurant in walking distance and had started lists of the museums we (I) wanted to visit.

Current projections of the Covid-19 virus is that it will taper off over the summer, but chances are come fall it will spike again.   Clearly, August and early September are still summer and the weather should be amazing on the east coast, but getting on a cruise ship just doesn't seem wise.  

So... rather than risk it and tie up our considerable payments into a cruise that we may not take we opted to cancel.   This means a series of calls and visits to the associated travel sites.   Airfare - canceled.  Hotel - canceled. Cruise - canceled.

There are still some things planned for the sabbatical window.   The peanut has sleep-away summer camp booked and fingers crossed that we are not still in lockdown at that point.   While she survives in the wild (in cabins with guitar-toting college kids) I'll be visiting nearby Lake Roosevelt and getting some sun.  

There's time to visit Grandma G.  Now, with the NYC trip off the books, maybe we'll take the kid on a road trip to visit the Denver grandparents.  Maybe we'll rent a house in the Hamptons... maybe we'll fly to Switzerland...maybe not.

For now, the most disappointing thing is that we don't have something on the horizon.