This week’s “Did, Saw, Heard” covers two weeks because I was on my (figurative, luckily) deathbed and missed last week’s post.
DID
I caught a case of covid.
I suppose I’m embracing the time-honored Midwestern tradition of writing to you about my health woes. My local newspaper used to share these vignettes every week. If this were the 1950s, the newspaper would have published something like, “Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey received a letter from their daughter, Miss Sara Jane Ramsey, informing them of her recent bout with pleurisy while she was visiting San Francisco.”
Not that I had pleurisy last week, of course, but there are covid-deniers around who would probably believe it.
My case of covid happened during one of my rare breaks from rural Iowa. I had flown to San Francisco semi-secretly to work on a project. I had no plans to see friends, since my project was supposed to be all-consuming.
Instead, covid was all-consuming. I developed a bad case of chills and a wracking cough. My head felt fuzzy and I couldn’t focus for days. It was, I believe, in the top five worst illnesses I’ve had as an adult.
So rather than working, I spent the whole week in a hotel bed somewhere between Union Square and the Tenderloin. The city’s familiar rhythms — sirens, rain, MUNI buses, drug-induced shouting — carried on outside my window. When my head allowed me to string more than two thoughts together, I felt some nostalgia for my old life there…some love for even the grimiest, grimmest blocks southeast of my hotel.
But I was observing the city through a pane of glass, never fully reimmersed as I usually am when I visit. It didn’t feel like I was in San Francisco — rather, I was in a literal fever dream of what my life had been there and why I had chosen to leave it behind.
I flew back to Iowa as soon as I felt better (and as soon as I tested negative…not that the CDC cares anymore). The trip was so surreal that I’m already forgetting it.
As annoying as it was to be sick in a San Francisco hotel room, there was one major advantage: I could DoorDash anything I needed. That included cough drops, Gatorade, multiple Thai takeouts, and nicer kleenexes to replace the single-ply sandpaper provided by the hotel. If I had gotten covid in Iowa, I couldn’t have ordered anything to save me. I would have been reduced to scrounging for baggies of frozen soup in my freezer and relying on my basement hoard of kleenexes to get me through.
HEARD
A scream from the back of the plane on Friday night. Since it wasn’t accompanied by a loss of cabin pressure, I figured we hadn’t lost a door plug.
I bought my ticket home for Friday night long before the NCAA women’s tournament schedule was set. My San Francisco to Denver flight was on time, and I landed just as the Iowa/UConn game started.
I watched most of the game on my phone during my layover in Denver. I kept watching as I boarded. The plane was tiny and boarding didn’t take long.
As we sat on the tarmac, the flight attendant watched the game with me whenever he wasn’t handling other duties. I kept the sound off because I’m not a monster, but I angled the screen so anyone around me could see it.
After we took off, the wifi wasn’t good enough for streaming, so I gave up and dozed a little. Someone’s scream woke me up. I guessed what it meant, and the flight attendant confirmed it. The next time he passed me, he leaned in and whispered, “we won!” We meaning Iowa, which makes sense on a plane bound for Des Moines.
It feels like a little bit of a miracle that people who never watch women’s basketball — farmers, mechanics, tech bros, flight attendants, Travis Scott, myself — are all tuning into the women’s tournament.
I’m writing this just before the championship game this afternoon. I’m cheering for Iowa (begrudgingly, as an Iowa State fan), but I would be happy for Dawn Staley and South Carolina if they win. And regardless of the outcome, I hope this energy sustains itself and turns into bigger opportunities for women in future seasons.
SAW
A late-night clerk behind a hotel check-in desk in Des Moines. His eyes were red from the night shift, or drugs, or harsh fluorescent lights. His pale forehead had a Gorbachev-like birthmark, which was the only similarity he shared with former world leaders. His long nails were badly broken and clawlike as they grasped my card.
My first thought: nature keeps evolving crabs.
My second thought: it’s a little late to be here alone.
I travel alone a lot. I’ve driven alone from San Francisco to Iowa, or the reverse, at least four times — 1800 miles each way, which I can do in three grueling solo days. My Denver-to-Iowa-and-back roadtrips number in the dozens. Before the pandemic, I was on a plane every two or three weeks for fifteen years.
I am familiar with the strange, anonymous rhythms of the road. I know the thrill of seeing mountains looming ahead. I know the eerie salt flats of Utah and the windswept high plains of Wyoming. I know every Starbucks on I-80 in Nebraska. I know the eastbound approach to the Missouri River; I know how my body relaxes as I cross the state line in the middle of the bridge. I know how it sounds when Google Maps says, “Welcome to Iowa.”
The rest stops are full of road trippers and retirees. Families on summer vacation; kids’ sports teams engaged in bus feuds; marriages fraying in the silence between driver and passenger. And always, an endless stream of cargo — more physical goods than most of humanity ever could have imagined, flowing like water across the highway system.
I catch the same fragments in airports. New loves: splayed out on the floor by an empty gate, unable to stop touching each other. Worn-out loves: one partner trailing a few steps behind the other, no longer willing to match each other’s paces. Tech bros and road warriors: all identical Tumi bags and loud cellphone conversations. Endless commerce: airport workers selling food and pushing wheelchairs, or rebooking flights and getting yelled at.
Sometimes I’m so caught up in observing these little dramas that I forget myself.
Sometimes my first thought is “crab people,” when perhaps it should be “am I safe here?”
After the hotel clerk gave me my key on Friday, I walked through the silent hotel to my room. I checked behind the shower curtain for murderers (but what would I have done if I found one? probably died sooner?). I deadbolted my door and texted my family with my location.
True crime podcasts would have you believe that solo female travel is risky. I suppose it might be. There are some trips and some rest stops I avoid. And I’m not saying I’ll never end up as an unsolved mystery. I’m not saying it’s impossible that my car will someday be found, blood-soaked and abandoned, somewhere in the vastness of the American West.
But when assessing the risks of traveling vs. staying put, or of cities vs. rural areas, one fact is hard to ignore: smooth-talking tech bros have caused me so much more pain than any down-and-out desk clerks ever have.
Cheers,
Sara
p.s. I am behind on all comments and emails since I couldn’t get my brain to engage last week. I’ll get back to you soon.
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p.p.p.s. If you want to read about the food deserts in rural Iowa and how this influences my hoarding patterns, you can take a stroll through the archive:
Not meaning to upstage but I too have a traveling hotel covid story . I flew to Florence Italy overnight on 12 February. By the morning of the 14th i was unusually tired but chalked it ip to jet lag. That night, in lovely hotel that felt more like a private home, we stayed in for room service because I just couldn’t go out. A 12 euro tray of prosciutto, cheeses, olives snd breads was delivered to our coffee table. The next morning, still not wanting to move out of bed in Italy!!! I knew something was wrong. My husband picked up a test and in no time it proved to be positive. This extraordinary good for to have my first case of Covid in a beautiful small hotel in Florence Italy. They delivered thermometers, asked if They could have s doctor come in, and continued to deliver room service. By the following day I was able to leave and move on, but felt lingering effects for 2 weeks, dragging myself about. Still, i will never forget….. Casa Howard in Florence. The place that made even covid feel like a luxury experience!
Sorry about the nasty case of Covid. Never fun to be sick and alone and far away from home.