THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Monday, March 16, 2020 |A
Virus Upends Spring Travel
Many people are staying home, or grasping for alternate journeys that might feel safer
BYANDREAPETERSENLeft, happier times on spring break in
Key West, Fla., last year. Below, the
Stein family on Cape Cod last year.FROM LEFT: PAUL HARRIS/GETTY IMAGES; LARRY STEINLIFE&ARTS
Jason tell you the truth: You do
not have to do this. You do not
have to shower, you do not have
put on a smart jacket, you do not
have to find matching socks. If you
feel obligated to wear a tie, you
can mix it up with some exercise
pants, basketball shorts or a Yoda
windbreaker. This is not a crime.
It’s a fashion choice! I’ll also tell
you this: When this whole thing
ends and you go back to the office,
wear the Yoda windbreaker to the
office. Your bosses will think you
have an “eccentric mind” and will
probably give you a raise and a big
expense account.
Do you need a desk?This is an-
other thing the serious “work from
home” advisers tell people to do.
They think you need a specific
place in your home where you
work; that you shouldn’t flop in a
beanbag chair in the kids’ play-room and think you’re going to be
productive. I have a friend who
once set up his office in the ga-
rage. In the morning, he’d make a
big show to his children of
“Daddy’s going off to work!” then
march out the door, walk straight
into the garage, and spend the
next eight hours taking calls and
puttering on a laptop next to his
hedge clippers. I agree there’s
probably value to a designated
space, but I live in crazy-expensive
New York City, where a three-bed-
room apartment is about as big as
a doghouse. I don’t have a spare
room to put a mahogany desk and
a photo of Eisenhower. I work ev-
erywhere. I work in the kitchen. I
work in the hallway. When the kids
are in the living room, I work in
the kids’ rooms. When the kids are
in their rooms, I work in the living
room, until my wife kicks me out. Ihave written some of my best stuff
on the stairwell of my apartment
building. I’m not in the stairwell
right now, as you can tell.
Don’t work in the bed or you
will fall asleep.OK, this is true. I
just fell asleep.
Eating and drinking.While
working from home, you may put
on a few. It’s fine. You think you’re
going to be healthier at your place,
because you don’t have all the ran-
dom office snacks (“Whoa! Who
brought sugar cookies today?”)
and farewell cakes, but you will
make up for it on your own. You’ll
be good at first, nibbling on car-
rots and seeds, but soon you’ll be
tearing apart your kitchen for car-
bohydrates, looking like an FBI
agent raiding a drug lord’s house.
This is normal. Your work-from-
home stretch will eventually end,
and you can go back to that
healthy salad place with the 2,200-
calorie Cobb salad, and your daily
4 p.m. latte/fistful of Skittles.
Talking.Yeah, you have to talk.
It’s important. Nobody likes talk-
ing on the phone more than a per-
son who works from home; I’m the
only person I know who actually
still answers calls. If no one picks
up when you call, talk to your
pets. Pets don’t understand you, so
your yapping doesn’t bother them.
If your pets do get sick of your
voice, just talk to yourself. Talking
to yourself gets a bad rap, in my
opinion; it’s a conversation with a
close friend. Just cool it when you
return to the office, which hope-
fully will be not too far in the fu-
ture. Be well, everyone.
—Mr. Gay is The Wall Street
Journal’s sports columnist and a
humor columnist for the Journal’s
Review section.F
or months, Scott and
Patrick Soltys-Curry
had planned to cele-
brate their second
wedding anniversary
with a spring break
trip to Dollywood in Tennessee
and a visit to Scott’s nearby
mother and stepfather. But as the
new coronavirus started spreading,
the family worried about Scott’s
stepfather, who is 68 and recently
had triple bypass surgery.
They canceled. Instead, they’ll
spend the week doing chores
around their Carmel, Ind., home.
“We’ll be cleaning, buying a new
couch. I have some shelves I need
to put up,” says Scott Soltys-
Curry, 30.
The novel coronavirus is shred-
ding the spring break travel plans
for families across the country. For
many, weeks of mounting worry
came to an abrupt climax in the
last few days, as the State Depart-
ment advised Americans against
all travel abroad, President Donald
Trump announced new restrictions
on travel from Europe, entire
states closed schools and cultural
institutions shut their doors. Now,
many people are canceling trips
entirely, searching for ways to en-
joy themselves at home or grasp-
ing for what might be a safer al-
ternative.Airlines have slashed flights as
bookings dropped. Occupancy
rates at U.S. hotels slid 7.3% to
61.8% during the week ending
March 7, compared with the week
ending March 9, 2019, according to
hotel data firm STR.
The Virtuoso network of travel
agencies says it is seeing families
who had planned European spring
break trips “pivoting to national
parks,” like the Grand Canyon and
Bryce and Zion in Utah, says Virtu-
oso spokeswoman Misty Belles.
“Right now wide open spaces
make them much more comfort-
able.”
Travel adviser Beth Flowers
was rebooking some of her clients
canceling spring break trips to It-
aly and Paris to resorts in Mexico
and the Caribbean. But in the last
couple of days, people have de-
cided to cancel those vacations,
too. Some are planning road trips
to Florida instead.
For some people, holiday plans
aren’t a priority anymore, as they
focus on keeping their families
safe and prepared amid the esca-
lating pandemic.
With travel advisories and
event schedules changing so
quickly, even backup spring break
plans are going bust. Blair Treis-
man Rosenfeld’s 17-year-old
daughter Olivia was supposed to
travel to Italy with her high
school Latin class for springbreak. Ms. Treisman Rosenfeld
and her husband planned a vaca-
tion in London and Paris for the
same time. Then her husband’s
company said any employee who
traveled to a country that had
cases of Covid-19 would have to
self-quarantine for two weeks
once they returned.
So the family, who live in New
York City, canceled London and
Paris. Then Olivia’s school can-
celed the Italy trip. The family de-
cided to use the time to visit col-
leges in the U.S. instead. Now,many colleges have canceled their
tours. Ms. Treisman Rosenfeld, an
independent film producer,
thought about visiting her mother
in Florida. “But she doesn’t want
me on a plane potentially dragging
the virus down with me,” she says.
She and her husband decided to
stay in New York and have Olivia
go on a road trip to North Carolina
with a friend and her parents. Now
the road trip has been canceled,
too. “We decided our family in thisclass, a chocolate factory tour and
“Gladiator school” for Sadie and
her younger sister Mia, 10. “I’ve al-
ways wanted to go to Italy,” says
Sadie. “I was super excited.”
But as soon as the first cases of
Covid-19, the respiratory illness
caused by the virus, were reported
in Italy, Ms. Stein “went ‘uh oh,’ ”
she said. She texted her husband,
who reassured her that the cases
weren’t anywhere near where they
planned to travel. But then the
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention raised its health notice
level for Italy to a level 2 (practice
enhanced precautions). “At this
point, I said, this isn’t good,” Ms.
Stein said.
Still, Mr. Stein was torn. “It is a
really big deal to go and it’s a re-
ally big deal to cancel,” he said.
But as the number of cases contin-
ued to rise and events were can-
celed, the Steins called off the trip.
“Even if the health threat wasn’t
significant, would we be able to do
everything we wanted to do?
Would public places be closed?”
says Mr. Stein, who works in risk
management at a bank. The couple
broke the news to their daughters.
“They were crushed, but they get
it,” Mr. Stein says. Italy is now un-
der a nationwide quarantine.
The family now has tentative
plans to spend spring break in
Grand Cayman in the Caribbean.
“The money is pouring out of me
to make up for this canceled trip
so we can bring them a little joy,”
Mr. Stein says. The family, who
had travel insurance and worked
with a travel agent who handled
the logistics, say they were able to
get much of their money back for
the Italy trip.
That isn’t the case so far for
Jennifer Friedlin, a communica-
tions director at a nonprofit in
New York City. She was supposed
to be going on a cruise to Italy,
France and Spain with her 13-year-
old twins and her elderly mother.
“It was the perfect storm of
things. Italy, older mom, cruise,”
she says, of her reasons for cancel-
ing the trip. “Seven days in a petri
dish didn’t seem like the best
thing to do.”
She says she’s spent at least 10
hours on hold with her airline,
cruise line and the travel agency
she booked the cruise through,
trying to cancel and get as much
money back as she can.crazy time should be together.”
Scott and Patrick Soltys-Curry
of Indiana initially wanted to push
ahead with their plans to visit Dol-
lywood and Scott’s mother and
stepfather. “I was just excited to
show [Patrick] where I grew up,
my stomping grounds and to hang
out with my family,” says Scott.
But Scott’s mother wanted them to
call it off. Even though only a
handful of cases had been reported
in Tennessee and Indiana, “she is
really concerned about her health
and my stepdad’s health.” But then
news broke that there was a case
of Covid-19 near where the Soltys-
Currys live.
They called it off. “It’s not that
we were concerned about us. We
were concerned about everyone
around us,” says Scott Soltys-
Curry, who works in user experi-
ence for a technology company.
Patrick, 33, is a high school Eng-
lish teacher.
The decision to postpone an
April spring break trip to Italy was
wrenching for the Stein family.
Larry and Suzanne Stein, of Need-
ham, Mass., had been planning the
vacation for nearly a year to cele-
brate the upcoming bat mitzvah of
their older daughter, Sadie, 12. Sa-
die had opted for a trip instead of
a big party with a DJ and dancing.
The Steins had planned 10 days in
Venice, Rome and the Amalfi Coast
complete with a pasta-making‘We decided our family
in this crazy time should
be together,’ says a mom
who canceled trip plans.JASON GAY
My friends, you
know I try to keep it
light and silly around
here. And I promise
this column will turn
light and silly in a mo-
ment. I think it’s important for us
to continue to have some laughs.
But let me first say this:
Americans are being advised to
stay at home for the foreseeable
future, in order to “flatten the
curve” of the coronavirus epi-
demic. Please heed this advice,
which is coming from pandemic
experts. It’s the right thing to do.
You might feel fine, but think of
your older and vulnerable neigh-
bors, and the critical need to re-
lieve stress upon our health care
system.
Also: If you’re able to work
from home, consider yourself
lucky. Many people don’t have jobs
with that kind of flexibility. Think
of all the dedicated people who
have to go to work because their
job still demands it. Think of all
the health-care professionals, on
the front lines of this battle with
Covid-19. The fact that some of us
can open our laptop in our Spider-Man pajamas and Skype into a
meeting is a blessing, for which we
should all be grateful.
OK, let’s go to the silly part
now.
Since I am someone who regu-
larly works from home, my bosses
(who regularly wonder what the
heck I do all day long, and long
suspected I had a side job per-
forming puppet shows at the mall)
thought I might have some advice
if you’re going to be in the same
boat.
Important disclaimer: This
work-from-home advice is written
by me, so it is both unserious and
terrible.
The pajamas thing.I have read
60,000 “So You’re Going to Be
Working From Home” stories in
the past week or so—this column
you’re reading, it’s far from an
original concept—and one consis-
tent recommendation I see is that
people should treat working from
home as, you know, work. Which
means taking a shower in the
morning, combing your hair and
putting on the same outfit you put
on every weekday for the office. I
get it; it sounds nice. Let your palPleaseStay
Home.Talkto
YourPets.
If your pets do get sick of your voice, just talk to yourself.LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS