Blockade Runners
16 days until catastrophic visa failure.
I feel like people here went through about three stages so far as far as general feelings about lockdown. In Stage 1 everyone was terrified, it was new and crazy and scary. In stage 2, after about a month people started geting tired of the masks and restrictions. They eagerly looked forwar to this being over. They talked about it being over constantly. Then they eased up restrictions, too soon as it turns out, and we got the second bigger surge. Now we're in a third stage, acceptance. Not of death like certain American politicians, but that this is not going away. We automatically put on masks before we go out in public, we don't notice everyone else wearing masks. After shopping for half an hour in the grocery store the other day I asked myself "is everyone still wearing masks?" and I had to look around, and, yes, everyone was wearing masks. But It hadn't even registered until I thought to look. Books and movies that show pre-pandemic life of people casually mingling in public seems cringingly weird now.
The local grocery store still has signs on smoe shelves that say rationing of certain products is still en effect, which still strikes me as a bit surreal.
Today I had to drive to Melbourne again to deliver some honey. Melbourne is still a locked-down area, which means I need a travel permit issued by my employer to get through the checkpoints back out of Melbourne, or face a $6,000 fine. Because of the nature of my job, I can issue myself the permit, so I downloaded the template from the government website, filled in the requisite information, and signed it twice, as the employer and employee. But then, a bit worried that the police/military manning the checkpoint would be suspicious of my self-signature, I printed a second honey invoice for the receiver to sign, so I'd have a signed delivery receipt to prove I'd just delivered honey. And then for added measure I tossed my fire brigade hat in the passenger seat so the authorities might look on me more favorably.
At the checkpoint, there's a sign that says "cars: left" and "trucks: right." There's much more traffic on the car side, and I noticed plenty of personal cars zipping into the truck side. I hope they're not getting away with that I grumbled to myself.
They run the checkpoint like a DUI checkpoint (indeed they use their DUI charterbus for whatever tehy use it for at checkpoints), sending about ten cars at a time into a side lane to be checked and letting the others go while they do that. Two of the past three times I've been through here I've actually just been waved through. This time as I approached I saw they were waving cars into the inspection lane, dang, guess I wouldn't shoot on through this time. Then I realized that in fact officers had just walked into the "truck only" lane and were waving all the non-trucks from that lane into the inspection cue! I cackled with glee at them not getting away with it. And then I was waved through without being inspected myself.