The beginning of April brought a whole new list of concerns (and rules) for working during a pandemic. I began to head back out to bridge sites to conduct field inspections as a lone inspector. This was only temporary as formal guidelines were developed. Once guidelines were in place inspectors were to go out in teams of two, as we generally do, but drive separate vans. We were still conducting inspections solo, the second person was there just to be on safety watch. Additional guidelines consisted of wearing a mask, thoroughly cleaning/sanitizing the van each day (beginning and end) and only spending time out in the field to collect the information and photographs. Once notes and photos were collected we could return home to work on processing the photos and updating the inspection reports. Working on reports at home has enabled me to spend much less money on lunch than I have in the past few years. While I missed going out to different restaurants, at the time, they were only offering take-out and those that were not, were closed. These guidelines would continue to evolve over the course of the year.
While I got back to checking on bridges, the office workers of the world switched (for the most part) to a “work-from-home” model. My wife, who had been working from home 3 days a week prior to the pandemic was now working from home full time. During the month of April, we encountered such low volumes of traffic on major highways that we were able to nonchalantly walk back and forth across 4 lanes of interstate highway. That would gradually change over the months of May and June.
I don’t have all that much else to say about April because, well, nothing else really happened. Besides work, most of my free time was spent browsing the internet or sitting through various TV shows and movies on Netflix, hulu, or Amazon. We would also occasionally take walks through the neighborhood or go biking along the local river trails. I spent a fair amount of money doing my best to support local breweries. Looking back, I probably tried to shoulder a little too much of that burden myself.
Barley lounging in the yard on a nice April evening