The runners and bicyclists shall inherit the earth,<\/em> is a truism of this Coronavirus pandemic crisis, as I see it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hot-yoga and spin-cycle studios \u2014 the mixed martial artists and cross-fitters \u2014 the swimmers and weight-lifters \u2014 they are all shut down. The state has closed their places of business. Such exercise is almost at a standstill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State of California would probably stop people from running and biking, if they could. But they can\u2019t close down the open road<\/a>. So I have ridden hundreds of miles in the past few months. Sometimes twice in one day. I have become an ardent cyclist these past three months out of necessity. As an exercise, during the darkest moments of the Coronavirus lockdown mandates, it was almost all I had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never have I seen so many bikers and runners out on the roads as during the past few months, and good for them. I have seen my neighbors also taking walks, although that is a much lesser form of exercise. But good for them, too. Mediocre physical activity is way better than no physical activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This pandemic crisis has presented me, and everyone else, with mental health challenges. All this time on our hands. All this uncertainty — it sometimes seems that the only certainty is uncertainty in terms of the spread of this SARS-CoV2 virus. From top to bottom nobody really knows what they are doing, and they are making it up as they go. With government lock-downs there is too little to do and too much family on top of each other. Some 125,000 dead from the novel COVID-19 so far in the United States. A self-induced major economic crisis from the lock-downs designed to limit the spread of illness. 35 million unemployment claims and the worst financial numbers since the Great Depression. Businesses going under left and right. Days and weeks and months all bleeding the one into the other. Boredom, anxiety, fear, and anger. It can be too much. The first few weeks I just waited to see what would happen. But I came quickly to see that \u201cnormal life\u201d would not be returning anytime soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I got out my bike out and headed for the open road<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a certain type of American I have known: a female from 15 to 35-years of age; not fond of physical exercise; highly engaged in political activism and social media\u2014 Very Liberal and Very Online; and intense and neurotic, disposed to psychiatric meds. I know this sort of person is at home \u2014 posting to others about the pandemic on Twitter to \u201cStay inside!\u201d \u201cThis is NOT a vacation!\u201d \u2014 and looking at their phone every fifteen minutes, worried about the spread of COVID-19 or Black Lives Matter movement. Their amygdala is firing over and over again in a perpetual \u201cfight or flight\u201d reaction. They are exhausted; they get no rest. It is a crisis 24\/7. Their smartphone pings with a new notification every five minutes. Their mental health is not doing well, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I very consciously decided to go in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In times of stress I exercise intensely to reach equilibrium. This is how I have dealt with difficult periods of emotional upheaval in my past: I would burn off the crazy with exercise. The more stress I experienced, the more I would sweat. I would attempt to gain release through extreme physical exertion. This time would be no different. It had worked in the past. Why not now?\u00a0Exercise as a naturally-occurring anxiolytic, no pharmaceuticals required \u2014 all you needed was the fortitude to get off your ass and do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my first love<\/a> broke my heart during my junior year of college, I took out my frustration in a genuine paroxysm of tremendous exercise during the memorable summer of 1988. When my mom was sick and dying<\/a> in 1996, I didn\u2019t hit the bottle \u2014 I hit the road. I biked thousands and thousands of miles. In fact, it was in response to the trauma of mother\u2019s illness and death that I first got into road biking. I exorcised my frustration and sadness through the crucible of arduous exercise. In retrospect, these were healthy coping mechanisms. When I recovered my emotional equilibrium \u2014 which I eventually did \u2014 I was in good shape. I would try to use exercise in a similar fashion during this Coronavirus pandemic period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I played tennis and rode my bike hour after hour. I did this again and again during the \u201cshelter in place\u201d months of 2020. I hadn\u2019t been in this good of physical shape in a long time. My biggest problem was that I was just getting horribly sunburnt. I could feel the sun still radiating on my skin at night when I went to sleep. Way too much sun, but it could not be helped if I wanted the exercise. Since all businesses were closed by order of the health dept, if you didn\u2019t want to stay in your house all day you were outdoors under the sun. So it was with me. I developed a deep suntan. I used copious amounts of sunscreen but it did not seem to help much. My lips were always chapped and sun-scorched. I worried about skin cancer, but I needed the workouts. With my golden suntan I looked like I just returned from a vacation. I was sort of on “vacation,” but not really. Silver-linings notwithstanding, this was a horrible time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this, I was pushing my 53-year old body to the very limit with so much vigorous exercise. I paid close attention to stretching and recovery, too. If I had gotten injured during the pandemic, if I then had had to stay home all the time, I might have found myself in the same state of mind as those neurotic female social media activists glued to their phones all day and all night \u2014 no thank you. Refreshing the news apps over and over again to see COVID-19 updates and the number of newly infected and news of police brutality protests and looting \u2014 that way lies madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a number of memorable bike rides during the Coronavirus pandemic that I will never forget. In particular, on Sunday May 3rd, 2020 when they began to relax the lock-downs, I rode from the Pierpont area in Ventura up to Carpinteria and back along the beach. There were hundreds of people out — maybe thousands — most of them seemingly from inland coming to the beach for fresh air and exercise because the beach was the only place open. Valencia, Santa Clarita, Moorpark, Fillmore, and Santa Paula seemed to empty to the coast and Ventura in search of a cathartic walk on the beach. It would not surprise me if people as far away as Lancaster and Bakersfield had driven all the way to the coast after the stay-at-home orders started easing in desperate search of Something Different. I wouldn’t blame them. I had been out biking all the time but most everyone else had not. After some seven weeks of near total lockdown I could almost feel these people had been holding their breath. Now it was like the county was exhaling and coming back to life. I could almost sense the mental health of my neighbors improving. There were family after family walking together along the Ventura boardwalk near the pier and county fairgrounds, and others cruising around on beat-up beach cruisers and other bikes that had not seen the light of day in years. People had ghetto blasters playing in the front baskets of their bikes or dogs peaking out of their backpacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome, my neighbors, and well met!<\/em> I thought to myself as I biked through the throngs. Great to see you active and outdoors! Drink up the sun! Enjoy the beach! Breathe in the salt air of the sea! It will all be ok!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course the scolds and the shut-ins were loud in urging everyone to remain indoors. \u201cThis pandemic is NOT over! Stay home!\u201d They were stuck in the unhealthy and unsustainable pose of trying to freeze the world and move everyone underground in a posture of fear to hide from the SARS-CoV2 virus. Everything was an emergency all the time, and adrenaline coursed through their veins night and day. They would stay inside their house until eventually a vaccine was developed. End of story. There is the singular phenomenon of FEAR<\/em><\/strong>, and then there are fear\u2019s kissing cousins, hysteria<\/a> and panic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But everyone along the Ventura coast that day was six or more feet away from each other. Nobody was huddled together or breathing on each other. We were outside. We weren\u2019t spreading disease. We were using the outdoors in a responsible manner. In my solitary bike rides and tennis matches I always had been doing so. There was no spike in local infection rates two weeks later. We could use the beaches and public parks safely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would not hide inside. I refused to live in fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the California authorities might reply to me that you, Richard, might act in a responsible manner but others won\u2019t. So in the name of safety for all we will close everything for everybody, even if it is overkill. The consequences be damned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn\u2019t going to go along with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t Communist China where the authorities raise their hand and everyone scampers to obey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember in the heights of the panic the police arresting surfers<\/a> who dared to go out in the water. These surfers weren\u2019t going to spread disease while catching waves<\/a> but other beach-goers on the sand might do so if there were too many of them. So California Gov. Gavin Newsom closed down all the beaches, surfers notwithstanding. Same with golf. Same with tennis. The Coronavirus epidemic caught the authorities by surprise. Not knowing what they were doing and trying to figure it out on the fly, they just shut everything down. There has to be a better, more targeted public health approach than that. I remember reading an article in the local newspaper about how they were prepared for an imminent deluge of 911 calls and overwhelmed hospitals<\/a>. “It’s coming!” they advised. The flood of 911 calls and COVID-19 patients into local hospitals has not even come close to happening so far in Ventura, and the article looks like hysterical pro-government propaganda in retrospect. And in early May when they finally opened up the beaches, and allowed people to play golf, and unlocked the tennis courts, and permitted people to walk in the parks, the infection rates in Ventura did not go up. Was it overreach by panicked officials which shut down the beaches and parks in Ventura to begin with? Were such public places ever vectors for the transmission of this virus? Were their closures unnecessary? Why not close down rather bars and wineries, live music concerts, professional sports in front of an audience, and theaters and cinemas which have no value other than adult entertainment? Why not let my daughters play soccer again in the park and do summer camps at the beach? Let them go back to school? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no issue with prudent, reasonable measures — maybe the devil is in the details when it comes to how to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. But there has to be a smarter public health policy than arresting surfers — or simply closing everything down mindlessly. In my more charitable moments, I remind myself that Gavin Newsom and his ilk were making tough decisions under enormous pressure without much time to think it through. They were going to be harshly criticized no matter what they did. But still. Had any government official in American history ordered a quarantine of not only the sick but of the healthy population, too? And mandated it en toto? These draconian measures might maker more sense if Bubonic Plague had broken out, but the survival rate for the Cornisvirus is so much higher. Has this been carefully thought out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to send money to those arrested surfers to help pay legal costs. Governor Newsom is a liberal from urban San Francisco who would not know a surfboard if one fell on his head. He is not a beach guy. Not a workout guy. Newsom is a city guy into sitting in meetings, fine wine and dining, and himself. I\u2019m an outdoors guy. The body enjoys a challenge \u2014 craves it. I need a cleansing sweat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the next weekend, on May 10th and 11th, 2020, I planned two wonderful bike rides sixty miles away in Orange County. I put my bike on my car and drove the 101 and then 405 freeways down there, and I passed sign after blinking electronic Caltrans sign warning me, \u201cBe safe. Avoid gatherings. Stay home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bullshit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And f*ck you, Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ignored all these signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether in my car or on my bike, I ignored them all. Rolled right past them. Across hundreds of miles of southern California road I did so. Without the slightest compunction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n