Bike ride with mask

During the past week, the grassroots and then the CDC decided everybody should wear a mask when they go out. This caught on like wildfire! I had to go downtown briefly today and wanted to ride my bike. I almost decided to drive, because I didn’t want to be someone who flies by people less than six feet from them as if assuming one can’t be contagious when going fast. I’ve seen a lot of this with cyclists and runners both before Mask Season and since it began. And I have thought, they’re breathing hard, so if they ARE asymptomatic but infected with the virus, they really ought to stay farther away or not run or bike! But now the shoe was on the other foot and I really wanted to ride my bike. I couldn’t resist. So I put on my bandanna mask, folder just so, stitched for a nose piece and a filter pocket for a piece of furnace filter that I took apart. 

I rode a wide berth around each person I encountered, and I stayed in the street for almost the whole ride, where it’s not as likely to come close to a pedestrian as it is on a bike path. Like the one by the lake here in Seattle — the path is too narrow for anyone to keep six feet apart always, but everybody goes down there anyway. It has been so beautiful out and the temptation is irresistible. I went to the lake the other day and turned around and headed back up the sidewalks almost immediately after a runner and a cyclist passed too close.

ANYWAY. The mask made me work a little harder to breathe, and it became too warm on the way home. My thoughts went something like this: “I’m wearing a mask because it might protect other people from whatever I exhale, and because, although less likely, it might protect me a little bit from theirs. I want to do everything I can to prevent spread. … But I am sure I don’t have the virus, and I’m not sure the mask actually accomplishes anything, so is there any true, rational reason to wear it? … Well, my doctor friends want me to, and one of them said it is the good-citizen thing to do, and I agree that it is if it creates less sick people for doctors to work with. … But I don’t have the virus and these other cyclists and joggers sure don’t seem to be unhealthy either, so why am I wearing this again? … We don’t know if we’re uninfected or if we’re asymptomatic. How would I feel if I come down sick two days from now and then recall that I was on the bike with no mask, passing people within ten feet? OK, I’m sure I don’t have the virus but I’m keeping this mask on.”

I had to go through the whole thought process several times because of the crazy-making nature of a virus that can be both asymptomatic AND very serious or deadly.

It turned out to be perfectly possible to wear a mask on a 90-minute hilly bike ride without ever touching or adjusting it. If you put on a mask to go out, get it adjusted exactly the way you like it before you get out in public, because you can’t touch it again until you get home and take it off and drop it into the soapy water or the next batch of laundry.

It has been a pristine clear sparkling day here in Seattle. One of the first things I will do when this stay-at-home imperative is over is go for a bike ride with no mask. I wish we could have air this clean all the time.