As fear spreads around the globe faster than the Corona virus itself, we are all being forced to re-evaluate almost everything about our daily lives. How often do we go out? What do we avoid? How do we change our routines to keep ourselves healthy?
We must not give into fear. Fear disables us and blinds us, when we need to be clear-eyed and level-headed. But at the same time, we must also be realistic about the challenge we now face.
At Purple Roofs, we are all about travel and connection between different kinds of people. The LGBTQ+ travel community has often served as ambassadors to many parts of the world where being gay (or lesbian or trans or bi or gender fluid etc) is still stigmatized, or even illegal.
We live in every country, we follow every way of life, and none of us are untouched by what’s happening in the world today.
That’s why we’ve decided to take the unusual step of addressing this issue directly here on the blog and in our newsletter and social media accounts. After all, we regularly post articles about wonderful places to visit and things to see, and that’s felt increasingly out of step as the world locks itself down and quarantines many of us in order to to slow the advance of the virus.
The next few months are going to be a test for all of us, including the queer travel community. A test of our societies as we struggle with new restrictions. A test for our economies as we wait this thing out. And a test for each of us individually, as we deal with our own lives and reach out to support one-another in whatever ways we can.
There’s an old war quote:
“There are no atheists in foxholes.”
I’d update that for today:
There is no us and them during a crisis..
I know that this too shall pass. We will get though this and come out the other side, and then things will start to return to normal. I am hopeful that new seeds will sprout in the aftermath of this crisis, and that this experience will bring us closer together.
That change will begin to blow across the world.
In the meantime, Purple Roofs is still about travel. Travel is a fundamentally hopeful exercise – we fling ourselves off to far-away destinations in metal canisters that we trust to reach those places. We take a leap of faith and engage with other cultures, in the hope that we can learn something valuable about ourselves in the process. And we knit the world together into a global community, one trip at a time.
We must not lose that hope.
And so we’re going to continue to post travel articles during this crisis. While many of you may not be traveling now by choice or by necessity, it won’t always be so. Our travel businesses are going to need us all, through this time and beyond.
When you travel, take all the recommended precautions to keep yourself and your hosts safe. And when you can’t, send messages of support to the rest of our community.
In the meantime we can all work to keep the dream alive. Gay or straight, black or white, Canadian, Latino, Chinese or Italian, we all belong to the same species, to the same planet. We’ll all get though this, together,
The sign at the intersection of Adams Street and Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago that reads “Illinois US 66: Historic Route Begins” is small, unremarkable, and arguably an unworthy trumpeting of the road that is ahead. Indeed, not a single office drone pays it any mind on this gloomy fall morning as they rush from the city’s lumbering El trains to their designated steel and glass towers for the day. Nevertheless, Ryan and I stand in front of it with beaming smiles and angle our iPhones just right so that we can snap a selfie that will surely be the envy of all.
This is day one of an eight-day, turn-by-turn journey that will cover all 2,448 iconic miles of Route 66, the most famous highway in the United States. It was designated in 1926 and made famous by westward thrill seekers, Dust Bowl migrants, and the oft-covered song of the same name. During its six-decade span it was realigned several times, decommissioned in 1985 in favor of the Interstate Highway System, and brought back to life more recently by road trip enthusiasts, municipalities looking to bolster tourism, and folks wistful of a vanishing America.
Although the road is book ended by Chicago and Los Angeles and winds through the heart of several cities including St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque, the highway is really a journey through numerous small towns to countless to name, some of which have survived and even thrived, off Route 66 nostalgia, and others which have all but rotted. To cross the country via interstate highway is to merely skim the continent, but to do it via painstakingly slow Route 66 is to discover an America that is undeniably friendly, often kitschy, and ultimately vanishing rapidly.