CuRVWander

 June, July and August, a pandemic summer spent in semi-isolation on an "island" called Volunteer Village.  We are in about a 40 acre compound comprised of 10 well-spaced campsites, a meeting room/weather shelter with full kitchen and everything you need to prepare a banquet, a screened-in pavilion with BBQ pit, and a garage/shop loaded with power tools and grounds maintenance equipment.  In fact, that has been the big thing to do all summer, mow The Village.  All this behind a secure gate about a half-mile away. Being where we are, staying isolated does not take a lot of effort but like everyone else, it takes a lot of patience to go from day to day with little to no variety in our routine.  We did pick up one of the summer routine jobs as a volunteer though.  One night a week we are radio dispatchers and help-line operators.  With the campgrounds open there are rangers on duty until 10:00pm and we are their radio dispatchers from the time everybody e...

 By the end of April 2020 the Corps of Engineers in the Mobile district had decided to open campgrounds, albeit with covid-19 restrictions.  The campgrounds were to open in May with shields over the registration windows, just a small slot at the bottom for the gatehouse attendant to pass the camping passes through.  No reservations were done at the window, every camper had to pre-register online and pay in full by credit card, in advance.  The gatehouse attendants had already gone to credit card only transactions last year but this year they were instructed not to even do that.  Paper work would pass one way, from inside the gatehouse to the outside and that was it. Normally this would be a very busy time for me as I provide tech support for all the gatehouse attendants use of the reservation system.  But with their interaction with the reservation system being little more than checking a box to check people in and check them out, I am not getting any calls...

 In my previous post we had just been told to self-isolate in the Volunteer Village here on Allatoona Lake.  The United States Army Corps of Engineers district headquarters in Mobile, Alabama had initially gone into full lock-down mode, closing all public interfacing operations.  At the beginning, Rangers were still reporting to work but then there were some virus outbreaks at some projects (for instance the whole staff at Lake Lanier) and they soon switched to staggered office hours and teleworking.  Us volunteers were again instructed to keep our distance from each other and stay put in The Village.  And for twelve weeks that is what we did, almost. While the campgrounds were going to remain closed beyond their traditional opening day there was still preparation work that needed to be done so that when opening day did come the gatehouses would be ready to operate.  And that was lucky for Cyndee and I.  We had been assigned to install all the computer...