🇺🇸 USA - Planned Road Trip Next Summer

Now that Joe Biden has been elected the president of the USA, once he is sworn in on January 20th, 2021, I am expecting him to make a more aggressive fight against COVID-19. Once that happens the COVID-19 cases in the USA will go down, and by July 1st, 2021 the Canadian border will reopen. When that happens, I will fulfill my plan to do something that I had planned to do in 2019, take a road trip.

Where will I take this road trip? It’s obvious after mentioning the president elect, I plan to take this road trip to go across the Northeastern USA. I don’t know if my contract here in Taiwan will be renewed or not (I hope it will), but once I head to Canada in July 2021, I will get my car ready for this trip. All I need is to take the winter tires off and buy a set of new regular tires and then I’m all good.

My aunt who is 84 years old used to live in New York City, she now lives with her daughter in Stroudsburg, PA just down Interstate 80. I plan to visit them there after I never went to visit them there in 10 years. (They saw me in Montreal, Canada in 2017-2018). I owe them a visit, and while I am there, I want to see New York again. But to get to New York, I may have to either drive into the city and park my car to take the subway into lower Manhattan, or I would have to take a commuter train from Dover, NJ and ride it to Penn Station in New York.

After Stroudsburg, I plan to drive to Hartford, CT to visit my other aunt there. I last saw here in Montreal 2 to 3 years ago. I haven’t visited here there in 10 years as well and I owe her a visit. Once I am there I can also go and visit Boston. It’s a 1 hour drive from Hartford in fact, I have never been to Boston before.

From Boston, MA I will go back to Canada, but I need to make up my mind on whether or not I want to drive to Eastern Canada to see St. John, NB, Prince Edward Island, and Halifax, NS, or if I should just go to Montreal where my aunt lives. The drive from Boston to St. John, NB is 6 hours, Fundy National Park is around 7. If I drive to Montreal from Halifax, that will be 13 hours. But going from Boston to Montreal is 5 hours (although I plan to see Sherbrooke, QC. Another place where I haven’t been).

So yes, I will decide on this road trip, I got plenty of time to decide. I’m really looking forward and I can’t wait! However if the Canadian border is not open yet by July 2021, I will just do a road trip into Northern Ontario, Northern Quebec, and down to Montreal, and take a flight to see my aunt in Edmonton AB.

BTW I still have my membership with the CAA.

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How can you be so sure?

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And all thanks to Biden!

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Joe Biden has set up a COVID-19 task force team. Once he is sworn in as president, he will take this action, and I am sure that Biden will make an aggressive effort to beat this pandemic, even if it means to impose a short 2-week national lockdown even though I don’t support lockdowns.

Wanting to do something and being able to do something are different things. I want to be a billionaire but I can’t just make a task force designed to make a billion dollars and be successful. Biden will do a better job than Trump, no doubt, but the US is getting over 100,000 cases per day. Without a vaccine it would take months of strict quarantine to get those numbers down to anything that Canada would consider okay, and the US economy won’t be able to survive a lockdown like that for long. The US will either be saved by herd immunity, or by a vaccine and a vaccine is still a long way away.

But the good news is that Pfizer is mass producing the vaccines for COVID-19, and once they are approved by the FDA, all is well. But that should not take until 2022 because if they could work on making this vaccine over the past 10 months, then there should be no reason why it should take another year for the vaccine to be approved.

Vaccine is hopeful, but they still don’t know how long it’s effective for. Remember that the flu vaccine only lasts about a year and coronavirus vaccines have never been successfully brought to the market in the past. That would be a lot of booster shots for everyone on earth. Not to burst the bubbles, as I want to go home (and not worry about death to all) as much as the next guy, but we have to be realistic. Mask wearing, on the other hand, is something that could be accomplished, if Americans didn’t think it was their god-given right to not wear them. Taiwan = exhibit A

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Road trips are the best. Enjoy…next summer… after Joe Biden something something… :cowboy_hat_face:

I just did some calculations, and it turns out that if I go from Boston to Fundy National Park in Canada, and then to Prince Edward Island, Halifax, and to Montreal, that trip will be too long. Plus my car I have back in Canada has a high mileage (thanks to living in Northern Ontario for 2 years). So if I just go back to Canada from Boston then it will keep the mileage down, and I can avoid lodging because I plan to stay with my kin folks in Stroudsburg, PA, Hartford, CT, and Montreal, QC.

July is still a far way from now. The COVID vaccines are out, and there is hope that we will be able to travel again, and the 14-day quarantines will be done with. I am still looking forward to summer 2021.

I was on the phone with my cousin in Pennsylvania on Sunday. We are both glad that the vaccines are out, but on the other hand there is a problem. There may not be enough vaccines to inoculate as many people in the USA. And for things to get back to normal, it may take until the fall of 2021. So because of that, when I get back to Canada for summer 2021, I may not be able to take that Northeastern USA road trip. But as soon as Biden becomes president on January 20th, I really hope that he and his administration gets cracking so the Canada/US border can re-open by at least July 1st and I can pay my kin folks a visit, see New York for the first time in 11 years, and see Boston for the first time.

There not enough vaccines anywhere. Lack of raw material.

Road trip would be fun. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that we’re safe from covid-19 in 2021. It may take longer to produce, distribute, and administer the vaccine to 320 million people in the US. Particularly when we consider that a) the united states is divided by numerous opposing opinions about vaccines and government intervention, and b) the United States does not have any centralized Healthcare System, but instead has a patchwork of private insurance companies that privately-run hospitals. I share your hope that the Biden administration can set up a good system to administer vaccines, but it ain’t happened yet. Might be too early to plan a freewheelin’ 2021 road trip.

And because you want to visit the wonderful cities of New York and Boston, I’m including this informative graphic comparing the two cities.

I guess my planned road trip to the USA will have to be cancelled or postponed again.
I am Canadian, and my government increased the travel restrictions that will take effect as of February 22, 2021. Yes, it is a temporary measure, but if this travel restriction remains in place until July, then I will not go to Canada in summer 2021. And if I cannot go to Canada by then and the border remains closed, I will also not be able to enter the USA.

You could travel to Cancun and than enter the US?

@Steve4nLanguage’s recent road trip looked pretty cool. Maybe you can do something like that? Wouldn’t want to do it in the summer though. :sweat:

Forget it.

I just spoke with my cousin in Pennsylvania. She told me that she took the Moderna vaccine. The reason is because one of our closest kin folk died of COVID-19. We spent the whole conversation on this, and I mentioned to her that the vaccines had just arrived in Taiwan during the first week of March 2021. I am considering taking this vaccine because once I take this vaccine, I have to be exempted from these 14-day quarantines no matter where I go. If I take the vaccine, Canada must exempt me from quarantine, or else I will not go to Canada.
However if I do make it to Canada this summer, and the US border opens partially for vaccinated people, I may still consider going on this road trip. But for now everything still remains tentative.

This is not true. We do not know yet what efficacy means. You could still be contagious with the vaccine if Coronavirus is caught.

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