Vacationing in the Time of Covid

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Charles Falls Jr., known as Chillie, loves to take cruises. But Covid, as it has done for so many, left him marooned at home in Virginia. As he told Cristal Duhaime, a producer at the Times podcast First Person, as soon as restrictions eased, he eagerly planned a return to the waves. But for Chillie, who suffers from prostate cancer, resuming his beloved travels — particularly aboard the cramped quarters of a cruise ship, most people’s idea of a pandemic nightmare — was especially perilous. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Mike Obaro. This is a daily.
0:07.0	Today. It's August vacation season, but it's different now. Or vacationing in a kind of grey zone.
0:16.0	A quasi-post-COVID world. We're navigating regulations and rules, but above all, our own tolerance for risk.
0:27.0	Producer Crystal DuHame and my colleagues at the Times podcast First Person tell the story of one man whose decision to resume his favorite form of travel was especially perilous.
0:45.0	It's Friday, August 5.
0:49.0	Morning. Welcome to Travel and Cruise in the Stream News. Coming to you from Bedford County in Central Virginia.
1:05.0	I first came across Chile on YouTube. We're almost every day. He does a live stream all about cruises.
1:13.0	God, a lot of stuff on the agenda for this morning. Cruise ships say one today from US port.
1:22.0	For more than a year, the cruise industry shut down because of COVID.
1:27.0	But at the end of January, Chile was getting ready to go in his first cruise since the pandemic started.
1:34.0	And Miami, Freedom of the Seas, who I will be on. And what's it now? 59 days or something?
1:40.0	Hi, Jenny. Hi. Come in the house.
1:47.0	A few days before Chile was scheduled to board the Freedom of the Seas, I went to visit him.
1:53.0	You don't have to take shoes off. This is a farm. This is my sister, Jean, by the way.
2:02.0	He lives in Forest, Virginia, with his sister and her family. And you know, if you hear the cats in the background, we have two cats running around.
2:11.0	We call them our COVID Kitties. We rescued them during the first part of the pandemic.
2:20.0	And their names are Charmin and Cotton L. So. And then through here.
2:28.0	This is my bedroom, actually. It's also where I record all my shows.
2:36.0	I have some lighting. I have, of course, I call it my big, but microphone.
2:43.0	But this is this is where I do all my craziness from.
2:48.0	And then of course, I travel away from here whenever I can to go on cruises, which I'm getting ready to do.
2:55.0	Probably need to stop. Yeah. For a second.
	...

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