2020 Recap
2020 will be a year that will live in infamy. Luckily Pfizer, Moderna, and other soon-to-be approved CORONA vaccines are shining light to the end of the tunnel. I think 2021 will be a spectacular year.
From travel the world to hunker inside and build, build, and build. After leaving Quest Analytics CEO gig in December 2019, we decided to travel the world for a year. Before the end of 2019, we had a wonderful time touring the American West in an RV (our first time and the kids loved it). In January 2020, we headed to hike, surf, and explore the islands of Tahiti. After island life, we were getting ready to head out to Japan. However, the news of a novel mysterious virus made us think twice, and we canceled our trip. This was a smart call in hindsight, as we would have likely gotten stuck in quarantine in Japan. Not the best option with two small kids.
In March, the magnitude of CORONA become evident, and we canceled the rest of the travel plans and decided to focus the year on something else. I had been working on a new business concept with my long time co-founder friend Tapio Tolvanen. We decided that it's better to accelerate our plans and get a new company Elo Health going (more about Elo in other posts). Anu (my wife) started to transition her Konmari consulting business Joys of Simple online. Our son Max continued on-off-on-off kindergarten.
CORONA has changed San Francisco's life dramatically. The city is eerily empty, and there's no sign of traffic anywhere. In a typical year, two million tourists visit San Francisco each month, now the numbers have been cut to near zero. 20% of San Franciscans have relocated or left the city. Transition to work from home made highways and downtown empty. Dozens of streets have been converted to walk-bike-only making San Francisco an even better outdoor city.
Closing most businesses and inside dining has had a massive negative economic impact. Luckily the new regulation allowed most restaurants to convert sidewalks and many streets to permanent outdoor terraces making the city much more livable.
We spent a good part of March turning our backyard into a kids' playground and garage into a mini gym. Climbing gyms closing made me reinvent my exercise routine, and I started cycling a lot more. I finally had time to pick up an old hobby, mountain biking, to realize that my friends were not wrong saying the Marin trails are world-class. I have ridden most trails in the last six months, including a fantastic long cycling day around the San Francisco Bay.
See trail details on Strava.
Fall fire season was tough as you couldn't venture outside for two weeks. We also experienced a day when the sun didn't come up at all. Luckily we had already bought air purifiers in each room to make the inside air breathable. September-November fire lock-downs seems to be here to stay. I hope our new administration will get back on the right side of history combating climate change.
Max's kindergarten opened again in mid-fall, and life started to feel almost normal. All events and travel canceled my fear of missing out (FOMO) has declined to near zero, and I have been much more present in everyday life. Maybe reading Power of Now for the second time also helped. Instead of one family outdoor trip a week, we have now done three. We've all been healthy. All in all, 2020 has been very strange, but a relatively good year.
