In the last six weeks since my previous post I haven’t had any rush to plan my next trips outside of Melbourne. Well during the last two weeks I haven’t had the need to plan trips even over 5 kilometres outside of my home. Melbourne has been in stage 4 restrictions and we have still four weeks to go under these tightened restrictions. It means that as mentioned, we must stay within 5 km from our homes and exercise is limited to one hour per day. There is also a curfew from 8pm to 5am every day and wearing mask or other face covering is mandatory. Also, only essential businesses have been allowed to be open during this time. The second wave of corona that started back then slowly creeped up with almost all the cases being community spread. The contact tracing has been lagging and the daily infections went as high as 721 cases at the end of July. That caused the move to stage 4 restrictions to start. It has had a positive effect as the daily cases haven been around 300 lately with trend getting lower. At the time of the last post, the numbers in Victoria were 531 active cases and 2469 cases confirmed from the start. Statistics from yesterday shows 7875 active cases and total cases 16517.
Melbourne from the west. Skyscrapers and Melbourne Star Observation Wheel 
Sun setting on Yarra Boulevard bridge overlooking Eastern Freeway with city on the horizon
Life for me between stage 3 and stage 4 restrictions have affected only slightly. I have to limit my weekend runs and bike rides to one hour and within 5 kilometres. I also have bought couple of masks in addition to my tube scarfs (which doesn’t offer much protection). The mandatory masks are not enforced on people having an exercise and even if that causes some criticism, it wouldn’t be practical. Even wearing a three-layered mask when walking a good pace makes you feel you don’t get enough oxygen. And when outside in open air, I think the risk is quite minimal of contractions.
Masked up 
Short rainbow under massive clouds
Weeks in this situation go by very fast as days and weeks seems repeating itself. As I’m not able to get far physically and have an adventure, I have instead been having adventures virtually. I bought myself a VR equipment to escape the situation into virtual worlds and it’s been great. As I got a two-bedroom apartment and I haven’t had to anymore think about visitors anytime soon, I have had now a dedicated room for using the VR goggles. At least there is only the walls that take some hits during intense playing 😁. There is also a new flight simulator game coming from Microsoft that has the whole world to fly in, so more virtual traveling around the world.
Thumbs up for the Oculus Rift S 
City silhouette from Royal Park
But on the positive note, it has been now 8,5 months since my knee surgery, and it has felt great this last month. Before that there was good and bad runs with it, but I feel that now it doesn’t affect my running at all. I think that’s all for now. The adventures down under are a bit boring at the moment, but I believe that things will get better. Even if New Zealand has to wait to next year, I should see more Australia by the end of the year. But for now, I can only hope and endure the current situation.
Jone's adventures Down Under 