Have you heard teamwork., Loote and John K’s song “Wasted Summer?”
If not, you should listen. It’s pretty good. It’s a nostalgic bop about wasting the summers of your youth on doing drugs, sleeping in cars, falling in love and listening to music.
I’ve had it stuck in my head pretty much constantly this summer because, well, there’s a pandemic, I’m unemployed and I’m essentially wasting my summer. It’s just nowhere near as fun as teamwork., Loote and John K make it seem.
I will say though. Like I said in my camping trip recap, the one good thing about this pandemic is that it forced me to get outdoors and enjoy the nature of my home state.
It also forced me to develop closer relationships with a smaller number of people. Because I had the tiniest social circle ever, most of my summer memories were made with Kelly (my sister), Lexi (my cousin), Kayla (my sister’s best friend) and Zach (a friend from high school).
Now that it’s Labor Day Weekend and my summer is coming to an end, I kind of wanted to share a few odds-and-ends of the random (pandemic-safe) things I did during my wasted summer in Michigan.
First of all… I took up both kayaking AND stand-up paddle boarding! Both are a ton of fun. I quickly learned that I prefer river kayaking (exciting!) to lake kayaking (boring!) and that doing yoga on a paddle board is very hard.
There’s a really affordable kayak rental spot on the river that runs through both my hometown and the town my mom now lives in, so I spent a lot of time kayaking with my mom, Kayla and Zach.
Kelly also lives on a lake, so Zach and I borrowed kayaks and spent some time there.
Once Zach and I decided we could be considered professional kayakers, we decided to give stand-up paddle boarding a try. There was a lake and a rental place in a nearby town, so we made a weekend trip out to Brighton to give it a try.
In addition to trying some new water-based activities, Kelly and I had a TON of fun outdoor adventures with Duchess. Once the weather warmed up, we spent just about every weekend taking her out to nature preserves, parks, ponds and arboretums.
Even without Duchess, there were still tons of walks and hikes — both alone and with friends and family.
Because Kelly also has a balcony at her apartment, I spent a lot of time drinking coffee, reading, applying for jobs and freelancing from her hammock out there.
A lot of my time was spent at my sister’s place, in fact. We routinely hosted drinks on her balcony, get-togethers at the dog park or yoga classes on the grass.
I did also attend one larger-than-advised get-together early on in the summer at Zach’s house. His best friend/ my college boyfriend Kenny was in town for a few days during the summer, so I got to catch up with some friends from my high school that I hadn’t seen in years.
Don’t worry, the beer pong table is a CDC-recommended six-feet long?
Once restaurants re-opened, Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor shut down their downtown streets to make room for socially distanced dining, so we could safely eat outdoors mask-less because the tables were heavily sanitized and spaced six feet apart.
Kelly, Lexi, Kayla and I took (infrequent) advantage.
Duchess tried to as well.
Zach is on a softball beer league team, so at one point, we went to the batting cages at SportWay of Westland to practice with some of his teammates.
And finally, I got back into running! I’ve always loved running, but I’m very injury prone and — since Michigan has winter — running has always been a seasonal thing for me.
I started running about three times a week, and got to explore a lot of parks and sidewalks in and around the Ypsi and Clinton areas while doing so.
So, that’s a snippet of how I spent my socially-distant outdoors time during the summer of COVID-19. It wasn’t awful, but would I do it again? Definitely not. While I do love that I can be outdoors, winter IS coming… and also? I’d just kinda like this deadly pandemic to end.
This post was originally published Jan. 23, 2021. Its timestamp has been updated.
