There's vaccines in them there hills

Last week, protected reader, we made our first ever trip to the home of the famous San Francisco 49ers, the Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. But we weren't going to watch football of any kind - nope, this was a visit to a mass vaccination site, to get ourselves some Pfizer goodness.

We arrived in good time in unseasonably cloudy California weather. Our first impression of the stadium is that, well, it's got a really big car park:

We then went through security screening (which had a queue), filling in the relevant forms (whilst forming part of a queue), before getting into the bottom of the building itself to register. The atmosphere of the building seemed to have more in common with a provincial airport than a sporting venue, but that may have had something to do with the check-in desk feeling of it all. We then went up some escalators to the next level... and joined another queue; you can just about see the people in that queue on above the white horizontal bit of construction roughly halfway up the photo above.

This was the queue to get back into the building... to join the next queue... which finally led to a set of desks where we'd all get jabbed. There were obviously a lot of people getting vaccinated here, as you can see from the picture; this site is a relatively recent addition, and with anyone over 16 being eligible for the vaccine in California now, and a significant drive on to vaccinate everyone before mid-June, there's a need to get a move on. The vaccination itself was wonderfully low-key, and we then wandered down the hall to the observation area. Here I made the mistake of waving to Helen, who was a couple of minutes behind me; our observers were mildly concerned that I was in some state of distress. But in fact no, I always look like this, I've had a hard life!

After 15 minutes without any obvious adverse reaction, we were done, with our COVID vaccination record cards in our hand, and the appointment for the second dose already scheduled. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the building, but fortunately there was some space outside the building where an obvious photo opp beckoned:

And with the addition of a friendly sticker, that quite literally was that. Hassle-free, and free of side-effects other than a slightly sore arm for about 24 hours. That said, colleagues tell me it's the second dose you have to look out for, so we'll see.

I've also had my card marked by the authorities here. I got in the car on Tuesday to find this on the windscreen:

Now the locals here seem to treat car parking like a constitutional right, but clearly that doesn't apply between the hours and 8 and 10am on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays in our road, which is the time they sweep the street. It's all very organized and I can't say there aren't signs... there very clearly are. So it's a fair cop, guv. I paid my $46 and resolve to do better next time.

So that's it - the pandemic here appears to be slowly winding down with a whimper rather than a bang, so let's all keep our fingers crossed. We're at nearly 70% of the adult population having received at least one dose here in Santa Clara county, so we're making good progress.