I’ll never forget how crazy things became at the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020. My friend’s father died in April 2020 and then his sister nearly passed away one month later when she contracted the virus at work. When I tried to get things like toilet paper and hand sanitizer from local stores, I couldn’t find any and had to resort to buying whatever I could on the internet and traveling for anything else. I remember this one car trip I took in May 2020 where I had to drive a full 100 miles in just one direction before I could actually find toilet paper. I went from city to city and every single small town in between, but I just couldn’t find my beloved triple-ply. When I finally secured some toilet paper hours into my trip, I was happy just to find the single-ply that feels like old sandpaper. In my mind, it was surely better than anything as I had nearly caused a serious plumbing clog when I had tried cheap napkins in place of toilet paper. My best friend Cindy works as a building contractor and she had similar problems with building supplies during the pandemic. Wood prices shot up and in some places you couldn’t find two-by-fours or half-inch plywood sheets for months at a time. Cindy told me she made a similar car trip for coils of steel rebar tie wire because her normal supplier was out of stock for multiple weeks straight. Cindy uses galvanized rebar tie wire for constructing large condominium buildings as it’s resistant to both moisture and salt corrosion. Since it costs significantly less than stainless steel rebar tie wire, it cuts the cost of building construction down.