Melissa The Frustrated Bee

Melissa The Frustrated Bee

Byrichard

Imagine, you’re a bee. You stop off at the local watering drinking hole but you fall in. All the pollen that you collected in the morning is now lost. It is now in the swimming pool where you had stopped for a quiet sip.

Life would have been over, if not for a human being noticing movement in the water. A pool brush came from underneath and lifted the bee out of the water and then shook violently so you hang on. The brush is no longer shaked. Instead it is put down in a sheltered spot, away from prying bird eyes.

I don’t know if the bee will survive but at least it had a chance at not drowning. If it goes back to the bee hive it may go empty leg pouched.

Walk The Distance – PCT 94 Percent Done
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Walk The Distance – PCT 94 Percent Done

Byrichard

On the 10th of May 2023 I started walking the PCT virtually and now I am 94 percent done. I have about 300 kilometres left to walk and I will have completed the entire distance. Some of it was covered walking and some of it was covered while walking. Of course I didn’t walk the actual PCT. I walked it via the Walk the Distance app.

The thing about walking the Pacific Crest Trail virtually is that eventually you forget about it and just keep covering the distance, without paying attention to landmarks and more. I’ve been walking this virtual path for 10 months. I have ‘walked’ 4008 kilometres and passed 469 checkpoints.

At the peak of my walking habit I would have covered this distance sooner, but because of the return of cars and car drivers, and dog walkers, my walking habit has declined. I don’t enjoy playing chicken with cars, and being challenge to overcome my fear of big dogs that are unrestrained. If we were in the pandemic honeymoon I would still be walking five and a half million steps per year.

I like that we can take on such big walking challenges. On one app I am walking the Silk trail and on Walk the Distance it’s the Pacific Crest Trail. On Garmin’s app I am walking the AT. I think that when I finish the PCT I will walk the Continental divide trail.

The beauty of these virtual walking challenges is that I can walk the same 20-40km loops IRL daily, without the walks I’m actually doing being too boring.

In less than a month I will finish the PCT. I think that it will be done within 30 days.

Exhausted by Noise Pollution

Byrichard

Yesterday the drive was easy. 12-13 hours of easy driving with good road conditions. The exhaustion came from having neighbours that start making noise at 20:00 so the “early bed time” you planned is ruined. I woke at 0230 and by 0330 I was driving for 12hrs straight.

If I had been able to sleep as I had planned to I would have found the drive very easy.

Tired of Garmin and Apple, Playing With Casio
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Tired of Garmin and Apple, Playing With Casio

Byrichard

For a while now I have been wearing a Casio and an apple watch or a Garmin and an Apple watch, or a Casio and a Garmin watch or a xiaomi smart band and a casio or a xiaomi smart band and… it goes on.

A Break of Routine

The reason for which I’m flying between so many devices is two fold. I have too many devices. There was a time when I went climbing, hiking, cycling, diving, swimming, on via ferrata and more and I was happy with just one watch.

Collecting

Now, with the pandemic and other factors I seem to have more devices than arms, and no loyalty to either. I believe that it’s due, in part to walking the same loops over, and over, and over again. Every so often I walk clockwise and then I walk counter clockwise. I take the short route, then the medium route, and then the long route, and then the extra long route, and sometimes I backtrack, especially on weekends.

To break from that monotony I think I fiddle with various watches and tracking devices.

We think nothing of wearing a different pair of socks every day, or trousers, or t-shirts, but if we switch between watches, or wear two at once we’re lunatics.

Compulsion

If I wanted to be nasty about myself I’d say that I’m not a lunatic, I’m an addict. I feel the need to preserve my step count on as many services as possible, as a result of which I feel the urge to wear multiple devices each week.

Personal Fitness Tracking

There are two solutions to this. The first is a learning opportunity. Home Assistant and NextCloud have fitness tracking sort of built in. If I worked on updating HomeAssistant automatically, with data from Garmin, Apple, Casio and Xiaomi then I would have by data in a central place, and I could wear just one device at a time as the data aggregator I care about is my own.

Apple and Garmin

Apple and Garmin have frustrated me with their apps. They have taken fitness tracking and tried to make it an addiction. Apple and Garmin want you to push yourself every day, seven days a week for years. I burned out on Apple several times and yet I can’t stop wearing their device. My steps are counted by my phone anyway. Garmin has been faulty on occasion. It has crashed on some walks.

Stop Hesitating

The second solution is to pick one device and to stick with it, without flitting between one and the other. I feel myself drawn to Casio at the moment. I like that it tracks without nagging, and without judgement. I also like that I can go for months or even years without the need to charge.

The Paradox

Garmin, Apple and Xiaomi don’t care about walking as fitness habits, so you wear them every single day, but they won’t mark your fitness as progressing. You’re quantifying for the sake of quantifying, and wearing a casio would be fine.

Yesterday Garmin asked if I wanted to join the beta so I did, but I need to run or cycle for two weeks for the app to provide me with feedback.

And Finally

For years I wore a Suunto, and then for years I wore an Apple Watch, and then I played with an Apple Watch and a Garmin device, and now I feel like experimenting with Casio, as I did when I was a child.
Casio stand out now, because everyone already has an Apple Watch or a Garmin device, but few wear Casio.

Cyclist Sightings

Cyclist Sightings

Byrichard

Yesterday I went for a walk, during which I listened to two podcasts via AudioBookShelf, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is that the seasons have changed. The snow has melted and there was a brief interlude in rain so plenty of people went out for bike rides. So many in fact that I seemed to be one of only two or three people on foot.

This makes me happy. I like crossing people on bikes because they usually don’t have big dogs, and they pass by within seconds rather than longer. They also tend not to take up the entire width of the road.

For some reason when couples walk they take the entire width of the road, as do families, and other groups. They’re not morbidly obese. they’re average. They could take as little space as cyclists and I do.

I should be cycling too but my bike lives half an hour from where I live at the moment, by car. It lives there because that’s where I went for bike rides several times and I felt that by transporting my bike, back and forth, in the car, I was damaging it, so I left it there. I never repatriated it because winter was coming so it made little sense. Now that summer is back it could make sense to repatriate it.

In reality I should prepare it for Spain. I should dismantle it, and take it to Spain, for a Spring service, before coming back to Switzerland, and use it, freshly serviced.

The difference in service price between Spain and Switzerland is 70 euros compared to 300 CHF. I could also take advantage of the slightly better weather in Spain to go for bike rides.

I have a few days to decide.