Not everyone is happy living in the real world.
An advert for Air New Zealand, Boeing 777-300, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, horse riding, New Zealand’s landscape, the three or four passenger classes and of course bungee jumping.
The Swiss travel an average of 30 kilometres per day in their cars, according to a new survey shared by the Radio Television Suisse.
I walk 14 to twenty kilometres per day, and if I go for a bike ride I travel 30 kilometres. I use the car twice a week, for food shopping and that’s mainly because of the 15 minute rule for refrigerated food, rather than laziness. During the pandemic I would do food shopping with the car but pick up the drinks by going for a walk. It’s a one hour trip to the shops and back for me.
My single biggest frustration with walking as I do in Switzerland is the network of roads that lead from everywhere to everywhere, with no pedestrian paths for walkers or cyclists. Some villages and streets are designed for cars, with no pedestrian option. No pavement, no cycle path. No limit to 20 km/h. It’s assumed that people will use the car, rather than walk. This is astounding.
When I drive I show respect for walkers and cyclists. I slow down to pass them, on narrow roads, and on wide roads I go to the opposite side of the road to pass cyclists and walkers. To reduce the need for cars people need to be able to get from their homes to walks and cycling lanes, without risking dangerous drivers. For five years I have walked more than driven. For five years I have seen how cars behave with. pedestrians and cyclists. For five years the toxic behaviour has encouraged me to drive with humanity, but also to desire a switch away from cars. We should not automatically get into a car to do things. We should automatically get our walking shoes on, or get on our bikes.
“Il y a un énorme travail à faire. C’est une question d’horaire, pour qu’on puisse se déplacer le soir et le week-end dans les heures creuses. C’est aussi une question de destinations: il faut que les transports publics soient facilités à destination des régions touristiques”
In brief, Vincent Kaufman says that public transport needs to be spread across the day, not just at peak times, but also that transport needs to be later in the evening, when people who want to go out socialising need to have transport. That’s what I have said for years, or even decades. We see how London makes it easy to get around even at night, whether with tubes until midnight or later, now, or night buses.
In the video interview he also speaks about how the Swiss transport network is geared towards commuters rather than pleasure seekers. I find this both paradoxical and ironic, since so many adverts encourage people to take public transport. Having said that, transport is to the tourist traps, rather than areas of unique and outstanding beauty, which is why I suffered so much, without a car one summer, and without the ability to drive a second summer. That’s why I pivoted to local walks and bike rides.
If there is an alternative to the car people will use it. If the alternative to cars is cheaper, then people will use it. I have happily explored every walk and bike route from Geneva, and even Yvoire to the West, and Lausanne to the East. I think that I know almost every road, via biking. For walking I think I know most paths within a two hour walking range of my current home. I used to go to the mountains every weekend, like described in the article, but with the pandemic, job insecurity, a broken arm and a summer without the car I have learned to walk and cycle.
My two frustrations are, first, that dog walkers don’t keep their dogs on leashes, so at least six times I have been attacked by dogs. People love to say “If you’re not afraid of a dog then it won’t attack”, that’s great, but then I am being attacked, precisely because I am scared, which is why I am scared in the first place. A few days ago I thought that my fear of being bitten would be realised but I had the right response. Principally I froze.
The second frustration is that cars do not respect cyclists and pedestrians. Every single day cars drive too fast by me. When I drive by people I either give them space, if there is space, or I overtake pedestrians at slightly more than walking pace.
And finally
I went from using the car seven days a week, for almost anything, to using the car just twice a week, and only because I need it for shopping. I have gone from driving one or two hundred kilometres a weekend, and 50-60km a day, to zero. I am the change they want to see.
This morning rather than use the phone, check twitter, look at Facebook, or look at Instagram I took one of my two e-book readers. I have a Kobo and a Kindle device. I have both because I don’t want to lose all of my books if one company goes out of business.
Twitter and Facebook are filled with pushed content that we are not interested in. When we’re browsing our timelines it used to be to see what friends were doing or thinking about. For months now it has been re-shares and other impersonal content.
Twitter recently expanded the character limit and with this move, they also added threading, things that we had right from the start with Jaiku. I wouldn’t mind threading if it was designed in the way that forums had threading. Instead of writing a threaded tweet sequence why not take fifteen minutes to half an hour and write a blog post? With a blog post, you immediately say “I want to be verbose about what I’m thinking about”. It is also an opportunity for us to take back our right to the content we create because the adverts beside our content generate revenue for us.
Instagram is the latest “social network” to increase the amount of noise we get in our streams. They show images from strangers and companies instead of content from our friends. They also start to push hashtags to encourage us to follow topics rather than acquaintances.
Facebook,
The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that we felt in the past has been replaced by NAGO. ;-). We’re being nagged to follow specific accounts. Specific accounts post the same content in the morning and the afternoon, sometimes multiple days in a row. In so doing we have no compulsion to check our feeds.
We can dedicate hours to reading a book without interruption. We can leave aside our mobile phones and pick up the e-reader knowing that we are not missing out by not checking our feeds.
This week we have the pandemic Groundhog Day and this is the time when we will see if the Sisyphean life continues. Most of Europe is reopening, and although for those who have not read broadly about the pandemic rejoice, others do not. By deciding to reopen now, it is almost certain that next winter will be a pandemic one.
During the winter months we need to keep windows closed and we need to meet indoors because it is cold and, possibly, unpleasant outside. Being inside makes it easier for the virus to transmit from person to person so eradication is more of a challenge.
That is why it is a shame that European countries are deciding to reopen. By reopening now, when the virus is so virulent, they are condemning us to another winter of pandemic solitude. This is a deeply unpleasant thought.
There are discussions about doing away with Covid passes, about doing away with crowd number limits. It looks as though Denmark, Switzerland and other countries are deciding to just live as if the pandemic was over. I would rejoice, like others, if not for articles and snippets I have read. I have read that Long Covid affects the brain. I have read that Long Covid damages the lungs. I have read that Covid damages body’s ability to provide an immune response.
If we ignore the risk, then we can have a normal summer, yet again, but if we keep in mind that we are in a pandemic and that we could be disabled for life, from falling sick, is it worth the risk? At the moment I prefer solitude to being careless, but we will see how I feel by April when the summer sports begin.
These blog posts are for future generations, to understand the insanity of the current governments. We could have been out of this pandemic, if moral people had been in charge.
Before the pandemic, when life was normal, I would go to three or four events per week organised via websites. These days, on meetup.com things are organised every two weeks, and for just 15 people at a time. This means that if you’re not first to sign up you’re on a waiting list and you could be social once every few weeks, rather than three times per week. This frustrates me.
There is a simple solution. There is a demand for events to be organised. I recently bought fresh Via Ferrata stuff and may start doing them regularly once again. I want to accertain that I am comfortable with the sport after such a long break, and once this is done I can create my own via ferrata and walking group. I would organise things at least once per week, maybe more.
The biggest nuissance with Meetup.com is that it requires a monthly fee for having a group. The result is that groups are created, run for a bit, and then destroyed to avoid paying for longer. The alternative is to use Facebook but I absolutely hate what Facebook is and what it represents. Every time it abuses of peoples’ trust it and gets caught it never apologises.
I have car and I have three seats. Like I used to do before the pandemic I can pick people up in Nyon, drive them to and from the activity, and when it comes time to say goodbye they can contribute towards petrol and the cost of having a group.
I would never charge people a fee to participate in an activity because that goes against my ethos, but having people pay a fair share towards petrol is the right thing to do. If you don’t charge people for the petrol used, they abuse of our kindness as drivers.
There is an added benefit. The problem with group activities is that when they end people rush to the train, without saying goodbye and I find this really strange. Before the pandemic there would be a stop at a bar to have a drink, and then drive home. In the Pandemic age that stop no longer occurs. I find this to be a shame. At least by driving from Nyon to the via ferrata or hiking location there is a moment for conversation before and after the journey.
I could be like others, and take the same trains as they take but that would increase my costs for participating in events. It also doubles or triples the journey time.
Last week I walked an extra eight kilometres rather than take a train, so it isn’t that I want to use the car. I have spent five or six years doing almost all of my bike rides and walks from home. The point of the car is to expand my range, once again.
As I got to the end of this post I noticed that I am included in the hike that I thought was overbooked, and I see that other people are doing a VF at the same time on the same day and now I am torn about which one to do. The beautiful irony.
The old paradox is back. Nothing to do for the entire week, and then two activities to do at the same time.
Today I sat in the sun to charge my watch. I kept my left wrist facing the sun. My right wrist was employed in keeping a kindle in place, reading.
My goal was to get the watch to go up by one day of charge and it worked. I wouldn’t sit in the sun to get a tan, but I would to charge a device. I didn’t time how long it took to charge but it wasn’t more than half an hour. In the middle of summer, in the right mode, I could easily see this watch charging a few percent a day in the right conditions. With the right combination you could get this watch to be autonomous.
A watch that doesn’t need to be taken off to charge is ideal, because it can track your moves for weeks, months or even seasons at a time. It also means that you can carry one less charger.
I am still reading A Good Place For Maniacs. He has finally left California behind.