Yet another article has been written about how smartphones are a trap we built for ourselves by VOX. The article is paywalled so I didn’t read it but it’s worth commenting on the headline.

This weekend I was in Divonne volunteering at the Triathlon de Divonne and during this time I was surprised by a single thing. I was surprised by how many people I knew through cycling, after-work drinks and one or two from running. Divonne isn’t a place that I go to very often. I usually go on the last Saturday of the month, to ride with friends.

Many years ago, I couldn’t drive for a month, so I saw this as a brilliant opportunity to take a break from driving. To replace the car I used a foot scooter, a bus, and one or two trains. In the process I had a tremendous amount of fun. In contrast, more recently I tried an e-scooter and I’d be tempted to say that the experience sucks.

The key reason that it sucks, for me, as a cyclist, and as a runner, is that it’s stuck at 20 kilometres per hour. If I run I’m slower, but I’m doing sports, and if I’m cycling then I’m twice as fast when riding down to Nyon. Heading home I am also faster, within reason.

It’s a very easy habit to pick up, once you find an affordable EV. The EV habit makes tremendous sense. When I learned to drive petrol was about 1.21 CHF per litre, and when I was driving the most it went to about 1.71 CHF per litre. Recently, due to recent electoral choices petrol has risen to between 1.98 CHF to 2.20CHF per litre in Switzerland.

When you see this price increase it means that your fuel costs from 70-100 CHF per refuelling stop. Even with the petrol scooter it went from 6 CHF up to 9 CHF. Within this context it means that driving to Geneva with the scooter doubled in price. That’s a discernable difference. That is quite the psychological wall.

For the first time in months it is raining properly. We don’t have torrential rain, and we don’t have drizzle. We have proper rain. Proper river filling rain. Proper lake filling rain. It’s the type of rain that falls and hydrates the soil, the planets, the lakes and more. It’s the type of rain that cleans roads of their greasy films.

It’s the type of rain, where if you walk in it for five minutes you will be drenched. It is the type of rain that cleans veluxes, and potentially cars. It’s the type of rain that makes a nice change from constant sunshine.

According to MétéoSwiss, as the app is called, if you have your iPhone in English, it is currently 34°c in Nyon, that 16°c hotter than the norm for this time of year. After the summer of heat waves the heat persists at least until the anticipated storms this evening.

The storms, yet again, may be torrential. Cycling earlier today around the Vallée de Joux saw me fighting a wind from the west on the way back towards the car. It was strong and persistent.

I woke early on Friday to go for a run. From 5am onwards people start to gather and at around 5:15 there is a quick warmup and at 05:30 the run begins. The run is without a timer so this isn’t a race. It is a persona challenge instead.

I was right at the front of the race, with the fastest of people, running at 3-4 minutes per kilometre. When I noticed I slowed down to a pace that I thought would be sustainable for 5km. As a result some people overtook me and I resisted the desire to speed up.

I love to be part of online communities that also meet in the physical world on a regular basis. I enjoyed tuttle meetups, seesmeetups and more. I also really enjoyed when running and cycling groups have whatsapp channels where we can chat. The reason for this is simple.

There are five to ten running groups in Nyon, and several dozen between Morges, Rolle, Geneva, Nyon and Lausanne, without excluding Divonne and other places.

Recently I went out for the entire day and when I came home I had a swarm of flies sitting by the velux, two days in a row. The buzzing was loud. It’s a good thing that I am not squeamish about flies because this was the stuff of nightmares.

This summer I’ve had puce de canards burrow into my legs and die causing discomfort for a few days, I’ve gone for monday runs where midges were an issue, and recently I saw clouds of flying ants, but luckily these insects didn’t pester me.

Yesterday I ran twice the distance I usually run during a social run. As a group we ran from Bassins to Nyon via at least part of the Toblerone trail. We had aimed to run along the entire trail but we missed a turn near the top and ended up following the roads that I usually cycle along instead.

If we had taken the right route we would have run around 18km, mostly downhill, along the Toblerone defensive line. It is a narrow trail with Toblerones, pill boxes and more. It goes through the trees, by the river, and can be quite technical, with tree roots and rocks sticking out as well as other obstacles.

There are four types of ride. The first is a solo ride, where you ride where the wind takes you. The second is a solo ride where you draw a route on a GPS and then go out and explore. The third is a group ride where someone draws a map and you follow them, and the GPS track on the device you’re using for navigation.

The fourth is that you go for a ride where you know you want to explore a route, but you haven’t drawn it on a map, and you haven’t spent hours seeing whether it is gravel, tarmac, or other.