Yesterday I went for a bike ride. When I looked at the route I thought “this looks like a nice calm, relaxed ride. It wasn’t. I rode with group 2, which is a fast group, going uphill at 20-40 km/h on certain segments.

You might look at a cycling route and think “this looks flat, it doesn’t go to the top of the Jura” but don’t let that mislead you. When you’re riding at the foot of the Jura it’s easy to climb, and then descend, and then climb again, and then descend, and then climb yet again. In the end we did 1100m of climbing over 80 kilometres cycled.

We are all familiar with the phrase. We learn better when we write things by hand, rather than when we type them on the keyboard. For decades people have been against typing, saying “It’s cold, it’s dead, it’s impersonal”. Those same people will then say “you have awful handwriting” and yet still feel nostalgia for hand written notes. In the age of AI more is being lost.

Ten Thousand Hours of Practice

When people my age were growing up, if you wanted to sing, you needed to devote ten thousand hours to develop tone, timber and a good voice. I am not a singer, which you can tell by what I just wrote. The point is, to be a singer you needed to dedicate yourself to the craft.

Yesterday morning I felt a little under the weather so I considered skipping the 07:00 ride. I didn’t because I thought that I would regret not going, if I did not go. In the process I got to ride with the autumn/winter tyres and this time they felt less laggy than before.

Two days ago, when I was ready to go for a ride I noticed that the tyre was flat. I replaced the inner tube and yesterday the bike felt much, much better than it has in a while. I did have a small, slow puncture in the rear tyre.

Yesterday afternoon I heard some very loud banging. I thought that it was due to an idiot driving a farming machine into something solid and they were trying to fix the damage. As it continued it made me furious. It’s for this reason that I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon on my bike.

When I rode by the absurd people making a huge amount of noise I saw that they were hammering at the bed of their flat bed truck. For some reason they were hitting it as hard as they could with hammers.

The sun is shining. For a day or two the grey Autumn weather is gone. This would be a good time for a spontaneous bike ride. The issue with this is that Strava is great for sharing activities that are planned in advance, and those that have passed. It’s easy to get kudoes. It isn’t easy to converse.

They have instant messaging but it is only available via the mobile phone app, rather than from the web interface. It is seldom used so to use it might appear spammy to use it like we use Signal or Whatsapp.

A week ago I proposed a bicycle ride to Mies, before stopping at the Port de Crans for coffee. Quite a few people joined the chat but no one committed to turning up. I woke up in the morning and said “I’m thinking of setting off early, since no one had confirmed. When no one said “wait, wait, wait” I set off on my bicycle ride.

The conditions were excellent. I was warm, the roads were quiet, and the views were pleasant. I even thought “These are fantastic cycling conditions, it’s a mistake to stay indoors and zwift when the weather is so pleasant.

Routine is extremely important. With routine the question is not “whether you can be bothered” but “I will do this.” You go from asking “if” to automatically assuming that on Wednesday morning you will ride, and sunday morning you will ride. If a ride is cancelled for A or B then you’re asking “if”, but you’re also making other plans.

This weekend, for example, I saw that it would rain today. I assumed that the ride would be cancelled so psychologically I shifted my plans. I went for a group raclette and when the meal was over I stayed for a digestif, and then another, and then we went out. In the end I got home at 3:56 or so, and I went to sleep at 5 in the morning. That’s both really late, and really early. If I had got up for the bike ride I would have had two hours of sleep.

Bike rides have been cancelled because of rain, rather than wind or other factors. When it rains cyclists don’t want to ride because it gets their bike dirty and they have to clean it, lubricate it and more. With hikers rain is also an excuse to be lazy, within some groups. With other groups rain is just rain and the walks and hikes go ahead.

Yesterday morning we had stormy weather. It was raining very hard, and so windy that rain was aerosolised rather than falling as raindrops. As gusts blew, so you saw a cloud of rain move with the wind. You could see gutters overflowing as the wind blew water out over the lip of the edge. It was strong enough to change the direction of water flowing with gravity.

When I hear that new cycling lanes will be created on a new segment of road I feel excitement, at the prospect of cycling being a pleasant, streamlined experience. Often though, in Switzerland, especially in the French speaking part they will spend months digging up a road, and then putting the road back down, and painting lines and saying “There, we have cycling infrastructure.

They don’t widen the road, and they add the bare minimum. On the most dangerous bit of road they leave it as it is. Those lines were just to tick a box, not to provide cyclists with a better experience. In this case I’m thinking of the road between Crans and Eysins.

There was a time, for decades, if not centuries, when a watch provided us with the time. We would wear it in a pocket, attached to a chain, we would stare up at a clock tower and we would see the time. We might even hear church bells to indicate every quarter, half and full hour. In the last decade we have gone from wearing watches to tell time, to watches that quantify us.