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Recently I drove for 26 hours over two days between Switzerland and France and I used Audible rather than Audiobookshelf to listen. The reason for this is that when I am driving I do not want to fiddle with an app on a phone. I don’t even want to fiddle with apps on Car Play.

I noticed that PocketCasts, the Podcast App, MyCitroën and even TomTom can be quite distracting when you’re trying to set things up when you’re driving. Most of these apps are fine, if you start from a parking above ground with access to data, but if you’re underground you need to fiddle while driving. To be clear, I don’t, and that’s one of my reason for not using most car play apps.

Some people aim to read twenty books per year. Others aim for a book a week. I read 15 or so books last year which doesn’t feel like much, compared to others. Having said that, I don’t read like others. When I read I flit between books. I might start three or four books within a few days, and gently make progress for weeks or months at a time.

Since the books are often not finished I might read hundreds of pages but it doesn’t appear in the reading stats. It appears in the pages read statistic. Many apps do not put that forward, until you dig a little deeper.

I like Garmin Connect and the Garmin Instinct 2. Both the app, and the device are good and they’re reliable for tracking sports on a daily basis. Having said this, I felt the urge to slide back to my Suunto devices and the Suunto app. For many, many, many years I was very happy with suunto getting two dive computers, one feature watch an ambit 2, ambit 3, Suunto Spartan and Peak 5.

It is when you roam with your phone across Europe that you realise how much data an iPhone gets through. In the space of a week I burned through almost 3 gigabytes and 7 more gigabytes before controlling which apps could use data. At the same time I reset the data counters and looked at the option of using dual esims at once.

With the iPhone it is possible to have one sim active for your normal phone use, and a second sim that can be used for data while roaming. In so doing you save money as we will explore shorty.

I was in Spain for three weeks. I had planned to blog while I was there. I didn’t because my mac book pro was misbehaving when I tried to connect to three or for Wifi networks. Last night I tested it with another wifi network and I had similar issues. I think that there is an issue with the wifi device n the machine.

When I tested it using my mobile phone as an access point it behaved as expected, but that’s when there is less than a meter separating the laptop from the wifi hotspot.

Yesterday we were under the clouds for the entire day. Low lever clouds or fog kept us away from the sun. I noticed that someone on Strava had managed to get above the clouds by going for a bike ride. I decided to try to do the same thing, eventually, by running. This is the longest distance I have ever run. It was uphill for the first part.

I ran from the height of Nyon towards Tranchepied, and from there I ran up towards the Domaine de Bonmont before turning to run along the foot of the Jura towards Trelex, before running back down towards Nyon and home.

The biggest improvement you can make to walking and cycling mobility is to avoid having cyclists, and pedestrians blocked by car traffic. This can include traffic lights but also busy roads where it is impossible to cross. If you’re on a walk, or a bike ride, and you get blocked by cars, then the temptation is not to walk that route, or walk a shorter distance.

Millions are being spent to make roads more cyclist and pedestrian friendly but they’re making changes that look good on paper but do nothing for cyclists and pedestrians. Between a village and a town they spent two months to add a pavement on one side, and a cycling/pedestrian path on the other. It should have taken a week. It took ages, and the net gain for pedestrians and cyclists is cosmetic, rather than useful.

Yesterday afternoon I was trolled by an American account of a person living in Germany. I commented on the absurdity of bicycle lanes that are just two hundred meters long and the troll account said “be happy to have that”. I felt like answering in a hostile manner. I refrained from doing this. I deleted my threads account instead.

You might see this as overkill, but there is something to be said about dumping toxic antisocial media sites. We invest our time and attention on Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky and Threads and if we report accounts, over and over, only to be told that they do not breach their codes of conduct rules, then they have squandered their chance to keep us as customers.

I was thinking of taking a break from Whatsapp for three weeks. I have this desire, and need because I am tired of how people use Whatsapp. They create groups, where strangers are added. People with no deep knowledge of online communities delete posts that are sometimes not spam. Other people complain when people try to have conversations. The result is that WhatsApp is emotionally draining because it doesn’t feel like a healthy, tight knit community.

Yesterday morning I woke and looked out of a window and saw fog. For some, the reaction is “oh zut alors” as we think that we’re in for several weeks of being under the clouds, with the mountains as a weekend escape from a sun deprived time spent in fog.

An Indirect Walk

I took it as an opportunity. I could have walked from A to B last night. Instead I walked my usual walk. Along the way I looked for interesting photo opportunities. The fog was thick, and you could see water droplets floating in the air near lights.