A Saturday Walk During A Pandemic

Byrichard

Last week it was comfortable and warm so it was tempting to go cycling. This week it has gone back to being cold. Yesterday it was cold and windy and today was cold but sunny. I went for my usual walk but rather than listen to a podcast I watched TikTok videos as I walked at full speed. I am so used to the paths that I do not always need to pay attention.


The paths are dry. It hasn’t rained in days. The rivers are lower than they’ve been in a while and in theory river walking may be possible once again, as long as you don’t mind cold feet.


What was out of the ordinary today is that I saw people walking through fields on two separate occasions. On one occasion it was a trio of older people and their behaviour made no sense to me, for the simple reason that you can very easily walk around the field, and that the field has crops on it. If you’re going to walk through a field make sure that it has been harvested, that it is fallow or that no cows are using it.


I later saw a duo of people doing the same thing on another field and this does seem odd. Why would two groups of people have the same discourteous behaviour of walking over a crop?


Rather than walk along the usual routes I cut through the forest, walking through leaves, over dead branches, between trees and more. I filmed the progress I made. At the moment walking through forests is easy because none of the undergrowth is out yet. Walking between trees is easy, and so is navigating. When the undergrowth grows in spring such explorations will no longer be possible. That is when cycling will be more fun. I look forward to the cycling season starting properly once again. I went to be on the bike, and to explore. I also want to feel that something is finally changing.


I saw a Trio of older women and I thought that they may be having adventures like the three men in Last of the Summer Wine. A trio of friends going for mischievous adventures in nature during their afternoon walks.


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Another Pandemic Weekend Without Plans

Byrichard

Normally at this time of year, as the snow melts and the temperatures increase the opportunity for spring and summer sports returns. These sports are via ferrata, outdoor climbing, hiking and more. This year is different because although today is Friday no plans have been made for the next two days. There is a excellent chance that I will either hike or cycle alone. Usually I avoid cycling on Saturdays because that is the day when people are anxiously driving between their homes and their shops.


Walking feels like the safer option on such days. It’s usually on Sundays that I like to go for a bike ride, to range a little further than when I am on foot, and to enjoy different sensations. During this pandemic my favourite route is not possible because it crosses the Franco Swiss Border in two places and I prefer to avoid crossing the border unless it is essential.


At the moment the prospect of everyone being vaccinated, and of everyone being able to meet in groups of ten to fifteen to do via ferrata, hike or climb seems unlikely. It would seem that this is another year of relatively solitary sports. Hiking and cycling are good solitary sports because we often go at our own speeds anyway. These are also sports with almost no carbon footprint. You just walk out of your house and enjoy.


Scuba Diving, Climbing, Via Ferrata and other sports sometimes require a two or more hour drive to go to and come back from the activity location. With cycling and local hiking you burn no petrol, except for the rubber soles of your shoes but those wear out quite slowly. We’re speaking grams, rather than litres.


During my walks I often visit the old phone boxes that have been converted into libraries. I browse through the books. Some villages have a good selection of free access books. No one has thought to block access to them during the pandemic.


If I wrote a blog post for every walk or bike ride at the moment it would either be a clockwise or an anti-clockwise loop that always begins and ends in the same place. The main change are the crops, the animals and people I see, and the weather.


Yesterday I did meet someone in the physical world, for a walk, and I came to the conclusion that I much prefer to meet people for bike rides. The problem with walking with people during a pandemic is that you don’t have the freedom to walk into a field or patch of grass as you’re walking “with a person” rather than alone. You’re also working on set paths.


I like to walk along roads and other paths, and I like to change route as soon as I see people come the other way, or to climb up an embankment, or to choose a path between two fields. When I walked in Geneva yestreday I decided to take off my mask because I thought that there would be an opportunity to always be two or more metres from people but this wasn’t the case. If I was alone I would have put the mask on. In this context I didn’t feel as free to do so.


Cycling, during a pandemic, in contrast is excellent. The first reason for this is simple. You’re going at 20 to 30 kilometres per hour so whatever you breathe in or out is going to be diluted into the turbulence that is behind you. The second reason is that you’re on a road or path and the pedestrians you encounter are close for just a second or two, not even two breaths.


The other advantage is that you’re on some type of agricultural or normal road and there are usually not that many people on the same path so it provides us with greater freedom. People are cautious of bikes, but not of other pedestrians. Being on a bike makes us safe.


During my walks I often see people on bikes. Today I was surprised to see three women riding alone. Usually it’s two or three guys at a time, riding together and talking. It makes a nice change. Having said this the conditions today were unpleasant for cycling, a cold strong wind. These are the right conditions to make cycling cold and tiring.


I hope that Sunday will be good for cycling.


How far will we cycle in pandemic solitude? We will have to see.


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The Year-Old Pandemic

Byrichard

Thanks to the incompetence of leadership during this pandemic Switzerland went from a low of 21 cases per day in June 2021 to a high of 3600 or more over Christmas. This is really a shame. For a short period up to the 21st of June Switzerland really looked as if it would end the pandemic.


On the 21st of June the government made a mistake. It reopened society. The rational was that the pandemic would soon end and that slowly we could return to life as normal. Within a week or two the number of new cases started to go up again, but rather than go a step back until the number went back down the government went ahead with the next diminishing of sanctions.


Over time, we could see the number of new cases climb and climb and I really expected to see a peak within two weeks from the 1st of August. It came about three to four weeks later and that’s close to when the second wave was declared. Bad decisions continued to be taken until it was decided that people should have their Christmas and new Year. Two weeks after all the Christmas shenanigans were over tightening came back, and instantly the number of new cases went down.


We’re now a year into the pandemic with little chance of the pandemic ending anytime soon.


As I see it the government has two possible avenues. The first is to vaccinate everyone, but the drawback is that you need vaccines to vaccinate people, so for now this idea is on hold. The second idea, and this was definitely possible in June, and is still being proved by New Zealand, is that you can end the pandemic with proper government directives.


Last week Switzerland finally got down to just 1000 cases per day, which is excellent news, and with a little effort it looks as if the pandemic could end sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately the government decided to reopen society yesterday, so we are now condemned to go through another wave of infections and the end has been blown away by bad policy.


One weakness during this pandemic is that lockdowns and restrictions have been pictures as political rather than scientific. As a result of this people are guided by their emotions rather than their rationality. This irrationality means that people fail to see that the sooner the pandemic ends, the sooner normal life returns.


The more often society reopens, the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer the pandemic lasts, the more businesses will go bankrupt. It makes sense to have a lockdown like we had this time last year, for the pandemic to end, so that life can resume.


There is another cost to the pandemic. Teenagers are unable to have a normal university experience. Add to this that around 36 percent of homes in Switzerland are one person and this is a theoretical 36 percent (I don’t know the actual number of people) who might have gone without a hug, a kiss or a handshake for almost a year by now.


In the 21st century plenty of people live alone, and when you live alone during a pandemic it implies that you do not see many people. In fact the only person you see during the day is the cashier, if you buy food.


Switzerland decided to close petrol stations on Sunday, and my habit of seeing one person in the physical world per day was lost. I sometimes go three to four days at a time without speaking to another human being.


This pandemic is teaching us to live in absolute solitude, for days at a time with no contact, and weeks, months or even seasons without even a handshake or hug.


I don’t watch normal television anymore. If a podcast has someone speaking about relationships I pause or stop listening. I avoid films. I avoid certain topics in podcasts. I listen to very little music.


We’re in a pandemic, and we live in solitude. Normal people think “the pandemic will take two years to resolve, and it isn’t that bad”, but to people in solitude it is that bad. Solitude is fine, as long as it is not made to feel like isolation, and that’s why I changed my media consumption habits. I went to be comfortable in solitude, not distressed in solitude.


With how people behave, and how the government behaves, we are in for a few more months at best. Maybe the summer of 2022 will be less lonely.