The Storm Missed Me by Five Minutes

The Storm Missed Me by Five Minutes

Byrichard

Today I saw that they were expecting a storm and I was really looking forward to a sudden downpour, lightning and more. I also thought that it would trap me at home and that I’d have a day without walking or cycling. In the end I saw that the doppler radar no longer expected any rain etc so I got ready for a bike ride and went out. I could see that the clouds over the Jura were nice and dark, threatening to become an active storm. I still continued my bike ride. I went from near Nyon to Mies, up from there towards Commugny, then towards the Versoix, up a road and had not explored yet.


During the ride I saw a few fresh roses, so I stopped to photograph and smell the roses. I didn’t see as many people walking and cycling as I would usually expect. They were wisely hiding from the rain as I should have done. I had a cycling rain coat, so if the rain had caught me I could have been slightly less drenched, and cycling clothes are not usually dry at the end of a ride anyway.


What is less fun is hail and thunder. Both of those things are dangerous. Small hailstones hurt when they hit you. I know from personal experience. Not only is hail painful, but it’s cold and it can chill you to hypothermic levels within minutes.


It didn’t hail, but it did rain and thunder, and it missed me by five minutes or less. If I had been that bit slower, my bike and I would have been soaked. As things were, the rain didn’t get me.

From Arnex to the Signal De Bougy and Back
|

From Arnex to the Signal De Bougy and Back

Byrichard

Cycling from Arnex to the Signal de Bougy and back is a nice ride that takes you along the lake through the lower part of Nyon, Gland towards Rolle, and from Rolle up towards Perroy, Aubonne, Pizy, The Signal de bougy and back down on the other side.


View when you are almost at the Signal De Bougy
View when you are almost at the Signal De Bougy


This route can be ridden both ways. The direction I suggest is easier because the climbing, although physical from Rolle to Perroy levels off, The next challenge is up from Aubonne to the Signal De Bougy. This climb is physical, and you are exposed to cars.


When you’re at the top you pass by two large car parks, and you could stop and go into the Signal but I have never tried, after a bike ride, so I do not know where you could leave your bikes. I instead continue along the park, pass the golf course and then when I get to the end of the road I usually turn left and enjoy the downhill through the forest for one bit, and then the vineyards for the other.


The advantage of this route direction is that it’s downhill from the Signal De Bougy, almost all the way back to Nyon, or wherever you start this journey.


View towards Geneva
View towards Geneva


If you try the reverse route you will be climbing from Nyon to the Signal de Bougy on a road that can be quite busy and you will feel more fatigued. The part from Tartegnin up to the Signal De Bougy is physical so you need to have endurance.


If you try this route and you find that you have spare energy left over you can then continue towards Bière and either go up the Col De Marchairuz or the other col, cycle around the Vallée de Joux, and then come back down via St Cergue. That’s a 90 kilometre loop.





From Nyon to Vesancy
|

From Nyon to Vesancy

Byrichard

In 2015, I was exploring on a mountain bike when I found a road above La Rippe that was closed to traffic, so I decided to explore it. I managed to cycle a certain distance before I met a rockfall blocking the road, so I had to turn back. I then tried again in 2018 and I got quite close to the top but decided to give up and turn around. Within the last three weeks or so I have attempted the ride again, and this time I have made it up not once, but twice.


The first time I attempted it this year, it was exploration. I used Komoot to set the destination point, and then I started cycling up. This ride is a challenge because it starts steep, and it stays steep almost the whole way up. I read a comment that once you get to 1200 meters it gets easier. That’s almost at the top of the climb.





It is easier to do this type of climb if you look at distance remaining, rather than altitude. It is the type of ride that you do one kilometre at a time. Every kilometre is earned. One nice aspect of this ride is that you have more wildlife. You hear rustling in the leaves, and you hear things scuttling around. I saw at least one Chamois, one snake and quite a few hikers. Hikers do not count as wildlife. You see some people walking upwards, and others walking downwards.


I like to find routes that either have very few cars, or no cars. Cars often drive too close and too far. The further we are from cars, the safer we are. It gives us the time to focus our attention on the effort and the challenge, rather than on safety. I wear normal shoes, rather than cycling shoes, for this climb. In a previous attempt I found that I wanted to stop but couldn’t, so I was stuck with continuing to climb until the gradient was gentler. That was not fun.


View of the Alps through the trees
View of the Alps through the trees


On this ride you have a good few of the Lac Léman as well as of the Alps and the Mont Blanc on the right day. When you get to what I consider the top there is nothing to do. I could go further and explore on the french side, but during a pandemic I prefer not to cross borders, especially on foot, with a bike on my back. I could go up on foot, and explore from the other side, and eventually link the two. In theory I can go up from La Rippe, over the top, across to the West of La Dole, rejoin La Cure, cycle to St Cergue and come down the fun road. We’ll see next summer.

Roses From A Daily Walk
|

Roses From A Daily Walk

Byrichard

Sometimes you go for a daily walk and all the roses are starting to emerge, and these are not tiny ones. These are saucer sized roses. They are mainly growing at the side of orchards. These are Red and pink, but there are other colours, so if I walk in the right places I should find them too.



I could have posted these images to Instagram or Facebook, but I’d rather post them on my own website, for the world to see, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, three to six years from now. 😉

|

Experimenting With Minergie

Byrichard

Minergie is theoretically a fantastic, environmentally friendly way of making a building more energy-efficient, by reducing the need for air conditioning and heating. For three years now I have been playing with and experimenting with minergie. During the first and second heatwaves, I liked to open windows and get fresh air. I found that Minergie means “poor air circulation”. As soon as you close the windows you feel the heat radiate from the walls as if they were sauna stones.


With a classic old building the walls are thick and heat stays out, so you never think about open or closed shutters and other things. With an old-fashioned apartment, you can open the windows on both sides and bask in the summer heat. Old apartments are great in heatwaves because you keep your windows open all day long.


With Minergie the experience is different. They eventually begin to feel like ovens, during a heatwave. This year I am trying a different tact. Closed windows, doors, and blinds. So far the experiment seems to be working well. My idea is to compartmentalize the heat. Each room heats and cools by itself. The bathroom and the spare window have veluxes, and these act as radiators in summer, from heat, coming in as sunlight, but also from radiant heat, from the hot glass from being in the hot summer sun. By isolating the oven rooms they warm up in isolation.


I find that some rooms feel cooler, as a result of this strategy. This is a partial success.


My Frustration with Minergie is two-fold. My first frustration is that unlike air conditioning in a car you can’t blast cold air and cool the cabin to a comfortable temperature if it gets too hot. You need to adapt your habits before the heatwave has even started. The second frustration is that with Minergie you cannot open windows and get fresh air as you could before. If you do open windows you need to do so before the day heats up. You open the windows in an attempt to cool down the building’s superstructure.


Although Minergie was designed to keep buildings warm in winter it was never designed to keep buildings cool during yearly heatwaves. In summer Minergie buildings become heat accumulators and, as neighbours in other apartments open windows, and heat up the superstructure, so the top floors become saunas if people are not careful. According to data from last year, the apartment starts to heat up in April and stays warm until Octobre.


Minergie should go back to the conceptual phase and re-imagine how to cool buildings passively, during heatwaves.