A Walk By The Mediterranean.
Have you walked by the Mediterranean recently? I walked by it today. It was blue and Green, turquoise and red. The sea was calm and a sailing boat or two set off to sail from one place to another.
Today I looked at two of the masks I used over summer and they are both bleached by the sun. So is my hat. I normally expect things in Spain to be sun bleached, not Switzerland. The reason is simple. First, it never ever rains, and even clouds are rare today, and second, I spend an hour and a half outdoors a day walking. Plenty of time for my things to get sun bleached.
If you’re an extrovert you could go out into the street and ask people “Is the covid virus airborne” they would probably either say that they don’t know or that it isn’t. The second introvert option is just to observe people. See how many people wear their masks as moustaches, how many of them wear them as neckerchiefs, how many people observe proper social distancing. If these methods are how you determine whether people know that COVID-19 is airborne, then the answer is “very few”.
It makes you question whether self-isolation is justified. It doesn’t seem to be, because not that many people are falling sick now. There is one detail. The point of self-isolation, and the point of eradicating a disease, is that you don’t wait for things to seem safe, to resume normal life. You wait until they are. 2200 people fell sick this weekend. That’s a lot of people. That’s 733 a day. That’s an infection rate of one person every two minutes.
We are at the trough of a wave, but there is every chance that another crest is coming, and none of the barrier gestures are in place at the moment. If the virus has an opportunity it will spread quickly between communities with current behaviours as they are.
Due to the pandemic I am still going for my daily walks in the countryside. I go along roads with less human and dog traffic. I find that if I go on routes with people out for their walks they walk side by side and make it impossible to pass them without entering their safe space. I can and do wear a mask but when you cross people once or twice in 20 minutes the mask is not justified, and you need the sunshine. I walk in the countryside. If I was in town the mask would either be on, or I’d be keeping three or four meters between myself and others.
I might be eccentric, but the pandemic is over one and a half years old, so I have had time for pandemic habits to become automatic.
I had to stop walking at two moments during this walk. Tractors had to turn around. To do so they had to drive over the road I was about to walk on. I prefer not to have a tractor with seeding equipment too close to me. It is interesting to watch them as they work different fields, with different tools, at different times of the year. Daily, I see what they’re up to.
Yesterday I went for a run despite the rain. I was going down to run along one road that I usually avoid because of dog walkers. I ran along it before spotting someone walking with a dog. I couldn’t tell whether he was walking towards me or away from me so I turned around. I ran along a difficult bit of grass, trying to avoid the drivers in cars who have no empathy for people on foot.
To the left there is a massive field of mud. It used to be an agricultural field but the Swiss turned that field into a field of mud that fills with water when it rains. There is a dirt road but that dirt road is behind a fence. It can’t be accessed on foot.
I was running towards an agricultural road where I would be off the road once again. Once on the road I appreciated the metalled surface but I heard barking so I turned to look to the right and saw a cage with what appeared to be a dog or more barking so I continued running. I then spotted that two dogs were running along a road, on a course to intercept me. I count this as a dog attack because I turned around and ran back towards the road with traffic. In the end I cut across a fallow field but the fallow field was filled with deep puddles of water which I tried to avoid stepping in.
My feet ended up ankle deep in water several times and the effort of running was far greater than if I had been able to follow the path I wanted to run initially. The problem is that I had to overcome my fear of dogs to enjoy that route.
Over the pandemic, and ever since then I have found walking routes that keep me away from people, and away from their dogs. The habit that I picked up during the pandemic never ended, because COVID denialism replaced pandemic awareness. I walk by people sometimes, but if I can avoid them I do.
Over the last five years I have walked locally almost every single day and I have found routes that I enjoy walking along. Now I have an eight kilometre loop that I walk either clockwise or anti-clockwise. I had more routes but because of how cars behave towards me I decided to abandon certain walking roads.
When I hear a car I often step into the wet grass and the mud, because I know that they never slow down for me. Buses don’t slow down, delivery trucks don’t slow down. Motorbikes don’t slow down, and bikes don’t even bother to give me a safe space. The result is that I step into the wet grass and mud, and they wave to thank me. I’m not getting out of their way out of courtesy, unless they’re tractors or trucks. I’m getting out of their way because I am so tired of them passing me way too fast, way too close. It was easier to change my walking route.
For a long time I walked with waterproof shoes but I stopped, because waterproof shoes have good tread, and good tread is excellent at trapping mud. The problem with shoes that are great at trapping mud is that they require half an hour to clean at the end of every walk. It’s easier to wear shoes that have little to no tread. These shoes are not waterproof, so my feet get soaked.
Yesterday I was dressed for running, so I was warm when I was running. Because of the two detours I took, along wet fields the humidity wicked up from my socks to my trousers, and from my cap down to my t-shirt. This is despite wearing waterproof trousers and a rain coat (with no hood).
I have a route that I run and walk every day, whether clockwise, or anti-clockwise. Because of the rain I thought there would be no dog walkers, and that I could enjoy my rainy route. Due to the dog walker I couldn’t, so I deviated, and that deviation eventually got me soaked.
I achieved my running goal nonetheless. I would have enjoyed it more without the challenge of overcoming my fear of dogs. My fear of dogs is recent, growing over the last two or three years. Before that I didn’t bother about seeing dogs. The problem is that a dog ran and barked very aggressively along one fence, near Crassier. Two or three times I encountered that dog with nothing to hold it back so I ran into a field, and waited for it to leave me alone. Another time a dog ran towards me and barked aggressively near a forest, and I climbed onto a fallen down tree to have a slight height advantage. Yet another time I encountered a dog in a forest, where I shielded behind a tree until it left me alone.
The one that radicalised my fear of dogs was near the motorway. I stood still waiting for the owner to put in on a leash so that I could past. Eventually it charged me, ready to attack. I turned to run, and then turned to face it. I really thought that this would result in me being mauled. I walked away with no physical harm, but traumatised by the experience. The only time I decided not to avoid a dog walker I ended up being charged.
Since then I always avoid dogs when I’m alone.
Without dog walkers and cars on agricultural roads I would love my daily local walks. The pandemic showed me the euphoria of walking without cars and I really miss how quiet and pleasant the world was, when cars were rare. I call it the lock down honeymoon. For people who enjoy local walks it was fantastic.
There was a time when I would automatically get into a car to go for a walk. There was also a time when I would not consider going for a walk, or run, in the rain. Those days are gone. Now I go for my daily walk, or run, whatever the weather. I planned to be out for about half an hour yesterday, but because of the deviations I ended up going through wet fields. If I had run my usual route I would have remained relatively dry.
The rain is falling again today, so once again I will get wet, but this time I am walking so I can wear waterproof shoes, maybe.
The GBD-800 Continued is a step counting Casio with two serious flaws. The first of these flaws is that although the GPS from the phone can be used to map walks and other activities it has to be activated at the start of a walk and deactivated at the end of the walk. If you do not deactivate the GPS it will track the drive to and from the start of the walk, to the end of the walk. This isn’t ideal unless you’re on a multi-day hike.
The second flaw, and this is a real shame is that the watch does count every single step you take, and possibly more, but it doesn’t offload the data anywhere. It doesn’t connect to Google Fit, Apple Health or any other app. It will track your daily steps per day, and if you just want them on your watch and your phone then the watch is fine.
What frustrates me, after playing with the GBD-200 though, is that whereas the data from the GBD-200 is exported to G-Shock Move the G-shock connected app only allows you to export step information as an image with a map and a step count. There is no way to automatically get the data out of the app for use with other apps. With the GBD-200 and Move app you can transfer to Apple Health, Strava and Google fit.
I like the look and feel of this watch and I like to wear it but I still want my steps to be counted. For years now I have logged millions of steps so I don’t want to lose that data moving from device to device, unless that device sends the step number to another app. Out of pandemic I would not have any interest in step counts because I would be doing different activities with people, so I’d care about the activities, and people. As we’re in a pandemic I need different distractions. This is mine.
When I bought the Garmin Instinct it cost 298 CHF. When I bought the Spartan it cost 473 CHF. The most expensive was the Apple watch Series 4 for 479 CHF. If Suunto had stuck to their own OS I would never have been curious about other brands and I would not flit from device to device once every two or three years. I would still be with a single brand. If we find a good cheap Casio alternative then we have a watch that lasts for years on a single battery, at a third to a quarter of the price. I see that as a win.
This morning I watched the and it’s interesting. The person is not an expert. He played with various models to show how epidemics spread over a period of time when variables such as infectiousness, social distancing, quarantining and other variables are implemented.
If one hundred percent of people self-isolate then the duration of an epidemic is cut short from lack of people to infect. This is what every nation should have done. With such measures the duration of an epidemic or pandemic is short and thus the economy takes a much smaller hit.
I chose both to watch and share this video because it’s factual, it’s experimental and it provides us with examples of how actions have positive or negative effects. Despite it being theoretical it provides the right messages.
When I saw the video titled “How to tell if we’re beating COVID-19” I did not follow the link despite having it suggested on YouTube and Twitter. When I read the title my immediate reaction is that at the moment we’re not. To beat it we should have gone into isolation as soon as there was a risk of a pandemic, not after it has infiltrated numerous communities and spread.
I look at the graphs on Corona-data.ch every day. During the first few days of ORCA I was hoping that Switzerland’s graph would decline downwards within a week of people going into self-isolation but that didn’t happen.
From the moment people were told to self-isolate to the moment they did self-isolate there was a lag. It took almost two weeks for the streets to empty and for motorways to become empty. Two nights I looked towards the motorway and I couldn’t see any cars for thirty or more seconds. The “Red and White Snake” as I like to call motorway traffic at night, vanished.
When you look at the model showing one hundred percent isolation in the video above you see that pandemics can be cut short much sooner. It helps justify the attitude that I’ve had when on my walks, of avoiding to be within two meters of others and to turn around and find an alternate route if I could not avoid coming in close proximity to others.
I have been reading The Aeronauts A few weeks ago Amazon Prime was recommending the film, but after watching the first few seconds I saw that it was based on a book and decided to read the book instead. It explores the use of Hot Air balloons to study weather and the atmosphere, before planes and other forms of transport. It also explores the early days of scientific expeditions that attempted to get to the top of the Mont Blanc to study atmospherics.
Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about the absurdity of life during this pandemic. People are pretending the pandemic is over and falling sick with a disease that keeps them sick for months.
Entire professions are now unstable so finding work is harder.
Millions of others are unable to work.
Living with COVID is absurd. I wish the world would stop being absurd. I am tired of the absurdity of people being okay with living in a pandemic.
I would spend more time writing this blog post but part of the absurdity that I am writing about is that I do not have the space to work towards my personal goals, so my days are absurd. I am in limbo and I can’t change it until I regain my normal life, a life that is not as absurd.