A Weekend Walk During a Pandemic

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Today I went for my daily walk and I saw a shape. I thought, “That looks like a fox” and as I approached i had a doubt about it being a dog and I felt fear but I continued forward anyway. Eventually the fox noticed me, looked at me and then fled the other way. This is good news. This means that the fox was healthy, rather than rabied. It also means that I can keep being relaxed about seeing foxes.

Plenty of flowers in a field

At this time of year fields are filled with flowers by the thousands and if you walk around the right fields you hear the buzzing of bees. I didn’t hear them today. Summer heat seems to be back now. The thermometer is going up to 26 to 27 degrees. Warm enough to cycle in shorts and not feel cold. This is a nice time of year for such sports. I have cycled 100 kilometres so far and tomorrow I expect to add another 20 to 30 kilometres so I will have reached my pre-pandemic goal for the first time in two or three years. I haven’t cycled seriously since I broke my arm.

I have now completed 50 percent of The Complete JavaScript Course so I am finally closer to the end than the beginning of this course. I feel that I am learning new and interesting things, as well as consolidating knowledge about other topics. What I am learning about JavaScript can be found here. This is sorted by learning, rather than projects. I keep this as a notebook rather than a repository for others to use. When I am confident about the projects I am working on I will share them in an organised manner.

Coquelicots, and the Alps

Similar Posts

Walking Heatwave Strategy

Walking Heatwave Strategy

Byrichard

Two days in a row I have poured water on my head. The reason for this is that yesterday we were in 35°c heat and today we were in 33°c heat. When you’re walking for two or three hours at the solar Maximum the best cooling strategy is to pour water on your head, as I did. It’s a quick way of cooling. It’s not that the water was cool. The water is warm, heated by direct sunlight for the last half hour, or even hour.

I Feel Okay

I set off with 1.6 litres of water and drank every few minutes. I have a 600ml camelbak eddy+ in my hand and a 1l Sigg water bottle in my bag. I drink from the camelbak because I can walk at full speed, and sip. With the Sigg bottle I need to stop.

Refill from the Sigg Bottle

When I get low on water in the Camelbak I refill it from the Sigg Water bottle. It takes a few seconds and then I can continue walking. As I refilled the water bottle the first time I had a tractor heading straight for me so I went into the corn crop. The driver was looking at his phone. At least by being in mature corn he would sub-consciously know to avoid the corn. I was fine.

Replenishing on Electrolytes

For a long time I haven’t had electrolyte drinks because I felt no need. Now that we’re in a heat wave I am taking the time to remineralise, after the walks. I get so warm during the walk that I’m constantly “glowing” or “glistening”. My body is constantly covered in evaporating water and I am cooling down.

The Soaked Hat

During the last two walks I have felt that the sun was getting a little too strong so I soaked my hat twice today, once yesterday, and I soaked my entire self two days ago. Although I feel in control I know that these walking conditions are dangerous. That’s why I have 1.6 litres of water, and why I routed myself so that the fountain was near the end of the walk rather than the beginning. I can also catch buses home on two different bus lines if I suddenly feel overwhelmed and unable to continue

Why I Walk At The Hottest Time Of The Day

One of the reasons I love walking after 1300 is that no one else does. Most people lock themselves indoors and sleep, nap or do other things. I like to walk when it’s too hot for normal people to walk. It’s nice to have the landscape to myself.

During my walk I saw clouds of dust two or three times. They are created by tractors preparing the soil to plant the next crops. In one case I saw the dust rise high into the air and considered how strong the thermals must be at the moment, for the column to be so well pronounced.

And Finally

I have been for two walks and a bike ride. I came home feeling fine. I didn’t feel too thirsty, or too faint, or coughing. I am pushing myself by being in the sun at the hottest time of day but this year has been more gentle than others. I also carry more than enough water, and know where fountains that work are. If I saw a negative effect then I would stop exposing myself to these weather conditions.

Cycling From Nyon To the Signal De Bougy and Back
| |

Cycling From Nyon To the Signal De Bougy and Back

Byrichard

Yesterday I looked at the wind, and when I saw that it was coming from the east I decided to cycle into it, for the outward journey, and back, with it, on the journey back. Originally my plan was to cycle to Rolle and to turn around but the plan changed. I was cycling and I overtook a woman. I like to challenge myself to overtake everyone. I especially like to overtake everyone, as a personal challenge, until I am too tired.


View of Swiss vineyards


A little later I checked behind me and I saw a cyclist drafting behind me and I thought, “will he overtake and will we take turns drafting for each other.” but the person never did. I struggled hard, against the wind at moments. I was still comfortable but I could feel fatigue growing after Rolle. I could feel myself slow, but still no overtaking. Eventually I indicated that I was turning left, to head upwards and I turned around.


The person that had drafted behind me for half an hour was the girl/woman I had overtaken. I thought I was being drafted by a lazy man, but in reality I was being a gentlemanly wind plough for another cyclist. I wish I had known, I would have continued the ride.


In a different age I would have decided to continue, and had a conversation. We are in the pandemic age, and we know that men talking to women they do not know, is easily construed as worthy as trouble, so not worth the danger.


On the flipside I found that I love the concept of cycling with a woman, of either us being the remora, whilst the other makes it easier for the other. I am infatuated with the idea of cycling activities with women as company, as I was for climbing, hiking and via ferrata. So in reality I haven’t changed. Just the sport has.


Although it was a strenuous bit of riding with an anonymous person taking advantage to make less effort behind me, this was the most intimate moment of this pandemic. A full half hour with a stranger, with barely a word exchanged. A “good continuation” when I changed course, but that was it. The pandemic has made life like this for celibate people who are careful not to get or spread covid.


We now have years of solitude under our belt. Our idea of intimacy is so simplified that a shared bike ride with no exchanged words, becomes a “shared experience”. My ambitions are so much lower now. A bike ride in silence has become enough,


The pandemic will not end, and I am impatient for the next experience like this. I enjoyed the experience, and the conviviality of a shared bike ride.


Back to the main reason for this blog post. If you cycle along the lake and climb from the lake road to Aubonne, the ride is more gentle and pleasant. The part after the arboretum is more demanding and drivers behave like idiots so it’s worth being wary of them. Once at the top the ride down is nice. Ride past Signal de Bougy, turn left and that’s where the nice downhill section starts.


My loop is around fourty eight kilometres.

On The Desire To Change Career
| | |

On The Desire To Change Career

Byrichard

If I had been smart I would have changed career path around 2006-2007 when I was in London surrounded by entrepreneurs and web developers, rather than now during a pandemic. Normally I struggle to find new contracts because of two things. The first is that for camera and editing work there are very few opportunities per year, and the opportunities that do arise have hundreds, if not thousands of candidates so the probability of success is low. The other issue is that because there are few jobs, if you fail you may have to wait months for an opportunity to appear.


That’s why I have spent the entirety of the pandemic reskilling. Every single day I study web development. I have gone from IT support courses, to CSS to HTML, to Javascript to frameworks and back to JavaScript. The journey is long and hard. When I was finally free to study Angular in depth I found that my knowledge of Javascript was not deep enough, so I went back and studied on JS pathway, and now I am studying a second one on Linkedin Learning. My goal is to be proficient. This isn’t a one day goal. This is a journey.


You can follow my journey on github to see what I am learning. One of my side projects, to practice what I have learned is this one. At the moment it is a simple app that retrieves a random image from my instagram gallery and displays it with its title. This self-project is worthwhile because it is easy to follow a course and code along with the teacher. The problem with this is that when there is no teacher, and no model you need to innovate and find your own solutions.


Last year when I tried something similar I found a way to convert from Json to CSV to bring it into Wordpress. Now I am working with Fetch, random number generators to find a post, let to be within the scope of one block, converting epoch time to human readable date and time, and more. If I followed instructions I would find it easy to do, but I couldn’t find any, so I am experimenting with ideas from courses. The next step is to find how to use classes and ids’ to embellish it with CSS.


I started with the random post generator. The next steps will be to use constructors, for each loops, display ten posts at a time, but also to enable finding them by year and month. I can also add more metadata fields than I can with Instagram. I could add country, type of landscape and more. I can practice building a CMS from the ground up. In letters of motivation I wrote about learning about Media Asset management tools from the ground up, and now out of curiousity, that is what I am doing.


It has taken a while to understand how Javascript works, but now that I have I can spend more time experimenting and learning each day. My increasing proficiency will be shown through the projects I build in courses, but also the self-led project.


Sometimes I add comments to commits, to explain what I found hard, and then I show the code that resolved the issue. If you’re curious as to why I would use a self-hosted json file and media files the answer is simple. I don’t need to go through the process of asking for permission to acccess an api to access my own data. For an example of working with ajax and json you can refer to this project.


And Finally


When you work in the media and broadcasting you constantly need to look for opportunities, to face rejection, and continue looking. With the skills I am learning now people are already interested, and that is the reason to change from skills that are less interesting, to those that are.

Playing With Garmin Coach

Playing With Garmin Coach

Byrichard

Today I began playing with Garmin Coach. I decided to try one of the running programs. It’s the first of January, first day of the year, and I have already been for two walks and a run. The run was a calibration run so I ran too fast and too hard so I burned out on the first task. I ran at 16km/h and 230 steps per minute for a short burst before tiring and slowing a bit.


In the end I did not reach the 5 minute mark, but only by 45 seconds or so. With a different gradient I probably would have made the five minute mark, as well as with a more rational pace. I was tricked. I read that I was meant to do a hard run to the maximum of my ability so I tried.


When I got home I saw that it said “a moderate pace” so I think I pushed too hard for the first run. Now I feel physically tired. That’s due to the sound of fireworks for hours over the new year.



When you do a workout on the Garmin Instinct, without audio queues the watch asks “Do workout, you select yes, and it gives you the visual queues for when to warm up, run and rest. It then ends the workout but does not stop the track. This means that if you have to walk the rest of the way home, or to a car, you can, and it will be included in the workout.


That the watch displays workout information like this is practical because you don’t need to count “from 0 to 2 minutes I do this, then from 2 to 5 I do that, etc. You simply say yes to the workout and that’s enough. Next time I need to check audio queues from the watch, and another time, audio queues from the phone via earphones.


As I am just one workout in I have not formed a concrete opinion on the workout.

Lac De Divonne

Lac De Divonne

Byrichard

It’s a lake that was dug out when they built the A1 motorway. The quarry that was left behind became a lake. For a long time cars could drive around the lake.


View of the Lac De Divonne


The loop around the lake is good for walking, cycling, rollerblading and more. It is around 3.6km long and there are plenty of parking spaces beside it. If you want there is another option.


That option is the Voie Verte as it is called in France. There used to be a train line from Nyon to Divonne but it was destroyed to make way for the motorway. Some of the tracks were pulled up and it went wild.


Eventually they cut all the overgrowth, tarmaced the road, and gave it to cyclists, walkers and more. It’s a way to go from Crassier to Divonne without putting up with cars.


The advantage of this lake is that it is a flat loop. You can use it to run, cycle or rollerblade laps. You can use it to run a specific distance without having to invent a route along roadsides and more. It’s a way of working on endurance without the challenge of undulating terrain.


Aside from the lake there is a model solar system that is to a scale you can walk along. It gives you an idea of how much space is between the planets in the solar system as well as the relative size.


On the opposite side of the lake you have a reconstructed aqueduct for children to see how water was taken from Divonne to Nyon at the times of the Romans when Nyon was Julia Equestrius.


The lake is a tame simple walk that can be used for a number of things. It also has the advantage of being tarmaced. This means that even people like me can go for a walk without getting muddy shoes.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.