Have you ever considered how nice it would be to wake up when the sun comes up, and to end the day when the sun goes down? In summer the days would be long and filled with memories. In winter we would head to sleep when the sun sets. Every day we would either gain three minutes or lose three minutes. The curse is not the light bulb itself, of course, but rather in the ability for people to make…
When rain becomes a treat you get used to looking at rivers that are running drier and drier with every passing day. The river pictured below is so low that you see the river bed in many parts. It’s a meter or more below it’s usual level. Imagine being a weather forecaster during a drought. Today it will be dry and sunny, as it has been for a few seasons. In periods of heavy rain the water reaches to the…
Today a tractor was ploughing a dry field. A cloud of dust was not that visible but you can see that rain would now be welcome. I walked by the usual river and looked down and the rocks in the riverbed are uncovered. There is no water running over them anymore. I notied that in another field pumpkins seem to be ready. MétéoSuisse note encore qu’après les deux mois d’été très humides de juin et juillet, des précipitations inférieures à…
Today during my walk I noticed a sticker on a sign for EuroVélo.com. I don’t know how new the project is but I had not paid attention to the URL before. I like the idea of a European Network of Cycling Routes. I don’t need to capitalise these words. I just did, for some reason. During my walk I was listening to two podcast episodes of a single podcast about hiking the AT and other hikes in the US. It’s…
With the weather system that we have had over Europe a lot of rain has fallen. So much rain has fallen that it has swollen rivers and flooded plenty of regions. In Switzerland, because almost everything is on a hill flooding might be noticed in some parts of certain cities, but in theory it is easy, within meters, to be safe from the flood. Today in the port of Nyon you can see that the boats are much higher than…
There is an article on Swiss Radio and Television that discusses the positive impact that the flooding has had on the water tables. For several years not only have we had warm weather but we have also gone with very little or no rain for months at a time. During some weeks we were told “The water reserves are so low that we will soon need to switch to retrieving water from the lake rather than our reservoires. Underground water…
Switzerland and Europe are currently experiencing flooding. All the major Swiss lakes are close to breaking their banks. A few weeks ago, you could read about how Switzerland had been so dry that it had started to register on the aridity index. Now it’s flooded. Some people are bored by the rain, and wishes that it would go away, but I don’t feel that way. We had years with very little rain, so to finally get some rain is welcome….
We are in a pandemic where the only disease vector is proximity to others, so in theory this is one of the easiest pandemics to overcome, and end. In practice people are like cats, and getting them to self-isolate is like herding cats. Paradoxically if people were as hard to herd as cats, then the pandemic would have ended over a year ago and today we’d be doing something more fun. During this pandemic we see that the numbers take…
The title of this post is a joke, not a serious delusion of isolation. I saw that a few sunflowers had come out but that they were looking away, rather than towards me. They are looking at the morning sun and I was walking in the afternoon. They are still in the process of coming out. Today I was asked if I wanted to go to a restaurant and I automatically said no. Given the data about the rising number…
It is important to know that you are in Justified Self-Isolation. Over the last three or four days I have felt like an idiot for self-isolating, but I now see that this is entirely justified. The R number for some canton went from 0.70 or so up to 1.4 or higher in recent days. This is for Bern, Geneva and Vaud, and it should spread more with the weekend. As tough as it is to keep self-isolating and not meeting…