We’re just days away from Switzerland rebooting in Safe Mode. Rebooting in Safe mode means that children will go back to School on alternating days. Hairdressers and creches are already open. So are flower shops.
When I went to the local shopping the music festival maze to get into the shops was simplified and made more efficient. You don’t need to walk around so much. The doors to the shopping centers are also opening in the normal configuration again. Life is already to return towards safe-mode normal.
French people in Switzerland have fallen in love with the sentence «Il faut agir aussi vite que possible, mais aussi lentement que nécessaire». Translated it means “We must act as quickly as possible, but be as meticulous as possible” or something to that effect. It’s important to be responsive, and to take the time it takes, to get life back to normal, safely.
Part of this experiment should include a smartphone app to track who we’re close to and when. It’s developed by the EPFL and we’ll see how it behaves and if it provides us with any interesting or useful information. I’m a fan of apps that provide me with information about the information I’m providing. I like Google Maps for this reason. I’ll have an opinion on Monday.
Rather than go for my daily walk I went for a daily bike ride. I went as far as Versoix and back in a respectable loop. The borders are still shut so the paths I like to take are not accessible yet.
While some of us have gone fifty-two days without being within two meters of another person due to the pandemic others walk side by side down country lanes, forcing those walking alone to make the decision of whether to risk infecting the vulnerable couple or stepping off the road and waiting under an electricity pylon while the selfish people clear the way.
In the image above we can clearly see two couples walking side by side. If these couples could walk single file then single people would be able to move around more freely. That’s why I went for walks in the rain, why I walked through muddy fields and paths that became streams. It’s the only way to avoid these people. Solitary confinement may be the reason this behaviour bothers me so much. It’s hard to see people that are not alone, when we are.
If I was walking in open fields at the moment I would have been charged at least two or three times by cows protecting their young. The reason for this is that they’re with calves that are just a week or three old. You can see them stand defensively and that they’re ready to charge you if you get too close.
Now would be a very bad time to walk into an enclosure. Now is a good time to be careful when hiking.
When you’re driving from Nyon to the airport without traffic the journey takes about twenty minutes. If you decide to drive into the city of Geneva that journey time is doubled thanks in main part to traffic lights. It once took me over one hour when scuba diving in Hermance to drive from Place des Nations to the other side of the Mont Blanc Bridge. That’s over one hour for less than two kilometres. That idea cooled down my motivation to dive in Hermance. At the time I was driving a petrol rather than a diesel car.
Yesterday I was driving from the foot of the Jura to Cornavin and the drive from the foot of the Jura to Geneva was fast. It’s when you drive from the motorway to the centre that you lose time. 23 minutes to drive 3.8km. I don’t have a start/stop car so when I’m spending 23 minutes at traffic lights the engine is running and polluting the air for nothing. There is no gain from blocking traffic lights.
It was even worse when I was on Rue Montbrillant. The GPS indicated 15 minutes to travel about 750 metres. Can you imagine the carbon footprint of traffic lights? That’s 15 minutes of nitrous oxide that had no need to be sent into the air. Imagine the health impact of keeping vehicles trapped at traffic lights. Within 30 seconds I went right and parked at Place des Nations and walked the last 750 metres. I wasn’t going to waste 15 minutes because “environmentalists” decided that the best way to discourage people from driving was for them to sit in traffic and pollute the air.
When I was working on Rue Montbrillant I was taking the train to and from Geneva every day and I used an abonnement de route to reduce cost. It works well until you’re reliant on bus schedules. Some routes have one bus an hour. This means that a 30-40 minute drive becomes a one and a half hour public transport route. If you finish your day at 1800 you’d arrive home by around 1930-2000. This means that although you’re taking the environmentally friendly option you’re spending two and a half hours a day to commute. During warmer months and drier days, the scooter was a good alternative. Within minutes you’re on the train to Geneva.
That’s the paradox of environmentalism. You want people to be environmentally conscious and you want them to minimise car use but rather than provide them with time efficient solutions to encourage them to take public transport you trap them at traffic lights.
Waze, Tomtom and other GPS manufacturers should take the heat maps we generate with our mobile devices every time we drive and design public transport infrastructures to replace the need for cars. This data is already available. Below are two heat maps of cycling around London and Switzerland. If you used the same type of data from cars you could design a system that replaces the need for cars.
When you live in a city you see two kilometres as a big distance to drive but when you’re in the countryside 2km is nothing. London on a bike feels tiny after walking and taking public transport. In Geneva it’s not that you have much traffic. It’s that the traffic lights give the illusion of traffic. Most of the side streets are empty of traffic most of the time.
This week I wanted to cycle in to Geneva for my lunch time meetings but chose not to because the bike ride is energetic enough without the weight of a 15inch laptop on your back. I did buy a bluetooth keyboard for the mobile phone as a mac book air replacement. That should make cycling more pleasant. I also have spare tires in case I get a puncture.
Geneva’s traffic light policy did work on me. Several years ago I became so tired of waiting at traffic lights when driving into and out of Geneva that I stopped going. Instead of meeting people in Geneva I drove to various lakes to scuba dive and to the mountains to climb, hike, cycle and do other more environmentally friendly activities. This is especially true when we drive other participants. When I climb Fort L’écluse I meet people at CERN and when I meet people to go to Swiss VF I meet them at the Nyon train station, Fourmi metro stations or even the Lavaux motorway stop.
For once I walked in the drizzle, rather than the rain but I could hear thunder as I got home. I have almost reading Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home during this walk. Poetically I was listening to her about walking with a storm on its way whilst a storm was thundering over the Jura.
The rain became heavy just as I got close to home so today I am not drenched to the bone, and in need of a change of clothes like yesterday. I started today’s walk by running for the first two and a half kilometres, using the Guardian’s running podcast week three, for the fourth time. I didn’t run last week and I prefer to give my legs time to acclimate to running before pushing too much.
I spent most of my waking hours today working on the website. I’m still working on the front page and I think it’s almost ready to go live. It’s built with CSS, a little javascript, and grids. I have it behaving as I want it to behave. It looks good, whether viewed on a “desktop” or a mobile phone.
What I learned while working on the front page has helped. When I was making web pages mobile-friendly a week or two ago was bare bones and I didn’t change much. Now when I re-worked three or four pages today I used CSS where I could. I replaced tables with CSS and with pages where I had lists I used CSS to enhance lists. There is one page I still need to re-work, but I need to think about how to do something interesting.
Today I was caught outdoors during a thunderstorm but rather than run to shelter or rush home I continued taking a timelapse video of some flowers. According to the apps we were meant to get some rain at 1800 so I expected it to be short lived.
This didn’t stop my clothes or my bag from getting wet but I was wearing hiking trousers and I wasn’t worried about the shoes. I didn’t expect anything to be soaked through and I did prepare to run home if need be. By the time I was ready to run the rain was stopping so I took out the phone and waited, and tried to capture lightning.
When the Pandemic was just starting I thought that this would be perfect for a daily bike ride and I was tempted to go to the mountains and to do other things. I didn’t though, because emergency services said “Don’t monopolise our resources getting injured because we may be required to help with the COVID-19 situation. Within three or four weeks they changed their statement to “if you need help we’re still here, our emergency services are still working as normal.
Last year I broke my arm on a day of Canicule and I spent at least four hours waiting to be seen. The wait was so long that I started to lose patience. When finally I was seen, and the break was confirmed the doctor was smiling, almost laughing. “Normally when people break their arm they can’t rotate their wrist”. It shows that despite my interior monologue being impatient during the wait my exterior monologue was polite and courteous to the point where a doctor was relaxed and good-humoured.
I didn’t want to repeat this experience during a pandemic. My other concern, and reason for not cycling was that if the chain broke I would have to walk home, get the car, and then return and get the bike. To call for help would be to break self-isolation for myself and someone else and I was unwilling to do this. That’s why I walked everywhere within range of home.
During the bike ride I saw a lot of cyclists but what was really interesting is that there were more bikes than cars on the roads, at least on the roads I rode along. It was also interesting to see how I was cycling past some people so quickly. It seems that walking every day for so many months has a beneficial effect. It’s also because I am not fatigued.
As people can’t go to the shops, can’t go to the mountains, have walked enough, and more we find that plenty of people are actively cycling. Usually when I look at flyby information I see four or five bikes at a time. Today the map lit up in a way I have never seen before. Twenty people cycling simultaneously in twos or threes.
I overheard someone ask “so do we go down or do we go straight across”. They were new to cycling in the region. As I was doing the cycling equivalent of HYOH (Hike your own Hike), Bike your own bike ride, BYOB, not to be confused with the beer/beverage version, I just continued exploring.
Today’s route was different than usual because I had three variables. The first variable was that I wasn’t allowed to leave the Canton De Vaud. The second variable was that I couldn’t go into France so my usual ride segments were out of the question. The third variable was to ensure that the ride was not too short. I accomplished all three of these goals.
I got five personal records during this ride, which isn’t bad and for one segment I was in the top 5.4 percent. it won’t change my life. I got that time on a segment I love to race cars down. It’s a straight road and the bike lane is downhill so it’s easy to go fast. What was unusual is that I was giving so much power, but without burning out. When I stopped pushing it was to coast, rather than because I flamed out.
I downloaded a Chrome extension to block Twitter and Facebook. Neither of these sites provides me with what I need during this pandemic so rather than delete my accounts, as I almost did this morning, I blocked them. If websites don’t bring joy block them. Good mental health, during a pandemic, especially when self-isolating alone is essential.
As I write this blog post we’re getting the first rain in over a month. Finally the rivers will be able to get their fill. Imagine if I had been caught in the rain during my bike ride. I love the sound of rain on the veluxes.
There was a time when I would change the rear tyre regularly. I was changing from an indoor trainer tyre to a road tyre and back regularly. I developed my skill at this art and then the pandemic occured and I stopped changing tyres as regularly. Recently I went for a 74km bike ride and when I checked the tyre a day or two later I noticed that the rubber was gone and the fibres were showing. I went for one last bike ride, and then I swapped the old tyre for a new one.
Frequent Changes When I Used Zwift
Swapping tyres, once you know how to do it takes a minute or two, with the right tools and right level of experience. It took me 15 minutes. It took that long because I haven’t replaced a rear tyre in three or four years so the right habits had to resurface. When they did the process was quick, and painless.
In the past when I changed tyres I pinched my fingers, or hurt myself in other ways. This time I didn’t even draw blood. That’s a smooth and efficient tyre change.
Wait Until Punctures?
I intended to wear it through until the first puncture. The tyre damage was clear. I swapped it. It’s better to swap the tyre at home, rather than have to swap and inflate the tyre on a bike ride with a tiny pump rather than the proper home bike pump.
What’s Next?
The tyres that I have on my bike have been discontinued so I have to choose which tyres to replace them, several thousand kilometres from now. The rear tyre is brand new, and the front tyre looks fine. Indoor trainers ruin tyres because they wear them out unevenly. The bottom is flattened but the sides are fine. The front tyre is fine.
Good For Another Two Years
if I ride like I have been riding then I’m good for another two or three years before I need to swap the tyres. I’m using continental Grand Prix 4000 S II tyres and they last for three or four thousand kilometres before needing a swap.
And Finally
I’m tempted to shop for new tyres but it isn’t urgent, as tyres can last for years, or thousands of kilometres before being swapped. By the time I need new tyres new technology will have come out. I can also buy new tyres when the price goes down. At the moment they’re 10-20 CHF more than at their low point.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.