A person rides a horse along a dirt road near some woods.
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Day 64 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – “When I’m 64”

Byrichard
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Earlier today or yesterday at some point I was thinking of the song When I’m 64, and that I should share it. I’m not 64. Quarantine hasn’t aged me so drastically. I felt the need to make that joke.

Recycling

For the first time in two months I went to the recycling centre today. For at least two months I cleaned everything that could be recycled and sorted it into the correct bag. I was waiting for an auspicious time to take all this stuff to the recycle centre and today was that day.

I still spent more time waiting in the car, to get into the recycling centre, than actually in the centre. I’m organised with recycling so that it takes me seconds rather than minutes. I need to improve my paper recycling habits so that I can take seconds, as I do with everything else. Years ago I used to be disorganised about how I sorted things. I became systematic because I wanted to make the process almost instantaneous and it works.

Post Pandemic Spring Clean

Some writers or journalists were encouraging people to spring clean at the height of the pandemic but this made no sense to me. Why would you want to generate more rubbish and more things to recycle when going to recycle would take hours rather than minutes?

It feels nice to have finally got plastic, aluminium, PET, Glass and other things back under control. The next stage is to “turn the home into a museum” stage. It’s my way of saying “cleaning a place so that you can no longer tell that someone lives there.”

In a few weeks the idea of having guests may no longer be an alien concept so we might as well be ready.

Those Who are Alone and Want To Do Something Social, and Those Who Are Not, but Behave cruelly.

On social Media and Activities websites you see that there are two types of people. Those who are desperate to do something social, after two months of solitude, and those who are cruel and make it clear that they want to exclude people. It’s cruel because self-isolation and solitude are hard. I’m impatient for the chance to go hiking with people, of cycling with people, of shaking hands, or even simply having a conversation at a normal distance.

The Number of New infections in Switzerland faceplanting.

Although faceplanting is not an academic term it does reflect how impatient I am for the pandemic to be over so that I can get back to having a life in the physical world. By physical I mean handshakes and riding in the same car as someone else. It’s been at least 64 days since I did either.

Web Mastering

At the moment my biggest investment of time is working on my website. I’m making sure that I understand the bits of CSS that I am learning and applying them to page after page. It may be time consuming and repetitive but the goal is to learn, and master new skills. Repetition is my friend.

It’s also a way of working on a new portfolio while considering another career pivot. If the pessimists are right and we still have months of solitude and self-isolation then web mastering is a good direction to take.

And Finally

It’s easy to feel down for several hours a day during a pandemic and we need to find methods by which to stay sane and to stay stable. I believe that to a large extent I have but this is fragile.

We don’t know whether we will be able to socialise this summer. If we can’t then we have to survive another winter of solitude.

Take a look at the legacy part of my website. My Weathering page will make you dream of hiking.

If you have pictures of mountains outside of Europe I’d be interested. Leave a comment below

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Cycling With Different Levels of Fitness
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Cycling With Different Levels of Fitness

Byrichard

Originally I wanted to write about following route 50 from one village to Romainmôtier. I changed my mind as I created the title for this post.


An old pickup truck and bike
An old pickup truck and bike


Yesterday I cycled with two people on electric bikes on my normal bike. I didn’t feel that I was making that great an effort, especially since I was cycling at a relatively slow speed compared to usual. I actually felt that I was taking it easy.


View of one of the porticos
View of one of the porticos


Calories Burned


It’s when I looked at calories burned that I realised that what felt like an easy ride to me, was actually a huge effort. It didn’t feel that way to me, because it is normal for me to make such an effort, and I usually push myself when I ride alone.


Three Times More Calories


By riding with people with electric bikes I felt that I was having a relatively easy day. I burned three times more calories than them. It shows to what extent being fit affects how we perceive effort, but also how much energy electric bikes save.


Perfectly Within My Comfort Zone


A window seat and table, from the days before planes and trains
A window seat and table, from the days before planes and trains


I was surprised by the huge difference in calories burned because I felt comfortable. I didn’t feel that I was struggling to keep pace with the bikes, or struggling on hills whilst they glided with ease. That’s the beauty of cycling a lot. Effort becomes ordinary, and fitness makes electric bikes harder to justify. Why get an electric bike when you can cycle with people with electric bikes and keep up?


Cyclists and Non Cyclists Riding Together


There are two types of people. Those that invests hundreds of hours over several years to boost their cycling fitness, and those that use electric bikes, to keep up with those with experience. I would argue that the strength of the electric bike is two-fold. The first is that it encourages non cyclists to cycle and experience the pleasure of getting from A to B under their own steam, but the second is that electric bikes allow non cyclists to ride with cyclists, and get a taste of what we enjoy.


Visiting Romainmôtier by bike


Romainmôtier is a nice destination to cycle to. The road takes you through a nice quiet road in the forest. The woods are the Bois De Ferreyres. The route that I took was undulating, with some climbing and some descending, but these ondulations are not extreme like cycling up to La Dôle or up to La Rippe, so manageable.


Cycling Destination


Quite a few people cycled to Romainmôtier and I noticed that a few went into the grounds of the Abbaye and rested their bikes against the wall, before having a drink. By taking the bike parking is simplified, but as well as parking being simplified, you get to experience the landscape first hand. You’re faster than a hiker, but still get to experience the winding roads, the ups, the downs, and the freedom to stop with the bike, more conveniently than with a car.


An old fireplace
An old fireplace


Recommendation


If you are not a confident cyclist, and don’t want to spend hundreds of hours getting fit, then electric bikes are a fantastic short cut because they give you the freedom to explore, without the dread of having to get back, despite being knackered. Electric bikes are more forgiving than cycling without a motor. With an electric bike you just ask for more assistance and you’re comfortable.


Relaxing Cows – The Right Crowd To Be With During A Pandemic

Relaxing Cows – The Right Crowd To Be With During A Pandemic

Byrichard

During a pandemic it makes sense to go to the mountains and it makes sense to walk where you have space to the left and right to keep social distancing. Today I saw the cows near St Cergue and they were all sitting and relaxing, chewing the cud, waiting for the tourist day to open.



I haven’t been to the mountains much over the last four years because of the pandemic, a broken arm and for one summer no car. I say this but I did go up, on a bike. I have been up at least three or four times this year. I’ve been up to St Cergue via the safe road, la Barillette via the normal road, once, and up the steep La Rippe climb twice. It’s not that I don’t go to the mountains, it is that I do go up and going up is the workout, not what I do once at the top.


I avoid the mountains during the pandemic because I can’t avoid people on narrow paths that go up a mountain. I’d rather walk where the paths are wide and where I can observe adequate social distancing. As we see the pandemic is far from over and we must actively avoid being disease vectors, and falling sick. I’m fully vaccinated but News shows that we should not be lulled into a false and flawed sense of security.


I miss going to the mountains to do group activities every weekend but for that to be possible we need to get the delta variant to be dealt with, and we need for people to vaccinate. Society has opened up, before people were vaccinated, and before 14 days of zero new infections had elapsed.


The situation is bad enough for Anne Levy to say, “I’m worried”, but whether she will act on it, or just play lip service is not certain. In the eyes of many people the Swiss government should act now, rather than wait.


The sooner the pandemic ends, the sooner I can revert to writing adventure blog posts.

Northern Exposure and Blowing Bubbles
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Northern Exposure and Blowing Bubbles

Byrichard

Northern Exposure is a series about a doctor who finds himself sent to Alaska to be a doctor for a few years. He thinks that it is the middle of nowhere and he has to adapt from enjoying life as a New Yorker to life as a frontier town doctor.  


Early colza in the Canton of Vaud
Early colza in the Canton of Vaud


Although the series is thirty plus years old it still remains relevant today with its exploration of global warming, pollution and more. The characters have existential conversations and in a few episodes we meet the man living in a geodesic dome. He lives in the dome to avoid pollution. He is allergic to aluminium, methane gas and more. 


It’s an interesting episode to watch within the context of the pandemic. People, including me, continue to wear masks when we are indoors. People think that we are strange for doing this. The pandemic isn’t over. We hear all the time about how Long COVID lies dormant, whether people are symptomatic for weeks, months of years after primary infection. It makes sense to wear masks, given that a mask takes a second to wear and take off, but long COVID can be for life. 


Cars coming from Geneva on Easter Friday
Cars coming from Geneva on Easter Friday


The idea of being allergic to the modern world, to various forms of pollution is an interesting one. We read about forever minerals and plastics in drinking water, more and more often, and about air pollution. We have CO2 monitors to keep an eye on pollution. We have maps of pollution around cities, motorways and more. The topic is still relevant today. 


This television isn’t on Netflix or Amazon Prime. It is on Filmin, a film network for experimental films. The content is niche, more diverse and more interesting. as long as you understand Spanish. It has films like Nano of the North, which I find interesting. I know this because when I typed North for Northern Exposure it suggested Nanook of the North, a documentary film I read about regularly when I was studying documentary. 


Modern television series should have people wearing masks to socialise. “Lunatics” like me, who still wear masks, should be normalised in modern television series, to show that being cautious should not be worthy of stigmatisation and prejudice. Northern Explored pollutants in the air. Modern series should explore the reasons for still masking despite the gas lighting of politicians, stating that the pandemic is over, despite the death rate telling a different story. 

Muddy Shoes and a Drought

Muddy Shoes and a Drought

Byrichard

Every morning the landscape is covered in frost. That frost melts and turns to water, which in turn, turns to mud, and cakes my shoes. Unfortunately there has been no rain for weeks, and there is no rain expected for weeks. We are in another drought although most people will not call it that, yet. They prefer to enjoy the sunshine and ignore the deeper problem.


This risk of drought is recognised. The RTS wrote about how people are getting water tanks, due to the regularity of droughts. The problem is so bad that aside from the article about people buying water tanks to store their own rain water there is another one speaking about how the underground water table is at risk. “Il faudrait donc qu’il pleuve quasiment non-stop jusqu’à fin mars pour que les nappes phréatiques retrouvent leur niveau normal”. It would need to rain non-stop for two weeks for the water tables to find their required levels.


I miss the rain. I miss the rain because when it rains it feels like a treat to have good weather. I miss the rain because I like the sound it makes on the roof. I miss the rain because it fills the rivers and makes them interesting to watch. I miss the rain because without rain the sky becomes boring. There is no reason to look at the sky, or to look at weather apps when the weather never changes.


One of the most flagrant changes, when there is enough rain, is how the grass and other plants grow, by the side of the road. Paths that were easy to walk along, before rain, would become more challenging to walk along, when the rain has given the plants the water they need to grow. It means less grass cutting, it means fewer plants growing. We’re in spring now, and without rain we will not see plants germinate in the usual way.


I miss bad weather because the pandemic isn’t over, and there is nothing to be gained from the weather being good. Good weather is monotonous.

Mental Health and Social media
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Mental Health and Social media

Byrichard

There is a lot of discussion about Mental Health and social media because most people are not social media natives. They are either Luddites who do not appreciate playing with technology. They see themselves as users rather than participants and then there are extroverts and other people who see Social Media as a threat to their way of life. We live in societies built for extroverts rather than textroverts. As a textroverts social media is a place for me to have full conversations without having to compete with extroverts who often hijack conversations through charisma and the superficiality of what they have to say. The Royal Society for public health wrote a paper on the topic

It’s amusing that Instagram is theoretically the worst social app because if people use it like me then they would share their hikes, their climbs and their adventures. These would lead to FoMO and a feeling of solitude if people were motivated to do the same activities as me but unable to. Anxiety, body image, depression and bullying are all consequences of how marketers have encouraged people to use instagram. When brands and social media “personalities” post certain images and when brands promote certain behaviours then they encourage people to idealise the wrong things. They encourage superficiality rather than genuine interactions.

It should be highlighted that a lot of people use Instagram for selfies and this leads people to compare themselves to others. If they photograph food, sports, mountains, seasides and more the negative aspects highlighted above would vanish.

It’s amusing that Youtube is the highest and most positively ranked social medium because it is the one that my generation see as having the most negative comments. We often joke that youtube is fine until you read the comments. It’s good that people like Twitter and Facebook because twitter is great for getting to know people and Facebook is a useful way of staying in touch with friends when we travel and move around for work and university.

The Royal Society for Public Health came out with a few recommendations:

1. The introduction of a pop-up heavy usage warning on social media

If social media is an integral part of social life, rather than an addition to it then this recommendation does not apply. If twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social networks are integrated seamlessly into our daily lives then “heavy usage” would not occur and thus warnings would be redundant. Social media is part of a lifestyle. It is only when marketers trick people into following rather than conversing that it becomes toxic and require time limits.

2. Social media platforms to highlight when photos of people have been
digitally manipulated

If it wasn’t for the selfie and disinformation this recommendation would not be needed. The skills to tell which images are digitally manipulated can easily be taught. This generation grow up playing with the software used to alter these images in the first place.

3. NHS England to apply the Information Standard Principles to health
information published via social media

Media literacy is a skill that should be taught along with reading. As soon as people are able to read they should be taught to discern between reliable and unreliable information. This is a skill that should be taught from the moment someone learns to read to the moment they graduate from university. Media literacy is a very important skill in the information age.

4. Safe social media use to be taught during PSHE education in school

Grown ups are just as likely to suffer from bullying and other behaviour so it does not apply just to children. In the early days of the world wide web we all used avatars and nicknames rather than our real identity. This helped us play online without much danger. We see that safe spaces have been created for people below a certain age to interact online. Now that the world wide web has come of age it is important to work on creating more geographically relevant social environments like this.

5. Social media platforms to identify users who could be suffering from
mental health problems by their posts and other data, and discreetly
signpost to support

The nature of social media can be an introspective one and as such encourages people to be open about how they feel. Aside from signposting people who are at risk social media and social networks could create discreet groups on Facebook and other social networks where people can assemble of their own free will. By discreet groups I mean groups where membership and names are withheld both from within and from outside the group.

6. Youth-workers and other professionals who engage with young people to
have a digital (including social) media component in their training

This point amuses me because when I speak to social media experts and social media professionals I see that they see social media as something to do during office hours as part of their job. They do not see it as an addition to their lifestyle and as such are not natives of the medium. If people have a digital (including Social) media component in their training then they should live and breath it.

Too many people provide the wrong impression of social media and how it can be used. Too many people stigmatise it and this helps to emphasise the negative impressions that mainstream people have of social media. Social media is a lifestyle and only those who see it as a lifestyle should teach social media.

7. More research to be carried out into the effects of social media on
young people’s mental health.

A few decades ago we all lived in villages and everyone we knew lived within walking distance. As time progressed and as trains, cars and jet aviation became part of our daily lives so the village we grew up in became a state, a country, a continent, a planet. If you’re going to study social media on young people’s health then you should not ignore that social media is connecting people living in different villages in the countryside and different streets in towns. As such it means that social media could help people who are geographically distant stay together mentally. What should be studied is the negative impact of marketing on people’s natural use of social networks. Marketing and public relations should enhance, not distract from communicating with people.

A Snowy Day

A Snowy Day

Byrichard

Yesterday we had a snowy day. I saw that the snow was beginning to pile up so I went and cleared the snow for fun. I could have left it as it was but I saw an opportunity to have some weight training, for free.


I regret that I didn’t set a fitness tracker to track the snow shovelling as weight training. It took a while and I got at least 2500 steps out of it, but as I wasn’t counting this as a workout the calories burned was counted differently. If I clear snow again I will track it properly.


What surprised me about shovelling snow yesterday is that I broke a sweat but I didn’t feel that I had pushed that hard. It’s nice to be fit enough to get a workout without suffering.


I did this for fun, but I still claimed the action. I do it for fun, but I don’t want someone else to be able to claim work that they didn’t do. I don’t want people getting free credit.


Winter Vines with the Jura behind them
Winter Vines with the Jura behind them


A Quick Walk


I went for a 6.6 kilometre walk afterwards. The light was good. Dark clouds with highlighted hills and trees covered in snow. At least today’s walk was atmospheric. Normally on such a walk I would wear at least one thick, warm layer but I didn’t bother. I think I had enough residual heat left over from the shovelling not to get cold. Luckily this assumption was correct.


And Finally


I haven’t used Twitter for at least two days. I took a break from the site because I don’t like the new owner and what he is turning the platform into but also because it started to feel toxic, rather than enjoyable. Twitter is meant to be a “social” network but how can it be social when we need to make our accounts private to avoid trolls, and tweet anonymously to avoid future problems.


There is an upside. Twitter revenue went down 40% on the same day, from one year to the next with over 500 advertisers suspending spending. Twitter blocked third party apps to control revenue. Tweetbot and twitterific were blocked, if I remember correctly.


Such actions won’t enrich Musk. They will simply encourage people not to trust Twitter, as it behaves erratically. To be of value social networks need to be pleasant and trustworthy. It is neither.


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