Element Wolfeboro Authentech – Spitsbergen, Norway
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Visiting Buildings
There is a rule that you should often visit churches and other buildings, if you are authorised to. You can often find something interesting. In the case of the Temple De Crans-près-Céligny it’s the kitsch paintings and blue colour.
The other reason is for the view when you are outside, especially on a clear day. You can see from Geneva and it’s Jet D’eau to the other side of the lake, with the Alps and occassional trains.
The third and superficial reason to visit is that you can get a Camino De Santiago Stamp. The stamp is inside the church, on the left as you enter. What’s amusing is that just one village away, in Celigny you can also get a Camino Stamp.
I have seen many intereting sites, in churches, which is why I like to visit them. It’s not about religion, but about culture and local context. In Gingins there is a very old tombstone, in another there is a block of marble that Michelangelo started to carve but never finished. In the church above the thing that struck me is the blue. Usually churches are painted white or left gray. This one is a strong blue. It’s lighter, and more vibrant. It feels warm. It has a wooden organ in the back but I forgot to photograph it.
Missing Bees
Today when I walked by some woods I noticed that the beehives have gone and I am not sure why. Was it because of the storm winds, where owners chose to keep the bees safe, or to avoid the coming rain? It’s a small detail with big consequences., When I have walked that path, in summer, with the sunflowers on the other side, I have seen a bee superhighway. If the bees have been moved permanently then it will be quieter.
Climbing to La Barillette
The first time I climbed up to La Barillette on a bike it took me two and a half hours. This time it took one hour and sixteen minutes. I was going so slowly that I had to work to keep the bike upright. Since then I have gone from a mountain bike with tyres that weren’t pumped enough and soft suspension to the same bike with slick tires, hardened suspension and higher pressure in the tyres. I then swapped that bike two or three years later and tried the same climb. I struggled with the road bike as well. I had to stop at least two or three times. I also found that clipped in pedals on such steep gradients are a hindrance because you can’t stop until the flatter bits.
This time I wore normal shoes and I set off from around Nyon. I cycled up to the start of the climb and i just started climbing. Above Cheserex I already had to stand on the bike to get enough thrust, then sit down, and then repeat. As I went up I saw two or three groups. One group set off just as I was getting to them and the second stopped where the first had been.
I like having a group in front of me. The group in front gives me a goal. It gives me a pace. I want at the minimum to keep up with them and ideally to overtake them. The person I used for pacing gave up within the first four to six kilometres. I then continued at my own pace as the other people were now a long distance away.
As I go up this hill I often daydream and my mind wanders to something completely different. It’s the closest I’d get to meditation. You’re making a physical effort but the body is so used to it that the mind has time to think of other things. I don’t remember what I was daydreaming about.
I’m used to doing this climb in the heat of summer when it’s 37°c or more. This time it was no more than 20 or so. I didn’t need to take two litres of water with me but I would have been happy with a rain coat and a third layer. The reason for this is that the beautiful weather I set off in turned overcast and cold.
As I got closer to the top I could feel the temperature begin to drop, and i felt the need to close the zips, to preserve heat. I even thought of putting my spare layer on. I continued.
When you’re climbing you know what your previous times were and during this time I got to a certain point where i saw that I was going to beat my previous best times by a nice margin so it encouraged me to keep going, but also not to stop and rest, and not to wait for two cars to figure out how to pass each other. I cycled through the grass to overtake them.
When I finally got to the top I saw people get out of their cars, smoke cigarettes and talk loudly. I had two Balistos and then headed back down. The view was so bad that I didn’t take any pictures.
As much as you think you suffer during the way up, which I didn’t this time, going down is the difficult bit. When you’re going back down you’re cold and you’re not doing much. You’re letting gravity undo the work that you just spent an hour doing.
My tyres have over 4000km in them so as i went down the hill I was slower than I needed to be. The surface was also wet and therefore could be slippy. I was holding the brakes for a good portion of the descent, to such an extent that I thought this was a good finger strengthening exercise.
Just before I got to the pond my rear tyre suffered a puncture. I can see two marks where I think a thorn or some other object punctured the tyre and deflated it within seconds. It didn’t matter as I had a spare tyre with me.
This winter I changed tyres frequently for the indoor trainer so the process has become automatic. What I especially enjoyed about changing a tyre on the side of a mountain slope is that you don’t have to worry about getting the floor dirty. Within minutes the tyre was changed and I could continue the descent.
This ride is unique because the night before I decided to do this climb we were discussing a via ferrata with two friends but they don’t have the equipment. The compromise was going to climb indoors but I didn’t feel like doing that because 1. the weather was nice and because 2. there are free sports to be enjoyed. I woke up that morning, opened the blinds and because of what a beautiful and warm day I saw it would be I decided to go for a bike ride and enjoy it. It felt so good to get on the bike after several days, or even weeks of not riding.
I was fully within the moment yesterday. I profited from the good weather, I set a goal and I achieved it, and I lived in the now, rather than later. This is rare for me. This ride, despite it’s physical nature, was relaxing.
Avoiding Rush Hour Recycling
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday the recycling centre is open from 1600-2000 or so, which is great if you’re working and want to go after work. The drawback to going at this time is that the one for local villages is down a narrow road where cars can barely pass each other. If you go at rush hour traffic you have commuters, and you have people heading to recycle.
When I had the scooter I would often go with that, because with a scooter it’s easy to go down a narrow road despite cars coming towards you. In a car you need to be careful that the mirrors on your car don’t hit the car coming the opposite way. There are two issues. The first is that the road was narrowed to slow down traffic. The second is that a road that should have no commuter traffic does have commuter traffic. Ideally this would be a one way road system.
If I go at 8 in the morning on a Saturday I miss the rush hour commuters, and I also miss all the people who can’t find the motivation to head to a recycling centre at 8 on a saturday morning. I used to be one of those people. I changed because I found that traffic is more fluid and because it’s quieter.
I find it hard to motivate myself to go and recycle. If it’s raining I use that as an excuse. If it’s sunny I use that as an excuse. If I have just finished my walk as it opens I use that as an excuse not to go.
I have been recycling for two or three decades or more, so the process of sorting recycling is normal. I’ve been recycling glass, aluminium, electronics, grass, paper and other things for a long time. It’s an ordinary part of life. It’s taking things to recycle that I find annoying. That’s why I wait until the car is full to go. I feel that it makes more sense to go when the journey is justified, rather than weekly.
I have started to keep recycling by the car. In so doing the excuse of having to run up and down stairs 3-6 times to take things from home to the car is taken care of. I just need to load the car and go. It’s important to remove key excuses.
I could take my walking loop by the recycling centre but people tend to mount the pavement where I’d be walking. I prefer not to go there by foot. The other option is to recycle things on the mornings when I shop. I could easily turn up five to ten minutes early, recycle some things, and shop.
I have a modular system. If you order things from online shops or other online stores you get boxes. I use these boxes to store PET bottles, glass and more. I wait until they’re full, and then I place them by the car. It’s my way of recycling cardboard boxes, before recycling them. If I use plastic containers, or paper shopping bags I need to bring them back up, after I’ve been to the recycling centre. By using boxes that need to be recycled anyway I have a convenient, modular system, for trips to recycle.
Although it could be seen as lazy not to go every single week I am one person, not two to four people. I generate half to a quarter of what others produce in recycling so it makes sense to go half, or a quarter as often as others. I also save petrol and wear and tear on the car. By going once every few weeks I help reduce congestion around the recycling centre, especially by going at 8am on a Saturday, when others prefer to sleep.
The Noise Pollution of Caribana and Other Music Festivals
Summary
In the 21st century technology exists that could make music festivals sound good for festival goers, whist not ruing the night of sleep for neighbours of the festival. I would like EPFL and other academic groups to work towards finding a way to make music festivals more considerate of neighbouring humans, and wildlife. Music festivals should apply Corporte Social Responsability by reducing noise pollution.
Noisy Summers
During the summer months people organise outdoor events, which is fantastic. What is less fantastic is that those outdoor events are organised to take place from mid to late afternoon, all the way to 2 to 3am. This means that if you live downwind from Music Festivals you will not be able to sleep for days at a time.
Sleepless in Nyon – Due to Paléo and Caribana
Instead of going to bed by 2200 and sleeping by midnight you’re stuck trying to outdo the festival with noise. If you go to bed then you’ll have the noise pollution from the festival for hours.
Staying Up Later
When I was a university student living in halls I would make sure to go to sleep by two or three am, every single night. I wanted to go to sleep after all the noisy people had gone to sleep, to avoid being bothered by noise pollution. It worked extremly well.
The paradox is that I went to sleep after everyone else, but I also got up before a lot of people. I was easily living on four hours of sleep per night. The problem is that I am now two decades older, or thereabouts. I actually need my sleep now.
More Noise Pollution Due to Increasingly Powerful Speakers
The problem with music noise pollution from music festivals is that it is getting louder, with time, rather than quieter. For years I had the noise of the Paléo, during Paléo, but I could sleep through it. It was just barely loud enough to sometimes make out what was playing.
With the Carbiana the music is so loud. three to five kilometres away, as the drone flies, that with an air conditioner and a fan going at full power in a small room, or an extractor fan in a living room/kitchen, the thump is still audible. The speaker stacks are set so loud that two or three villages away you hear the festival as if you were there. That’s with all the windows closed, and double glazed windows.
The Sub Optimal Festival Sound Engineer
Caribana and other music festivals have people who are not that intellectually astute. I say this, because, in the 90s and the zeros there was an excuse for that flood of noise. Technological limitations. In 2023 that excuse is moot. The speakers are more powerful, more noisy.
With speakers becoming smaller, more efficient, and less visible it would make sense to distribute the speakers, within the crowd, and set them to a lower volume. It doesn’t make sense to pump out a wall of sound for a tiny festival venue.
Increasing Nuissance
I’m writing this blog post because I think the problem is getting worse, as the technology makes noise pollution easier to create. I’m writing this because if we have people gluing themselves to roads, because of car pollution, then we should have people protesting music festivals, for failing to consider the environmental impact, and corporate social responsibility in regards to noise pollution.
Fairness – Environmentalism
Festival goers are meant to be altermondialistes, in favour of a fairer, more environmentally friendly society, and yet for five days per year individual festivals make sleep difficult or impossible. Boiled down to one word festivals like Caribana are selfish. They don’t consider that people want to sleep at night, that they don’t want their personal sphere to be invaded by the noise pollution from a festival.
Develop Accoustically Conscious Solutions
I want Paléo, Caribana and every other festival to consider the noise pollution that they create, and stop it. Paléo collaborates with EPFL, so EPFL and Paléo, should find a way to play music loud enough for festival goers to hear it, without earplugs, and for the neighbouring countryside to be silent. How Caribana and Paléo behave, in regards to noise pollution is immoral and unethical. I want it to change.
Geneva’s Attitude to Noise
I know I am one solitary voice, but don’t forget, the fêtes de Genève had to stop making noise by midnight when they were allowed, and eventually I think they were banned, because locals complained.
Remember, the Geneva motto, between neighbours is “The less we hear each other, the better we get along.” Festivals are loud and disruptive. Something should be done to resolve this issue.
I expect to have another sleepless night tonight. Monday I will have my first night of sleep, since Tuesday.
Oh, to have quiet summers, like we did during the part of the pandemic, when governments were not ignoring the spread of the virus.