Flying over Oeschinensee with an FPV drone looks nice. I went there as a child and the lake is distinct with its lake, green slopes, hills and that wall of rock on the other side. It’s above Kandersteg and there are a number of walks to be enjoyed in the area.
Flying a drone in such a place is great because it gives you a way of exploring the landscape either before you’ve been on a hike or afterwards. It also allows you to find new locations from which to take pictures or even to find a new climbing route. I haven’t looked at what climbs there are around there.
I know that there is a Via Ferrata that I have been tempted to do in summer. With a drone, it would be fun to get some shots from a different perspective than usual.
Instead of people on a boat, he could have found people exploring the Via Ferrata. There are some nice shots going down waterfalls, through the valley, along the river bed, through the forest and more. It’s a great location for flying a drone.
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.
I recently noticed that I had Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur book as an audiobook on Apple Books. I have had the book for at least a decade but have only got around to reading it recently. Over the last week I have listened to him speak about the closing of Tower Records and it encouraged me to write more about the scarcity of choice, that comes with online browsing and shopping. When I lived in Weymouth I would go to WHSmith and look for new books, and then when I lived in London a few years later I would look for books at Waterstones. I spent hours in that book shop and often wanted to buy plenty of books but resisted temptation. The beauty of book shops is that you can look within a section and quickly see hundreds, or even thousands of books.
Scarcity of Choice With Books
Compare this to book browsing today. Book shops are rare, and supermarkets have a very limited choice. It does get worse. When you shop for books online you get plenty of the top selling books recommended, but it’s hard to find the least popular titles. It’s hard to find the long tail of books. it’s hard to browse through niche interests and topics because algorithms force us to see the top selling books, rather than browse.
Lending Libraries
That’s why the lending box in Eysins, Borex, Crassier, Founex, several in Nyon and other places are so good. They do have niche books, and they do have niche books. In the age of unlimited choice our actual options are limited to what algorithms think we want to read, rathre than what we would stumble upon in a physical book shop. Today we need to know what we’re looking for, rather than exploring, and finding it.
YouTube and Content Creators
He discussed YouTube and content creators that are creating content for free on YouTube, rather than being paid to generate it. What he didn’t explore so much, related to YouTube and amateurs trying to be professional about content production, a decade and a half later, is that broadcasters and independent companies are cutting costs and reducing their output thus reducing the number of jobs available for media professionals in mainstream media and more.
Coming of Age At the Right Time
I often wish that I had come to YouTube half a decade later than I did, maybe even later than that. When I wanted to break into the media the model was still focused on mainstream media. Now it has flipped around and the opportunity, and challenge, is to think of content that would attract people to view content. If YouTube had been what it is today, when I was 18 then I would have studied the same thing, but I would have pivoted towards independent content production much sooner. I have books on the topic, but independent at the time meant finding investors to pay for ideas. Today the barriers are inspiration and motivation. Paradoxically, despite the barrier to entry being very low, to post content on YouTube or other video sharing platforms. there is a wall. The wall of tabloid sensationalism. I watched one content creator until I noticed the clickbait nature of the headlines. In another case I stopped watching several content creators for going on and on about their million plus subscribers. The barrier to entry is the same as the barrier to watching the content.
Getting Beyond The Noise
The patience to sort through the tabloid and sensationalist crap, before getting to content worth watching. On YouTube there is a scarcity of choice, because to please the algorithms you need to be a tabloid sensationalist to appear in search results and to be recommended. Failing this you are invisible. Failing this you need to drive traffic via blog posts or other means.
On Books And Video
I speak about the challenge of finding books despite having a backlog of hundreds of books. As I have often said, finding a book you want to read takes seconds, but actually reading it takes hours. Some books require thirty hours of reading. Usually they require seven hours or so. Books require an investment of time. My real challenge is with video content. That’s where I struggle to find what I want to watch. In the past we would watch TV and see “What’s coming next” or we would read about new shows. Now we don’t, so we just have to browse until we find something. This isn’t a new problem. I had it when looking for films in video rental shops. In another lifetime finding something to watch was easy. Go to Discovery Channel and find documentaries to watch. Problem solved.
And Finally
As I read The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen I thought that it should be updated for the 21st century. Instead of doing this he just wrote a few new books, one in 2018 and the second in 2020. I would purchase them but I might as well finish the book I am reading now, before getting yet another book. The Cult of the Amateur is an interesting look into what was perceived around 2007. The new books would reflect more modern visions.
For two years I have been doing research to find as much information as possible on the topic of via ferrata. Visiting the via ferratas which date back to the 1914-18 war would be interesting. In this short video recording we see some of the tunnels dug in to the mountain as well as where soldiers would have slept.
Via ferrata is not just a sport to see nice landscapes. Historic exploration is also possible.
I have a single tab open in Chrome at the moment, my main browser. This window, to write this blog post. We are now in Day 32 of self-isolation and I’m keeping myself distracted through blogging, making webpages mobile friendly and more. I’m also limiting the time I spend on news websites, social media and more. I have a five minute time limit on social media apps on my phones.
I wanted to write a Facebook post while on the escalators to go shopping but couldn’t because i was already up to the limit for today. Pandemics are funny because they end up being really boring. You can walk, you can run, you can river walk and you can cycle, but if you have technical issues you need to find a way home. You also need to creatively find routes that people are less likely to follow. People are discovering my snickets so I need to be more and more creative.
It would be so nice to get into the car and go somewhere but for now that idea is absurd. We have to wait for the right time. A few more weeks of nice weather and then, when the rain comes, we can start spending time outdoors again. I write this as a joke. It would suck if we did see that happen.
Coiffeurs, physiothérapeutes, jardineries et médecins seront autorisés à rouvrir leurs portes dès le 27 avril, a décidé jeudi le gouvernement.
From the 27th of April onwards people will be able to get their hair cut again, and to make it easier, people will be able to leave their children at kindergartens. On the 27th of April normal shops will be allowed to reopen and on the 11th of May children will go back to school. That’s if every step goes smoothly of course. In another article they mentioned that exams in Switzerland will be in August.
Poor teenagers, spending their summer holidays studying for exams. Does this mean they will head to university a month later?
When speaking with a neighbour/teacher two days ago he told me that some children and their parents went to secondary homes in France and other questions so the question is how will they get from their secondary homes back to Switzerland in order to start lessons on the required day? Is returning to Switzerland seen as a legitimate reason to drive over big distances?
Un été blanc et sec attend les festivaliers
Annulations Historique! Paléo, Montreux Jazz, Caribana, la Cité… Les grands rendez-vous prévus d’ici fin juillet devraient tirer la prise de leur édition 2020.
This summer may be one of the quietest in decades or even centuries. There is a chance that all of the music festivals will be cancelled for this summer. In one article I read that, if so many countries are still in lockdown then it isn’t worth going on a tour, as a band for just a few gigs.
Although it feels like we’re nearing the end of the pandemic we can see that it’s still a month or more away, so our current lifestyle will have to be resilient enough to carry us through.
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