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Switzerland, Fitness centres and the mountains
For three years I was a fitness club member. I loved going to the gym up to three times a week when possible. I loved training so much that I bought apps and devices to track my progress. Any time that I could not spend three sessions a week at the gym I felt disappointed. That passion, when you are in full time work can be hard to keep active.
I tried going to the gym at 6am and I tried going after work but the habit never picked up. In Switzerland fitness memberships can vary from 700-900 CHF per year to over 1200 CHF per year depending on the membership perks you take. If you go to the gym 52 times a year that’s 23 CHF per session. If you go twice a week it’s reduced to just 11 CHF per week. If you go three times a week it’s 7 CHF per session.
In theory this is a reasonable price. It’s less than a week’s pay for most professionals. In practice you want to justify the expense. You want to go to the gym when you have time. This means weekends, evenings and on public holidays. I was often frustrated to have free time but for the gym to be closed.
I would love to see gyms that take your outdoor sporting passions in to account. Running and cycling are already somewhat covered in the lac Léman region of Switzerland. What I would like to see next are ski days, via ferrata excursions and canyoning within the club.
During week days and when the weather is bad you would train in the fitness centre. As soon as summer weekends and holidays would allow then as a fitness centre you would enjoy the great outdoors. I see through Glocals and facebook groups that the interest to do activities in groups is there. Fitness centres could attract a younger demographic to join.
I love physical fitness and I love exercise. If I lived in a city like London or Paris I’d be happy to sit in a gym and train. I’d have filtered air and less traffic to contend with. As I live in the Swiss countryside though I want to take full advantage of what nature has to offer. When I find a fitness club that offers discounted canyoning, waterskiing and other activities, and subsidised via ferrata and ski days then I will rejoin.
Barefoot Shoes and Socks
Today I am going to write about something a little different. A few days ago I saw a child with a huge hole in at least one sock and I commented “for once you’re the one with holes in your socks, rather than me. Usually I do have holes in my socks, and when the child noticed he pointed this out in public once.
After this incident I started to throw socks away as soon as they got holes, to avoid such a comment. For some reason it bothered me to have holes in my socks in a context where I had to take off my shoes. That’s not actually what this blog post is about.
Barefoot Shoes are Kinder to Feet
I noticed that all the signs of wear and tear that I had on my feet, as a result of wearing normal shoes are gone from my feet. My feet have recovered from having the toes, heels and other parts of the foot rubbing against parts of the shoes. The result is more elegant feet, thanks to soft barefoot shoes.
Intact Socks
I have been using the same socks for weeks, or even months at this point and they are barely worn. At one point, with normal shoes, I was wearing through socks within weeks. It got so bad that I was starting to worry about how expensive it would be to buy new socks every few weeks. With barefoot shoes that problem seems to be gone.
Five million steps
Over the last twelve months I have still taken over 4.9 million steps, so it’s not that I am walking less. I am cycling more, but I’m still in the five million steps per twelve month period range. My walking habit is consistent.
Softer Steps
When you walk with normal shoes the shoes do the work of amortising every step, so every step comes down with force, especially around the heel, where holes would begin to appear with some socks. With barefoot shoes you’re not crushing that part of the sock so the sock has a longer life expectancy
More Space for Toes
Plenty of people who write about barefoot shoes speak about the bigger “toe box”. With normal shoes you instantly feel that the foot has less space. This difference in room for the toes could contribute to the tips of socks wearing against the shoes, forming toe holes on socks.
Barefoot Barefoot Shoes
Since some people wear barefoot shoes, barefoot, without socks, it would make sense for the shoes to be designed to be barefoot friendly, to avoid friction points and more. It would make sense for shoes to be made to be comfortable.
And Finally
This observation is based on wearing a single pair of barefoot shoes for over 500 kilometres. If I wear another pair of barefoot shoes I might notice that the wear and tear of socks is different. usually new socks cost about 20 CHF for a week’s worth of socks. If I need to replace them twice, in the lifespan of a pair of shoes then I could buy a pair of shoes that is 20-40CHF more expensive, and the price of new socks would be offset, by not needing to buy socks as regularly.
I wrote that last part as a joke, rather than a serious consideration. I am happy to have stopped wearing through socks so quickly, at last.
Lensational – Empowering Women through Photography.
From Friday to Sunday this week SIGEF2015 took place at the Batiment des Forces Motrices in Geneva Switzerland. This event was organised by Horyou, a social network for social good, where people were connecting and networking, discussing how best to help people with various projects around the world.
Living in the Western World we hear and see selfies of friends and many images of food, autumn and things they find appealing to look at. Lensational is a project to bring photographic equipment and photography skills to people around the world.
They recycle cameras, resell cameras, conduct photography training and sell photographs. They are looking for camera donations from both private individuals and corporations so that they can resell these cameras at an affordable price to those who would otherwise not have access to digital cameras.
Women are then taught by NGOs and photographers about photography and this is seen as a means by which to empower women.
Some of these images are then sold internationally to provide these women with additional income from stock photographs.
Photographs by Marginalised Women.
Photography is a pleasant and enjoyable way of understanding daily life. It provides us with moments or instants from people’s lives. In these images we can see how people live and how they have fun. It is a window in to their world and now that technology makes it possible sharing our day to day lives has become easy.
We no longer require National Geographic, GEO and other publications to show us how other cultures live. We can now gain access directly with these people. It also gives marginalised women an opportunity to represent themselves.
On Mastodon Niches
Mastodon is a federated social network where people can join a server, based on their interests in tech and more. Most people join the servers that are open and easy to join but in doing so we have communities that grow, without becoming communal. I am on at least three different Mastodon servers.
Instances
I am on Mastodon.social, Techhub.social and Calckey.social and so far my favourite is Calckey.social because that’s where I got the strongest sense of community. In the process it also showed me one of the unique features of Mastodon, compared to reddit, twitter, facebook and other social networks. That feature is scale. I don’t mean that it’s huge and growing. I don’t mean that it has a million users.
I mean that if I wanted to create a Mastodon instance for hikers in the Canton De Vaud I could. I could create a niche mastodon instance that is centered around hiking in Switzerland, and encourage people I hike with to join, as well as to attract a larger community of people who enjoy the outdooors.
The Big Four
At the moment Social media is about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, where everyone is thrown into a gigantic melting pot. The issue is that this melting pot is driven by algorithms and influencers rather than human scale social interactions. On Twitter, Facebook and the two others we are fighting to be heard. On Mastodon, if we find the right instance, we are heard without having to become unsociable.
Instead of asking “Which server should I join?”, we can ask “Which community do I want to be part of?”. This is healthier. This is on a more human level.
And Finally
Mastodon is not Twitter or Facebook. It is more like Wordpress. If you don’t like one community then you don’t have to stay on that server. You can hop to another that is more in line with your way of thinking. In a community where you feel positive you do not need to hide your name. I would encourage people to flit from server to server until they find the instance that they like. Mastodon is more like a web forum. There are hundreds of servers, the aim is to find the server that you like being a part of.
When Rain Doesn’t Show Up
They forecast rain and I looked forward to going for a walk and having clean shoes as shoes are washed by the rain keeping shows slick. The rain didn’t come so my shoes got muddy and I stood by the tap trying to get the mud to drain away from between the tread, without much luck. Tomorrow if I run down the stairs as I always do I will leave thick clumps of mud from my apartment down to the garage
Apparently the cleaner doesn’t like seeing clumps of mud that has fallen off shoes. If I was a cleaner I’d be happy. I’d ask if they want to increase the frequency of my visits, or alternatively I would ask for a shoe brush to be placed at the front door, so that people may clean their shoes before coming in.
Of course, in the 21st century shoes never get muddy because they are worn from the car park, for the walk and back. People never go for muddy walks without the car so they never have muddy shoes by the time they get home. By that time their shoes, and the mud has dried, and fallen off inside the car.
It is absurd that someone would go for a walk straight from home. Who in their right mind would do something so quaint and old fashioned. I write this as a joke, but also with seriousness. If people did go for walks from home, rather than taking their cars, walking paths would be more prominent, and easier to find.
It’s only during the pandemic that paths were worn out from villages and back in. During the pandemic people went for local walks, especially during lockdown. Now that people have their freedoms to burn petrol to go for a 40 minute walk, away from home, they do. People haven’t learned not to use their cars for everything.
I don’t make stairwells and halls muddy on purpose. I make them muddy because it’s hard to walk locally, without using a car, without walking where it’s muddy. If everyone was like me then you would need those taps and grates, like you see at football stadiums, where shoes can be brushed clean before going indoors. That will be my next purchase. I really need such a brush.
Puddles and rain would do the same, but for some reason, despite the ground being wet and muddy it never rains at a time, to prevent me from going for a walk.
Driving the Microlino OnThe Outskirts of Geneva
The Microlino is made by the same people that made the trottinette that I loved getting around with when I was unable to drive for a month due to overtaking a slow moving vehicle where I had plenty of visibility.
The beauty of the Microlino is that it’s a small light weight car, where you get in from the front of the car, rather than the sides. The other nice thing about the Microlino is that it has a roof that opens. You can stargaze with your lover, if you have one, or enjoy the fresh air in the warmer months.
The two things I noticed immediately is that the steering feels heavy, but also that the brakes feel sluggish. In the case of the steering weight you forget about it within seconds. This is very easy to get used to. What does get some getting used to is the braking. It feels slower and more sluggish than with other cars so I felt the need to start braking sooner. I did find that I always stopped where I wanted to. I think this is the effect of driving modern cars where braking is really aggressive. This car is gentle. I could think of a better term, I’m sure.
The boot is large enough for your week’s shopping, but too small for a bike. the volume is good, so you can transport things for hikes that are within driving range of the car.
Getting in and out of the car is fun. It is also fun that you have to move the “love seat” as I’ll call it, forwards and backwards, to suit your arm and leg lenghths, to drive, and press the pedals comfortably.
I call it a love seat because it’s a bench and there is nothing to separate the driver from the passenger, hence why it could be called a love seat. It’s a car that encourages a more intimate driving experience than most. At the start of a day of hiking this would be nice, but at the end of a day of hiking this might be sub-optimal.
I personally really like this, car, especially now, in the pandemic era. Now that I don’t drive long distances to do various sports I don’t need a petrol car with a long range. I need something to get me to the recycling centre, and to go shopping. The adventure side of life was killed when people decided to live with COVID, rather than eradicate it.
I like this car because it’s unique, because it’s eccentric, and because it has character. Most cars are dull and boring. This one attracts people’s gaze, without being a friend of carbon dioxide and global warming. It’s electric, so you never have to go to a petrol station again.