Parapente race
Something out of the ordinary.
Normally at this time of year, as the snow melts and the temperatures increase the opportunity for spring and summer sports returns. These sports are via ferrata, outdoor climbing, hiking and more. This year is different because although today is Friday no plans have been made for the next two days. There is a excellent chance that I will either hike or cycle alone. Usually I avoid cycling on Saturdays because that is the day when people are anxiously driving between their homes and their shops.
Walking feels like the safer option on such days. It’s usually on Sundays that I like to go for a bike ride, to range a little further than when I am on foot, and to enjoy different sensations. During this pandemic my favourite route is not possible because it crosses the Franco Swiss Border in two places and I prefer to avoid crossing the border unless it is essential.
At the moment the prospect of everyone being vaccinated, and of everyone being able to meet in groups of ten to fifteen to do via ferrata, hike or climb seems unlikely. It would seem that this is another year of relatively solitary sports. Hiking and cycling are good solitary sports because we often go at our own speeds anyway. These are also sports with almost no carbon footprint. You just walk out of your house and enjoy.
Scuba Diving, Climbing, Via Ferrata and other sports sometimes require a two or more hour drive to go to and come back from the activity location. With cycling and local hiking you burn no petrol, except for the rubber soles of your shoes but those wear out quite slowly. We’re speaking grams, rather than litres.
During my walks I often visit the old phone boxes that have been converted into libraries. I browse through the books. Some villages have a good selection of free access books. No one has thought to block access to them during the pandemic.
If I wrote a blog post for every walk or bike ride at the moment it would either be a clockwise or an anti-clockwise loop that always begins and ends in the same place. The main change are the crops, the animals and people I see, and the weather.
Yesterday I did meet someone in the physical world, for a walk, and I came to the conclusion that I much prefer to meet people for bike rides. The problem with walking with people during a pandemic is that you don’t have the freedom to walk into a field or patch of grass as you’re walking “with a person” rather than alone. You’re also working on set paths.
I like to walk along roads and other paths, and I like to change route as soon as I see people come the other way, or to climb up an embankment, or to choose a path between two fields. When I walked in Geneva yestreday I decided to take off my mask because I thought that there would be an opportunity to always be two or more metres from people but this wasn’t the case. If I was alone I would have put the mask on. In this context I didn’t feel as free to do so.
Cycling, during a pandemic, in contrast is excellent. The first reason for this is simple. You’re going at 20 to 30 kilometres per hour so whatever you breathe in or out is going to be diluted into the turbulence that is behind you. The second reason is that you’re on a road or path and the pedestrians you encounter are close for just a second or two, not even two breaths.
The other advantage is that you’re on some type of agricultural or normal road and there are usually not that many people on the same path so it provides us with greater freedom. People are cautious of bikes, but not of other pedestrians. Being on a bike makes us safe.
During my walks I often see people on bikes. Today I was surprised to see three women riding alone. Usually it’s two or three guys at a time, riding together and talking. It makes a nice change. Having said this the conditions today were unpleasant for cycling, a cold strong wind. These are the right conditions to make cycling cold and tiring.
I hope that Sunday will be good for cycling.
How far will we cycle in pandemic solitude? We will have to see.
The Moléson Via Ferrata by night event is organised for the 13th of August 2016. This is an event that I have been tempted to do for several years. The principal is simple. You wear the usual via ferrata equipment with the exception of a torch. You have to contact the Moléson tourism board either by phone or e-mail and provide them with your information. You will then get a free ride to the start of the via ferrata. They insist on experienced climbers so I assume that they climb the red via ferrata.
The event is not only entertaining for those who are climbing. It should be entertaining for those who watch from the ground. Usually when you watch people climb a route you need to look carefully to differentiate them from the surrounding rock. At this event climbers will be lit up, against a dark mountain so the route will be clearly visible. It will highlight the main route as well as the segment or two that are a little more challenging.
If I was to be free to do this via ferrata by night I would expect the experience to be similar to scuba diving in the lake and caving. I would expect that when I look out at the landscape I would see the cities and towns from the region. Remember that the Moléson slogan is currently “On y voit ma maison”. “We can see my house”. One of the great advantages of trying a via ferrata by night is that you have no notion of how high up you are. You could as easily be 1km up as twenty metres off the ground.
There are three reasons for which I have been unable to do it so far. The first time I couldn’t participate in this event is that I was working on that day and it would involve four hours of driving. The second time I signed up but the event was cancelled due to the weather being unkind. The third time I could not do this VFÂ was due to Leukerbad. I had already committed to the climb and booked a hotel. In theory this year I am free to climb.
If you are thinking of trying it leave a comment.
Last night I had the good fortune of attending the social media dinner at the Coach and horse in London. It was yet another opportunity to meet people like Lloyd, Sizemore, Phil Campbell, Deek, Rupert Howe, Jess and many other seesmic participants. It was also my opportunity to meet some new people.
I met Vinvin and Johann from Seesmic for example. They’re part of the Seesmic team in San Francisco. Loic Lemeur arrived a little later so it was great to meet him to. It’s not everyday (well actually it’s almost everyday) that you meet CEOs of startups.
It was also Phil Campbell’s birthday so that added a little something to the party. He presented a new method by which to use eesmic which looks interesting although at this moment in time it is more proof of concept and I’ll wait until it’s developed further before discussing it in depth.
I was able to try out the Nokia N95 layout and user interface for seesmic on that night. Loic lent me his phone and I was able to record and post one seesmic post. So far I still think it’s a little slow so i prefer to use the web interface.
I got to meet the charming Kittenfluff (unless it’s an imposter as is alleged in a seesmic video from the early hours of this morning;-)) and had a nice time chatting with her and playing around with two laptops, two seesmic accounts and a little seesmic camera ping–pong. I also got an exclusive interview about some mysterious january flies and why the London light is the paper of choice to use as a fly swatter
There’s a great picture of me taken by Thayer
Take note that There’s seesmicAIR and Seesmic being used in this shot.
Two speeches were made, one by Loic Lemeur and the other by Gapingvoid (Pardon the poor sound quality.)
There’s one of Sizemore’s videos too.
Fooz, Giagia, Jason Jarrett and two or three others were present but I did not get to interact with them as personally for this event.
This is a fun group of people are fun to interact with and I’m happy I went to the event. i hope to have many more to look forward to.
Other the last week I have been learning about canvas and SVGs. I am not certain that I will use this knowledge immediately but it is good to learn nonetheless.
I struggled with some code when setting up a clock. I went back through the code line by line two or three times before trying to find a version in written form. I did and went through each line yet again. Eventually I found that I was missing one zero. I added it. Saved it, refreshed and then loaded the page again and it worked. I studied for almost two hours today.
Omicron is going to sweep through populations but instead of wearing masks, self isolating and avoiding large groups people will do the opposite and then blame governments for their lack of understanding about the pandemic.
For a year and a half it has been self isolate, wear a mask, social distance and more. The winning strategies not to fall sick have remained the same and yet people pretend to be clueless. The result is a pandemic wave sweeping through Europe and the US over the coming month.
Life continues. We just adapt to being satisfied with what is safe.
I’m afraid to open the veluxes because of the threat of finding yet another large spider. I don’t mind having to dispose of it, but I hate the idea of having one walking around without me knowing. A great alternative to open windows is to go for your daily walk. You’re far from neighbours, from smokers, from metalworking and more. You are free to daydream. Today the Mont Blanc was clearly visible. The image is at max zoom with an iphone 8+.
Yesterday and today the harvesters are out collecting corn and sunflowers. I captured a harvester as it dumped sunflower seeds into a trailer before moving on to finish the field. It is a shame to miss it at work.
Today I got a step closer to being able to control WordPress more proficiently than I can at the moment. With hierarchies related to taxonomies via specialist post creation. Coding your own post types and your own taxonomies gives you enormous control over what you can do with WordPress. I have projects. I know how I want to use this newly acquired knowledge.
This website will be overhauled. The static part will be moved into the CMS, and the CMS will behave, as the old website did, but with ease of new post creation and more. The challenge is in updating to new technologies, and using this process as a learning and consolidation phase, as I did with CSS and other technologies over the years and decades.
I don’t feel comfortable writing about my trials and tribulations on Linkedin because it feels as though you need to be at your peak, rather than as a between achievements point. With the blog, I can document the learning curve, and the progress I make as I work towards acquiring new skills, in my efforts to build a different career path than the things I have done so far. I also have a project to work on in my free time, aside from the website. The second project is ambitious, and useful. You will learn more, as I get ready to reveal more.
I thought that when I bought two cycling water bottles and two normal day bottles I would be done, but then I found a nalgene bottle for a reasonable price, and then someone mentioned drinking from a steel container, rather than aluminium so I was distracted and tempted. I did tell myself that this would replace my habit of drinking other types of drinks. I thought “Stop with these drinks for three weeks per bottle and you amortise the cost”.
It goes deeper than that. If I stop drinking the two drinks I normally drink, then I will save money within three weeks, and not have to spend it again for weeks at a time. It may be materialist to want more water bottles than I can use in a week, but at least it’s a lot less plastic to be recycled on Monday afternoons. I don’t mind recycling. I just hate that there are set times when it is possible. I hate that it has to be scheduled, rather than spontaneous.
If I have less aluminium and PET then my trips to recycle are diminished. In reality my goal is just to switch the budget from one luxury to another, without having a new expense. If I find that I am happy with the new system then that is all the better.
Temptation 1 – to replace the half litre bottle that I use daily, because it’s easier to clean
Temptation 2 – to replace the 1l bottle I have used for over ten years, because it is easier to clean, and because it should be easier to carry.
If we were not in a pandemic, and if we were not in a society where people still do not wear their masks properly, and where people respect the 2 meter safety distance then I would go and look at the products in person, and probably lose interest. It’s because we’re in a long protracted pandemic that I am growing curious about such things. It is a coping mechanism. As dull and boring as it may sound.
A few years ago I looked at mobile phones, new watches, climbing gear etc. Now I’m looking at water bottles. I like water bottles. It is something that you use every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep.
Have you ever considered that we always look at rows of corn from the same angle. We always look at them along the line of plantation so all we see is a wall of corn. Today during the walk I saw that some corn had been cut to reveal the seed rows of corn and it’s interesting to see the cistern like rows of columns of corn plants.
It’s interesting to see that corridor down which animals and other small creatures can run along. You never think of how distinct it is. You always associate corn fields with a jumble of corn, like a forest of trees. Unlike in old films and cartoons this is highly organised, so walking in one direction is easy, but not perpendicularly.