Walking in heavy rain for two and a half hours doesn’t make much sense. You don’t see much. The more time you spend outside the more of you is wet, and by the time you get home you’re cold and in need of warming up.
It’s day 57, the 11th of May. In theory Switzerland has rebooted in safe mode and we can start returning to normal life. I don’t know whether the shops or other places were busy because I didn’t go into any shops.
Today I had a ride towards storm clouds. I was cycling in the sun but as I looked towards Geneva I could see that it was dark and grey. I questioned whether to turn around or whether to keep going. It started to rain but I was reaching the half way point.
I didn’t turn around. I continued going and I passed families or groups on their bikes going slower than me. I flew by them and then I headed down towards the lake before turning right and going through a forest road. On this forest road, I saw children and parents on the road so I had to slow down as I passed them.
During this ride, I avoided passing through Versoix because it’s unpleasant. I prefer being in the countryside. I think that I spotted two people on bikes playing Pokemon Go. I assume this because they went to where I know there is an Ingress portal but it did not change.
I saw what I think was a young child and two parents start to head up a steep hill that I have found difficult to go up after some rides and thought “If that child makes it up that hill I will be impressed.” I didn’t slow down to see whether this was the case or not.
I haven’t cycled through Nyon or any big cities yet, because I don’t feel comfortable doing that for the moment. The countryside still feels like the safer place to be.
I question whether we’re living in the future, or uncertainty during this pandemic. One friend on Facebook wrote that Coronavirus is making us live in the future because of a number of reasons, as listed in the embedded post below.
If I am being myself then I would say that we’re living in the past. We’re living in an age before cars where our village or neighborhoud has become our world. For the first month my home village and the shopping centre one village over were the only two places where I spent any time.
I resorted to walking from home and exploring more and more of the local countryside, to the point where I was walking along dirt tracks that only farmers use to avoid crossing too many other people.
It’s also living in the past because we’re living with very little to no use of the car. The car, for someone like me, is synonymous with going for an adventure in the mountains, whether hiking or other.
Working from home, in my case is blogging, and looking to find opportunities on various websites and through e-mails on an almost daily basis. We’re connecting with people online via WhatsApp, Zoom, Infomaniak’s video tool and other methods. I even used facetime for the first time in a long time.
We’re seeing which countries have good self-discipline and those that do not. I’ll focus on the positive without being negative. The positive is that Switzerland said that people should self-isolate, stay at home and keep two meters away from other people and to a great extent they did. I’m not saying things were perfect all the time, because previous blog posts show they weren’t.
What we do see in Switzerland is that at least at the time of writing this post the number of new cases was flattening to a couple of hundred a day compared to the higher figures from previous weeks. Switzerland said “you should stay home and avoid being to close to people” and people did this.
The consequence is that Switzerland is a rare eutopia, in that we could go for two hour walks if we wanted, we could go on long bike rides and more. In other countries people were restricted to ranging within one kilometre of their homes as in one country, and in other countries of being under house arrest, except for shopping, going to the doctor or other.
We live in uncertain times because we don’t know whether we’ll have a normal summer. In Switzerland at least one third of people have cancelled their summer plans. On the oil futures market the value of petroleum went down to zero because those that had the ability to buy petroleum did not have the storage space to keep it.
Imagine being in a moment in time where petroleum is worthless, albeit temporarily. For the environment this may be great news because oil producing companies will have a strong incentive to innovate. We have to see if the fall in demand for oil lasts long enough for oil producers to reach a point of no-return in producing alternative fuels and technologies.
At least twice in the past oil crises have helped push innovation forward but that progress was abandoned when oil, once again became a cheap alternative.
Today my daily walk was a lot shorter than usual. This is due to the weather not being as nice as usual but also because my leg muscles feel tired and in need of a rest. After a 30km bike ride, a 16km walk with 790 meters of climbing and another ten-kilometre walk over three days my body needs a rest. It needs to recover. This wasn’t a zero-day so much as giving my body an opportunity to recover and rest.
I should prepare dinner soon.
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?
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.
Time for a walk. See you later.
Today’ I’d like to discuss stricter measures. Coop and Migros both have online shops set up for home delivery but the system is overloaded by people ordering at the same time. They don’t have the truck fleet or staff to cope with the demand so I suggest a better solution.
Both Digitec and Galaxus allow people to order online and choose which shop they want to pick up their purchases. This idea is relevant today because Migros, Coop and other shops are now forcing people to queue outside shops before being allowed to go in and make their purchases.
Queuing, whilst keeping shops from getting crowded inside, will increase the risk of propagation of the virus outside the shops. People have a tendency not to stand with the minimum of two-meter distance separation. The larger the crowd the longer the queue, and the longer the wait the higher the probability of contagion.
If we could shop online and request distribution from a specific point the time we spend at the shops would be cut down to a minute or two and it would have the added benefit that we would not even need to go into the shop. I don’t want to go to the shops at all if I need to queue but there is no choice.
The system they put in place yesterday will result in more, rather than less hoarding and increase the amount of time people spend in proximity to others.
Having said this the graph for Vaud has flattened but I don’t know whether this is because they ran out of test kits or whether they have failed to update the figures at the time when I wrote this blog post. I hope the worst is over for this Canton.
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.
It is not rare for me to do a timelapse from La Barillette. Several years ago I tried a timelapse with a 360 camera where you saw clouds forming overhead and in a spherical video. I also filmed a timelapse of the Paléo parkings filling up. This time I went up the Jura in the hope of filming Autumn colours but as I got to the top my project changed.
The problem with filming Autumn colours is that you need to be there at the right time of day and with the light coming from the right direction. The light was coming from the wrong angle so stopping in the woods would have allowed me to get three or four frames before moving on to the next location.
When you’re in a car this type of filming is not interesting. It’s more interesting to get to one location and get a greater diversity of shots. The other advantage is that you can always head back down and get the shots you thought were still interesting.
As I looked from above and assessed the situation I saw that clouds were forming and dissipating. I thought that I may eventually find myself in a cloud with poor visibility. I was more interested in capturing the formation of clouds. They did form, but then they dissipated, and then they formed again but more sparsly before dissipating again.
This is fantastic when you’re filming time-lapses because the change is noticeable without being accelerated so you can imagine what it would give if you did speed it up.
The challenge with timelapse is knowing whether something will take minutes, hours, days or even longer to capture. I have one idea that I assess would take six or seven hours which I will not discuss at this stage.
Usually when I film timelapses I set the camera up so that it records one or two frames every so many seconds. In this case I just started recording. I did not know on what timescale the actions would occur so it gave me greater flexibility in post production.
The footage was sped up from 800 percent to 5000 percent. The clouds that were vanishing was fast. The river of clouds flowing down the valley was slower and thus sped up more. The other challenge is to decide how tight or wide you want the frame to be. With the trees and the river of clouds it’s hard to know whether to have a tighter shot where the action may render the frame boring sooner or wehter tom have a wide shot where the action only takes up half the screen.
In the end this is about gaining experience rather than getting things right first time. It’s about learning to see and anticipate how nature will behave. If you get it right then it can be of great beauty. If you get it wrong you ignore it and think of a new idea.
Later in the year, when Autumn comes we can expect the clouds to behave like this. It’s the “Soupe de Pois” as some call it. I have at least two or three ideas to experiment with and two of them can be done from the comfort of home.
I did see something exceptional on the way back down. A herd of five chevreuils as I drove down afer I finished getting my timelapse footage. That’s the most I’ve seen at once when driving.
Sometimes a walk above the woods is easy. I don’t mean walking while flying hanging from a parapente. I mean walking at an altitude where there are fewer trees.
The walk from the transmission mast of La Bariellette to La Dôle is an easy walk that I have done many times. Sometimes I have done it at dusk. Sometimes I have done it with snow and sometimes I have done it when I was walking through clouds. Usually people do it when the weather is nice
There are two routes. One Route is safe for children, dogs and people who are not used to exposed paths. It is on the Jura side. The other option is more dangerous because the path is not maintained. If you slip you could fall to your death. There are no ropes, cables or chains to hold onto. When the dangerous option is wet it is slippery.
Today the weather was nice but the visibility was crap compared to what I have experienced on other walks. We couldn’t see the Alps, for example.
It’s amusing because on this walk I heard a lot of English spoken. Usually you hear a lot of French as French speakers enjoy the walk. The only wildlife I saw on this walk were groups of birds going after insects. They were feasting. With good weather the wildlife like to hide from human attention.
This was day five of week three of the Escape plan. I have easily managed to reach the goal as I do fifteen minutes or more of exercise every single day.
The walk to La Dôle is a good way of getting exercise because of how much walking you have to do uphill one way and how much walking you have to do going the other way. If you feel ambitious you can walk from Nyon to La Dôle and from La Dôle down to St Cergue. In St Cergue you can catch the train back down. I have only done the long variant once.
Walking from La Barillette to La Dôle is a seasonal walk. It can only be done when the road to the top is open. As soon as the snow comes the road closes to ordinary traffic and it is cut off from the world. In Winter you would need to do it with snowshoes and the walk would be considerably longer.
This is a nice walk to do during a day off or during the weekend. Some people even use the routes to practice trail running. It’s a 8km circuit and will definitely give you a workout. For walkers it is a nice walk to a nice viewpoint to see the bassin Lemanic.
Yesterday I set off for a bike ride planning to go from Nyon to Gland, and then up and around before heading back to Geneva and then from around Versoix riding back to Nyon.
Instead of this I rode from Nyon to Gland and decided to go further and once at Gland I rode a little further and I ended up in Rolle. In Rolle I continued going thinking I’ll turn off and head to the top of Aubonne and ride to Geneva. Instead I went up to the Signal de Bougy and from there enjoyed the ride back down towards the foot of the Jura. I continued this way and when I got twards Trelex I ran out of water.
I thought about stopping at the petrol station but didn’t think “If I continue to La Rippe and Divonne I can find a water fountain. Eventually, I did, in Crassier. I took on a little water and cycled on the cycling/walking path to Divonne, went around part of the lake and then headed back to Switzerland. Once in Switzerland I turned right and headed for Versoix via the top route. I went down the road that passes by the observatory and then at the roundabout near the swimming pool I turned left and when I got to the intersection where I had to choose between Mies and the petrol station or going left I decided to go left.
By this point of the ride I was running out of energy to pedal. I stopped for a minute or two and then set off again. I was running really low on energy and I had just enough strength to keep moving forward. When I was crossing Borex towards Signy I was feeling so tired that even my arms were fatigued. I really felt low in energy. I finally made it to the station, got an electrolyte drink, some chocolate and headed home.
When I got home I collapsed on the couch but that wasn’t enough so I lied on the floor for a few minutes, just to rest a bit. It’s rare for me to exhaust myself like this. I did do two of my regular rides in a single ride.
I did cycle up from the lake side to the Signal de Bougy. I did race one postal bus down a hill and try to go faster than a TPN bus as it crossed the border. In theory I should have stopped around Trelex when I ran out of water but didn’t.
According to the Suunto watch it will take me 89 hours to recover. I’d call that a success. I went from wanting to do a fourty kilometre loop to doing an 80 kilometre loop, with a nice climb thrown in.
I was probably tired because I did this 80km ride on two pieces of money cake, without a proper lunch. 😉 This circuit took me about three and a half hours with no stopping for the first hour and a half or even beyond. With two or three snacks I would probably do this ride without suffering so much.
When I cycle towards Geneva i often pass by a forest near Chavannes centre. Usually I only skirt the exterior of the forest but I have twice passed through it on a bike on my way back from Geneva. Yesterday I drove the scooter to Chavannes centre and parked it where scooters and bikes can be parked.
I walked from there towards the roads that are closed to traffic and at first i tried going downwards towards the motorway and found a path through the woods but it was blocked by a sign saying, forbidden entry, danger etc. I don’t know whether it was put there by children or whether it was serious so i turned around and went back up the road, towards the jura. I passed by a road but skipped that path. I then found a path cut through the forest overgrown with vegetation so I pushed through.
I am curious about the origins of this path. It is wide enough for vehicles to go through but it is so overgrown that you need to go from one side of the path to the other. There are plenty of fallen branches, twigs and other things to watch out for. The other thing to pay attention to are the sounds.
I could hear cuckoos in at least two parts of this forest and I could also hear another exotic bird. I caught a glimpse of it but no more. Another sound that I heard was the sound of rustling before something large ran away from me. As I was barely into the forest i questioned whether to continue. I think it was a deer or doe.
So far this spring I have seen three deers or does, a hare and plenty of birds of prey. I’m obviously walking where people are not having conversations and scaring away the animals. It’s funny to hear rustling and see an animal run away.
As you can see from the GPS trace I could have walked twice as far. It would be interesting to see whether there are smaller trails that we can walk along. What I’m looking for are small trail paths that we can walk along, without driving too far. If you do the walk I mention then make sure to have jeans, as there are thorns and tall grasses at moments. Also be aware that some sections are waterlogged so you need to walk on the side of the path.