Cyclist Sightings

Cyclist Sightings

Byrichard

Yesterday I went for a walk, during which I listened to two podcasts via AudioBookShelf, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is that the seasons have changed. The snow has melted and there was a brief interlude in rain so plenty of people went out for bike rides. So many in fact that I seemed to be one of only two or three people on foot.

This makes me happy. I like crossing people on bikes because they usually don’t have big dogs, and they pass by within seconds rather than longer. They also tend not to take up the entire width of the road.

For some reason when couples walk they take the entire width of the road, as do families, and other groups. They’re not morbidly obese. they’re average. They could take as little space as cyclists and I do.

I should be cycling too but my bike lives half an hour from where I live at the moment, by car. It lives there because that’s where I went for bike rides several times and I felt that by transporting my bike, back and forth, in the car, I was damaging it, so I left it there. I never repatriated it because winter was coming so it made little sense. Now that summer is back it could make sense to repatriate it.

In reality I should prepare it for Spain. I should dismantle it, and take it to Spain, for a Spring service, before coming back to Switzerland, and use it, freshly serviced.

The difference in service price between Spain and Switzerland is 70 euros compared to 300 CHF. I could also take advantage of the slightly better weather in Spain to go for bike rides.

I have a few days to decide.

Xcursion Fusion in Snow

Xcursion Fusion in Snow

Byrichard

Yesterday it snowed enough for the snow to get some depth. I went for a walk with snowboard trousers, a proper winter coat and the Xero Xcursion Fusion in snow that reached above their rim without getting snow or water onto my socks until I removed the shoes at the end of the walk. They’re minimal waterproof shoes that have “FeelTrue®” soles. These are thin, minimal soles. Despite this my feet felt warm for the entire walk with normal soles.

Fine in Snow

When I was walking on thin snow I felt that the sole might be sliding slightly but this is probably due to the slightly slushy snow, rather than the soles. Sometimes I had to walk in five centimres or more of snow and they still felt fine. I didn’t feel any concern about snow making its way into the shoes, even when walking where grass or fallow fields were growing. They’re very comfortable.

Light and Flexible

The advantage of these shoes is that they’re light and flexible. When you walk with them you can walk with your ordinary stride, rather than one adapted to hiking shoes, or moon boots. I thought that I might feel the cold through the thin soles but no such problem. I could walk normally for one hour and fourty minutes without regretting that I was wearing these shoes. That’s great, because hiking shoes can be 200-300 CHF and I got these for 90 CHF, the same price as my other barefoot shoes that are better in summer, and dry conditions.

I did not expect them to be so comfortable. I thought that water could filter through the top, or the gap between the tongue and the sides of the shoes, or through the soles. I had none of these issues. I would rate these for winter walking with snowboarding trousers without hesitation now. I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable they were.

When I tested them in heavy rain, walking through puddles I did get water to enter the shoes. With snow they’re fine, because snow isn’t wet until it melts. It’s important to stay dry when freezing conditions could affect your comfort level.

Walking in a Cold Wind

Although not highly scientific I walked in a cold wind two days ago with these shoes and felt no discomfort. It’s not a scientific observation, as I didn’t walk on my hands with my feet in the air. The main point is that despite being minimal I do not find them to be uncomfortable in -2°c with a strong wind and a noticable windchill factor. I didn’t check the “feels like” temperature

The Competition

Originally I wanted to get the Merrel Tail Glove 7 GTX but cancelled my order due to the wait. I also cancelled my order due to the price. The Trail Glove 7 GTX shoes cost from 160-180 CHF whereas the Xero shoes can be bought for 80 CHF if you shop around. The Xero Xcurion Fusion shoes cost as much, or less than the barefoot shoes and they keep my feet dry.

Snow Shovelling

When I finished my walk I noticed that snow had built up on the road outside of the building I live in. I went down to the garage to get a snow shovel and started to shovel the snow. Part of that shovelling requires walking up and down a steep ramp that was covered in snow. I did not slip, or feel that my traction was in danger once. I was in full control the entire time.

And Finally

Usually when it snows you need to wear big, heavy shoes that are more tiring to walk with. With the Xero Xcursion Fusion shoes you have the advantages of ankle height hiking shoes without the weight and bulk. These shoes are light and malleable. They do what your feet are doing, without having to adapt your gait to the shoes. The shoes are well suited to casual snow walking, especially when you have snow trousers with gaiters that prevent any and all snow from entering through the top. That’s how shoes should be.

I believe that these shoes are worth trying, especially if you’re used to the barefoot feel but want something that is seasonally appropriate. I was comfortable both when walking and shovelling snow.

Walking in Heavy Rain
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Walking in Heavy Rain

Byrichard

I knew that it would rain heavy yesterday (at the time when you read this) so I considered running so that I would spend less time in the weather. The issue, at this time of year, is that if you run you need to do so before the sun sets but you also want to wear lighter clothes, for running to be easier.

Ready for Rain

For these reasons I went for a walk instead. I rolled up the trousers to avoid contact between the socks and trousers. I wore waterproof trousers, and a good rain coat. I walked for an hour and a half in the rain and crossed almost no one. In this weather even the dog walkers stay home. That is what I want. I like when the paths are empty of people, when I can enjoy my solitary walks in solitude, without being reminded of my isolation.

I wore barefoot shoes for this walk. They get wet almost immediately as they are not waterproof. Within 200 meters my feet were drenched. That’s what I expected. That’s what I planned for. That’s why my trousers were rolled up. I didn’t want the humidity to creep up my socks, and then my trousers, and into my t-shirt and fleece.

It worked. I stayed dry.

The Inconvenience of Touch Screen Phones When Wet

There is one challenge in such rain. When you get to the end of one podcast you need to find an underpass, or a lending library, or some other shelter. You need to dry the phone screen and your hands enough to use the phone to select the next podcast. After that you can keep walking.

For many it would seem to walk in the rain, but that’s because they don’t walk the same path every single day, for weeks or months, or even years in a row. Changes in weather are like changes in crops, changes in seasons and more. When it rains I see a different landscape. I see where the land is low, and where it is higher. I see where the water flows heavily, and where your feet remain dry.

Golden Hour

The greatest paradox is that despite the heavy rain, and the uncomfortable conditions you can still notice golden hour. As I walked today I saw that the light became more yellow, despite being under the rain. Despite the bad weather there was a discernable golden hour.

As I walked through one village I saw people burning wood in a barbecue. I don’t know whether it was to actually have a barbecue, or just to burn wood. If they were going to cook with it then it shows that the English are not the only people to barbecue in the rain.

As if that wasn’t surreal enough I also saw two children walking with someone dressed in a Santa costume. They all carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the rain. It’s not every day you see Santa walking in the rain with an umbrella.

In the end I wasn’t the only strange person out this afternoon, walking in the rain, as the heavy rain fell. If I was that type of person I would say that this walk was magical. Today was surreal, like Godard’s 1967 film, Weekend, where we see strange things as a car drives through a traffic jam.

And Finally

For many rain is an excuse to stay in. I don’t see it that way. The familiar landscape becomes unfamiliar. The rivers that were barely a trickle are now full. The water that is transparent when the rain has just started has become brown. We can see rivers of muddy water flowing from the Gravière into the river. We can see where the road is low, and water flooded onto a road, and left mud and other detritus. In another location I saw apples strewn about. The rain had made the apples float, and transported them into nearby fields where other crops were growing.

Walking during the rain is unique, and worth doing, when equipped for the weather.

Walking with Two Pairs of Airpods in Winter

Walking with Two Pairs of Airpods in Winter

Byrichard

During walks, especially once temperatures drop my old pair of airpods tend to die by the time I reach the half way point of my walk. When they’re getting old the batteries in airpods don’t last as long in cold conditions but they’re fine in warm conditions.


A few years ago when a pair of airpods died I didn’t immediately put both to charge and so one of them was dead, dead, not just temporarily dead. I tried to get Apple to sell me a replacement airpods but the person I dealt with was asking me over and over what the problem was and I told him, over and over. In the end I got so tired of dealing with this induhvidual (intentional spelling) and just ordered a new pair.


I looked at the price for replacing the charger and individual earphones and came to the conclusion that it was cheaper to just get a new pair. Sometimes they sell for 189 CHF and other times the same airpods sell for 110 so I buy them when they’re cheaper. The airpods that I killed are no longer in use.


Since then I have bought two new pairs, at least one and a half years between purchases. I use my airpods for every walk I go on, so one and a half hours a day. I also often use them when cooking so that’s even heavier use.


When airpods are new they’re fine with the heat, and the cold, so you can use the same pair without worry. It’s when they have been used for a year or two that they begin to hate the cold of winter. It’s at this time that the left ear usually dies. If an airpod dies while you’re walking you’re stuck without audio. During phone calls you go from a video chat that’s easy to hear, to impossible to hear, due to ambient noise traffic.


That’s where the second pair of airpods comes into play. Yesterday when I was walking I used my old airpods until I started to run. Half way through the run the old airpods died, so I swapped them for the new airpods and continued my run.


The point about airpods is that even when they don’t last as well in cold weather they are still good for years. By buying a second pair you can have a primary pair, that you plan to use for the entire walk, and the secondary pair for when the primary fails.


Why Not Wired?


You might ask “why not use wired earphones in cold conditions and the reason is “comfort”. Airpods are more versatile and practical when you’re wearing layers of clothing, coats and more. I do use wired earphones when it’s windy, when I know I’ll be talking on the phone.


With airpods it’s hard to shelter them from the wind but with wired earphones the mic is easy to shield from the wind. You can continue your walk and your conversation, without the person you’re talking with struggling to hear you.


And Finally


Airpods come in a small convenient charging box so it’s easy to walk with a spare pair in winter. The point is not that you buy two pairs at once. The point is that you buy one pair and use it until it starts suffering in winter, and a new pair, to use as a backup when the old pair fails. The old pair then heat up and recharge as you continue your walk. Once winter is over you can go back to carrying a single pair of airpods again.

A Walk In The Snow

A Walk In The Snow

Byrichard

Today I went for a walk in the snow. It wasn’t snowing and I wasn’t in a blizzard but there was snow on the ground. I like when it snows because the landscape looks different. It reminds us of a different age, of old post cards, and a time when the planet was cooler.


A snow covered path with footprints


The season has changed. Visually tomorrow or the next day the snow will be gone and the landscape will look ordinary. The biggest change will be the temperature. I have started walking with insulated mugs of hot tea again. It’s not that I’m drinking them, but rather that I have the drink in case I get thirsty during the walk.


As I write this blog post I can hear snow sliding off of the roof. When it snows the world is quieter in the morning, and then as soon as the sun shines, or the snow turns to rain, then the snow that accumulated on the roof starts to slide, and you hear as it makes its way down.


Yesterday, during my daily walk, I came across a pile of salt. I stepped in it, to see whether it would dry the mud on my shoes and make it fall off. Unfortunately it didn’t so I need to clean that salt off as fast as possible, before it eats away at my shoes. They were preparing everything for the snow that fell overnight. They were out with snowploughs today, to push a few snowflakes off of paths, before the rain.


During this walk I didn’t cross many people, if any. It’s cold, it’s dark, it was rainy, and the roads were soggy. What you don’t see is that I was wearing my hiking boots today. Such shoes make sense in this weather, to keep the feet dry. It also serves to clean the mud.


That’s it for today.

The Day of Snow Poles and Mastodon
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The Day of Snow Poles and Mastodon

Byrichard

Today during the walk I saw an orange van moving by the side of the road slowly. It was stopping regularly. I crossed the road and looked towards it. I saw an open door and a person placing traffic snow poles into the bollards at the side of the road. Winter is coming and the roads are being made ready for when it snows. I wanted to film but I was told not to, so I didn’t.


It would have been nice to film such a scene, because it signals the change from Autumn to winter. It doesn’t matter. I respect peoples’ right to privacy. I can’t think of a security reason not to film such an event.


Mastodon


Through Musk buying Twitter, and through its swing to the Far Right people have finally decided to dump twitter to try something else. That something else, for many, is Mastodon. People are re-discovering what some of us have longed for, for a long time. Social media and the social web, without adverts, once again. For many years the web was seen as an expense, and everyone questioned whether it was profitable, so it was filled with enthusiasts, rather than others.


Today, with the slow demise of Twitter (theoretically) people have chosen to emigrate from Twitter due to political differences. Instead of going to a centralised network with a single point of failure people are migrating to the federated web where activitypub is used to share content between web servers. In theory every individual and business could have their own server.


This is good. The flaw with Twitter is that it had a board of people who decided that they would agree to sell Twitter to a single individual. This move has made a lot of Twitter users uncomfortable, me included. Social media and social networks are about conversations and communities, and what Musk has done, and those that agreed to sell to him, is show that social networks with a single point of failure, are bound to fail at some stage. Twitter won’t vanish overnight but the golden age of capital driven social media is over. Users are regaining hold of the social web, and people like Musk will have spent 44 billion, for a network where users are volatile.


I don’t mean that they’re flaming each other. I mean that if you open the jar usage stats will evaporate. As Mastodon picks up users at an increasing speed, so it will be more interesting for people to migrate from Twitter to Mastodon, and leave the sinking ship behind.


The Internet, and the web, were designed to be modular and adaptive. If one site or node is taken down, we just move to the next, and the next after that. Wordpress has provided bloggers with this flexibility for decades. Now Mastodon provides the same, for microbloggers.

A Frosty Morning

A Frosty Morning

Byrichard

Yesterday we had rain and with that rain came a night cold enough for everything to be covered in ice. As I came out of the train station in Nyon I could feel my feet slip frequently. In the process walking was treacherous for those who are not experienced with the pleasure of walking on ice. For others it is an opportunity to look for possible pictures.





On a minivan I saw this pattern on the windowscreen. Water seems to have been blown by the wind at just the right speed to create this fun little pattern. It’s the type of pattern we should look for right before defrosting a car. This isn’t my car so I was just looking to see whether it was a boring sheet or more. In this case it looks like pine needles from a pine tree so it’s nice to look at. Nature finds elegant solutions.





The second pattern of interest I saw was on this pond. When the wind is calm during morning hours the building reflects in the pond. Today the reflection includes a pattern of ice, to add character.


Tuesday should be a good day to hunt for possible images. The air temperature is meant to go down to -6c in the morning. It only lasts for one day so it’s not ideal for proper ice pictures but if there is enough wind then the lakeside could look as it did two or three years ago.

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unseasonal heat

Byrichard

In Austria, there’s a pollen warning. Apparently the lack of frost has encouraged the trees and other plants to begin releasing pollen. That’s quite amusing. We have the same temperatures in central Europe as you’d expect to have down in the south

Israel has seen snow but the resorts can’t open because of the lack.

Where is winter? Is it hiding in the south? Should people go on skiing holidays with their bikes and hiking boots rather than snowboards and skies?

On the Porte du Soleil ski pass you’ll see that they advertise their summer time activities like downhill mountain biking.

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200 1990 to 2000 hits on my i-pod

Byrichard

I’ve spent the whole day working on a report which is due on Monday but since I have to send it by post I decided to complete it a few days earlier in order to send it off. I’m in the process of printing it off now and then I can have fun with other subjects.

There’s fresh powder snow on the slopes so snowboarding could be quite a bit of fun, especially with all those unmarked runs which may have enough snow for the fun to continue.

I downloaded a lot of the hits which were popular whilst I was riding on the bus to school when I was younger. there are quite a lot of memories in these songs. they’re the songs from my generation, and I am old enough to say that. Those 25yrs old are part of a different generation than those pre 25 years old. Over the next year, many of the people I know will join my generation 😉