Today I experienced the WeWatt bike wait again. The first time I experienced it was when flying from Alicante to Geneva and the second time is when I was waiting to meet someone for lunch today. The principle is very simple. If you see that a wewatt bike is free for you to use you simply sit on the seat and start pedalling. The first two or three strokes are difficult but after that the resistance is minimal.
Wait and Charge
The beauty of the Wewatt bike wait is that while you’re waiting for people you usually play with your phone or with another device. In this situation, you’re waiting but as you’re waiting the battery level on your phone is going up rather than down. The longer you wait the higher the charge on your phone and the higher your physical fitness.
Not that strenuous
If you are used to cycling then the WeWatt bike does not offer enough resistance once you have given it inertia. You have to reduce your cadence in order not to be windmilling. For me getting the right cadence is a challenge. I would like to be able to change the resistance. I would like for the whole revolution of the pedals to exert force. During a ten minute session, I burned around 48 calories. I would need to spend 110 minutes on a WeWatt bike to burn 550 calories. On a normal bike, I would burn that in half an hour or less, depending on the terrain and effort.
Charge Produced
During the ten minute session, I charged the phone by about ten percent. It would take a theoretical 100 minutes to charge a phone fully. I do not see many people staying on one of those bikes for that long. I would like to try charging a laptop with this bike and I would like a home desk version. For the home desk version, I would want the option to increase to resistance to generate more power and charge devices sooner.
This afternoon Nik Butler, Loudmouthman sent me a text message asking whether I was free to go to the London Geek Dinner where Robert Scoble would appear. Of course I was free so I decided to go to the event and met a number of people. The first person I met was Robert Scoble for this particular event. He was standing at the door and as I came up he welcomed me into the room, we shook hands and I got his business card.
That was quite unexpected, so approachable. I spent some time talking with Loudmouthman, Michael Beddows, Liz Strauss and Giles Thomas.
The London Photowalk itself saw us walk from The Geekdinner venue down towards Southbank and the film cafe. It’s the first time I went to the bar and I’ve been living in London for over three years now. It’s amusing to see how many photographs were taken and videos recorded. It was the photographer photographing the photographer. Scoble interviewed people as we were walking down the street and others were filming the filming.
I enjoyed the evening and meeting Scoble. For a while I nicked his video camera and filmed some shots of London for him. One of those shots was the Midnight ring of Big Ben. That’s about it for tonight.
The 2019 Tour de Zwift event is a 9 event cycling event on Zwift. it takes you on nine different routes across five worlds with hundreds, and in some case more than 2000 participants at a time.
Zwift Tour description
“…the Tour is a celebration of Zwift and the worlds within. You’ll experience the best of Zwift, together with thousands of people riding by your side. It’s not a race, but a giant party on wheels and a great way to experience Zwift.”
This event is different from others in that it spans several days. It also varies from other events in that the range is from 1-4 watts per kilo for A, B and C categories. Category A is the long distance course for women and men. B is the short distance for women and men. Category C is a Women’s only category.
Stage One
Stage 2
Stage Three
Stage Four
Stage Five
So far the experience of riding these events has been fun. I have also rode in other events in the gaps between TDZ events and I’m happy to have the occasional sprint or climb to do. I look forward to going up the Alpe De Zwift yet again. You’re not riding in the real world and you can’t really converse with people but it’s fun to have a group to keep up with, or a group in the distance to catch up with. I look forward to the last four stages.
We’re just days away from Switzerland rebooting in Safe Mode. Rebooting in Safe mode means that children will go back to School on alternating days. Hairdressers and creches are already open. So are flower shops.
When I went to the local shopping the music festival maze to get into the shops was simplified and made more efficient. You don’t need to walk around so much. The doors to the shopping centers are also opening in the normal configuration again. Life is already to return towards safe-mode normal.
French people in Switzerland have fallen in love with the sentence «Il faut agir aussi vite que possible, mais aussi lentement que nécessaire». Translated it means “We must act as quickly as possible, but be as meticulous as possible” or something to that effect. It’s important to be responsive, and to take the time it takes, to get life back to normal, safely.
Part of this experiment should include a smartphone app to track who we’re close to and when. It’s developed by the EPFL and we’ll see how it behaves and if it provides us with any interesting or useful information. I’m a fan of apps that provide me with information about the information I’m providing. I like Google Maps for this reason. I’ll have an opinion on Monday.
Rather than go for my daily walk I went for a daily bike ride. I went as far as Versoix and back in a respectable loop. The borders are still shut so the paths I like to take are not accessible yet.
My usual loop is around 30 kilometres but for the last two bike rides I have extended them, to reach 50-60 kilometres respectively. I cover this distance in about two, to two and a half, hours. Cycling is good at the moment because plenty of people are on holidays so the roads feel safer as there are fewer commuters on the roads.
On both of these trips I ended up in Geneva. The first time I came from the lake side and cycled upwards by the UN buildings. on Via Appia etc before heading back towards Vaud. The second time I did the opposite. I cycled via the top, but through agricultural roads to avoid being exposed to cars, although I was exposed to dogs and walkers. Luckily I could take alternate routes to avoid dogs and walkers.
On the topic of walkers, why is it that when I walk alone I am at the side of the road taking 50cm of space and yet couples take the entire width of the road? At one point I went through the mud and grass to avoid having to wait for people to clear the road. Specifically, why, if people are walking across the entire width of a secondary road, aren’t they constantly looking back to see if bikes or cars are coming?
Cycling by the airport is now a mess. Before when you cycled by the airport you could go by the runway for a bit, before cycling by Arena etc, before continuing on. Now they have removed that cycle path, or at least downgraded it, encouraging people to cycle along narrow pedestrian bridges, with little to no indication of which route to take. It’s paradoxical that as you hit Geneva, you lose track of where to cycle.
In one case I continued going straight and ended up with a staircase in front of me. If I was on another bike I might have descended it but not on a road bike. I turned around and had to go back up.
There is one part where you are on a narrow high pavement. It’s impossible to avoid another bike safely. They spend millions on re-routing roads, without thinking about providing proper cycling routes. It felt safer before than it does at the moment.
I cycled down by the Intercontinental, Place Des Nations, then right at UNHCR before going through the tunnel towards the Palais Wilson, before crossing the road and heading back towards Nyon.
Perle du Lac is another mess, for cyclists, because cycling routes are not clearly marked so you don’t know if you’re on a pedestrian only path, or combined. They say “cyclists, slow down”. I would prefer a clear route being indicated for cyclists to take to get from around the Palais Wilson to the World Trade Organisation, before heading along the lake. Here too, you find chaos as you get to Bellevue. In Versoix cyclists and pedestrians share the same pavement, but even on a quiet day pedestrians take up the entire pavement so you’re forced to cycle on the road.
The road is limited to 30km/h and I cycle at that speed so theoretically I’m fine, but cars still overtake. I eventually went on the cycle path.
Cycling is a pleasure, when we don’t feel that our lives are in danger. The last two rides have been good because the roads have been quieter from cars, than usual. The result is a more pleasant cycling experience. People make a fuss about more trains, buses, and so on but the solution is simpler. Make every village and town pedestrian friendly. Make it safe to walk between villages, without having to walk on the road.
I use the car for recycling, and shopping, and little else. We don’t need need to use cars daily, especially if we make it safe for pedestrians and cyclists to walk around without the big cage around them. The “big cage” is, of course, a car.
For three years I did not cycle. For one year it was because I broke my arm while cycling, The second year it was because we were in the first wave of this never-ending pandemic so I preferred not to stray too far from home. The third year it was because the pandemic was still not over, but it felt as if we had a chance. This year is different. This year we know that the Swiss government doesn’t care either way. For the Swiss the pandemic is over, whether that is true, or false.
In light of this we could continue to self-isolate and to avoid doing anything away from home but cycling is one of the rare things that we can do that doesn’t A) Require a car and B) Doesn’t require being indoors with others. For both of these reasons cycling is a good sport to practice when Covid denialism is government policy.
For this bike ride I intentionally went into France, to explore a little. Usually I forget the passport or other documents but not this time. It feels good to explore the old places, once more. Despite the never-ending pandemic, at least solitary cycling can range further afield.
My mental health would do a lot better if I knew that various European countries were working towards Covid-Zero, but as has become the tradition now, European countries are pretending the pandemic is over, so that there is another Autumn and Winter wave. This has become the new normal. The new normal is not moral. There is little we can do about this as private individuals except self-isolate.
Over the last day or two I have taken a break from JavaScript to look at Ruby. It feels like a very different type of language so it’s good to see how things work in another programming language. So far I am struggling with transposing the knowledge with some things, but others are clear. I decided to write the JS equivalent name in my notes, to help with comparing the two. I might continue in this line for the weekend, and resume my regular studying on Monday.
Live distribution of sports such as Rugby, Football, Tennis, Skiing and other sports is easy to justify because of the audience size. Rock climbing and live distribution of this sport however is harder to justify because it is a niche sport. Sponsors exist and interest in the sport is growing. We see that there are a number of climbing events, via ferrata groups are popular, the number of local climbing gyms is increasing but for a mass audience to watch these events is still unlikely.
I noticed recently that recorded as live climbing events are available on youtube and that we can watch two to three hour broadcasts of these events. If you are learning to climb and if you want to perfect your climbing technique then these broadcasts are excellent because you can watch exactly what the climbers are doing. You can see where they put their feet, which hand they use for a certain hold, how they balance their body on the wall and how they clip in the rope. In effect these videos are climbing lessons for the youtube generation. You can imitate climbers with the same physique as you. You can really watch the climber try hand holds and foot holds. “Does it feel comfortable? No, then I try this, ah yes, this is comfortable.” Watching this process teaches the average climber to be methodical about finding foot and hand holds. In climbing you need to look up and down. You also need to look for small movement opportunities. Moving a foot up five to ten centimetres can make a hand hold easy to access.
People have been rock climbing for generations but it is making its way in to the mainstream. Recently Rock climbing was accepted as an Olympic discipline and we will see this sport at the 2020 olympic games. As this is a sport that requires strength, agility, stamina and intelligence it is a natural, although modern, olympic sport.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.