Environment

We are heading into a Level Four heatwave for the next few days and now people will realise that replacing gardens with parkings, and individual villas with apartment houses was a mistake. Now is when people will realise that tarmac gets hot during the day, and radiates heat at night.

Now is the moment that Nyon, and surrounding villages will realise that densification is a mistake, because, by removing grass, and trees, you remove dew catching grass, and shade producing trees.

For two years they worked on a motorway bridge. For two years they cut down trees, added tons of soil, and then widened roads for cars. Never during that time did they consider that people might want to walk along the most direct route from A to B.

More recently I have been walking into and out of town and for a while I had to walk on a dirt path. I had to avoid heavy machinery, large puddles, and cross the road on a busy road several times.

For a few days I fled from the Caribana music festival because during this event it is impossible to sleep due to noise pollution. Switzerland, despite being so strict about other forms of noise pollution is lax about the noise pollution from music festivals. Most people plan holidays to flee it. I did too, but I still denounce it. Having said this I stayed in a small village half way up the Jura and was able to walk a short distance to recycle cardboard, cans and PET bottles.

On Sunday I took the car rather than the train. This allowed me to wake up slightly later, and to drive up to the meeting point within an hour. By train I would have had a half hour walk, followed by a two hour train ride. On the way back it was meant to take an hour and ten minutes but didn’t, because of a crash on the A1. I didn’t see any news about it so I don’t think it was a bad crash. It did however block the motorway. A drive that should have taken an hour then took two hours.

Yesterday while I was looking for a Via Ferrata I came across this hike and I am tempted to do it. I will be in the area to do this hike on Saturday and if I camped overnight then I could do the second hike as a solo hike.

The reason not to camp, at this time of year is that the temperature still goes down to 5°c tomorrow, 6°c on Saturday and 8°c on Sunday. It’s not freezing, but you need a better tent and sleeping bag in these conditions.

The building I live in has solar panels on the roof and a heat pump. This allows it to be more energy efficient than other buildings. It also has thick insulation on the walls and more. Recently I have been playing with Homeassistant and electricity Maps. Electricity Maps is a real time representation of energy flows showing which countries are using green energy as well as how much of that energy is currently green. In Switzerland as I write this it’s about 97 percent green.

For years I automatically took the car for everything I did, or almost. Over the last seven or eight years that habit has changed as I grew used to walking locally, and catching the train to activities. This shift in habits is due to two things.

The first is that I met with people who take trains. If you meet with such people it makes sense to take a train with them. If you go by car the journey time might be shorter but the goodbye at train stations can be quite brutal. “Goodbye” and that’s it. The activity is over. With the train it’s just as brutal but at least you sat in silence before saying goodbye. When I say silence I mean that you listened as someone else talked.

We are all familiar with it. We get a phone call. “I will be in Nyon in 20 minutes, do you want to meet”. We think, duck, that’s short notice. Do we take the bike? No, because we don’t want to leave it unattended. Do we take the car? No, because then we’d pay for the parking. Do we walk? No, because the meeting is in ten minutes and the walk will take 30 minutes. do we run? No, because then we’ll be hot and sweaty and clothes might smell.

Yesterday I finally tested Publibike after years of considering these bikes. There is a paradox. I think nothing of spending three francs, for a coke, rivella, hot chocolate or coffee but the idea of paying 3 CHF to use a bike for a six minute ride is disturbing. I didn’t pay for six minutes, because that was my first ride. I paid 3 CHF for 11 minutes.

In Line With the Price of Coffee

When you compare it to the price of a coffee or a coke, or a can of redbull from a vending machine the price is reasonable. It’s when you compare it to the price of walking, free, and the bus, 60 centimes less, that it seems expensive. If it was two francs for half an hour it would be an excellent price point because it would be cheaper than the bus.

Tomorrow I will be heading to Gruyère. I saw that if I take the train it will take two hours but if I take the car it will take one hour. I am currently toying with the idea of suggesting that I pick up some people in Nyon and others in Fourmi, before going to Gruyère.

There was a time when I would easily have done this. At that time I almost always took the car because that was the default habit. Now the default habit is lost and taking the train is as convenient as driving.