Environmental

The title of this post is a joke, not a serious delusion of isolation. I saw that a few sunflowers had come out but that they were looking away, rather than towards me. They are looking at the morning sun and I was walking in the afternoon. They are still in the process of coming out.

Today I was asked if I wanted to go to a restaurant and I automatically said no. Given the data about the rising number of cases in Switzerland it makes no sense to go to towns or cities, and to eat in a crowded place, rather than to continue self-isolating. If I was okay with crowds at this stage in the pandemic I would have gone to the IFSC World cup. I am not fine with crowds, when the number of sick is rising.

It is important to know that you are in Justified Self-Isolation. Over the last three or four days I have felt like an idiot for self-isolating, but I now see that this is entirely justified. The R number for some canton went from 0.70 or so up to 1.4 or higher in recent days. This is for Bern, Geneva and Vaud, and it should spread more with the weekend.

Due to the lack of rain for a few years, and the lack of opportunities to socialise through sporting activities, I look forward to rain. Yesterday we were lucky. We got an entire day’s worth of rain. I didn’t leave the flat for the entire day and I still slept fine.

Just a few days ago the daily average for new infections per day was 103 per day but it climbed up to 134 or so today. The R-Index went from 0.7 to 1.14 nationally and across Europe the number of new cases is going up again. Governments and civil society don’t mind. If they did then they would put their masks back on and they would continue self-isolating. I see the opposite happening. Regions in Spain that had been green, and relatively clear of infection, are now red. Nightclubs have had to close.

Minergie is theoretically a fantastic, environmentally friendly way of making a building more energy-efficient, by reducing the need for air conditioning and heating. For three years now I have been playing with and experimenting with minergie. During the first and second heatwaves, I liked to open windows and get fresh air. I found that Minergie means “poor air circulation”. As soon as you close the windows you feel the heat radiate from the walls as if they were sauna stones.

The conversation is too often about designing cities to be car-free, but I would argue that designing the countryside to require less frequently would be more advantageous. The reason for this is that walking from village to village, and from villages to towns eliminates the need for, and appeal of the car. If the need for a car is mooted by making the sides of roads pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists, we reduce the allure of the car.

Earlier today or yesterday at some point I was thinking of the song When I’m 64, and that I should share it. I’m not 64. Quarantine hasn’t aged me so drastically. I felt the need to make that joke.

Recycling

For the first time in two months I went to the recycling centre today. For at least two months I cleaned everything that could be recycled and sorted it into the correct bag. I was waiting for an auspicious time to take all this stuff to the recycle centre and today was that day.

Today at around lunchtime we had a few minutes of rain for the first time in weeks but it didn’t last long. By the time I went out for my daily walk the ground was dry, as if it hadn’t rained at all. There was no mud to walk through so I came back as clean as when I left.

The daily walk is a good part of my day because it forces me to have some AFK (Away from Keyboard) time. That’s the thought I had when starting the walk. For two hours a day I spend time looking at the landscape, at how the plants and fields are changing day to day and more. I notice how paths are being worn where they would not be worn in normal times.

Today I ran and then walked a reverse journey of what I did yesterday. I wanted to take a picture of the corkscrew tree. It would have required for me to wait for two slow walkers and their dog to pass and because they insisted on walking two abreast it made more sense to turn around and take an alternate route.

Slight increase in the number of cases in Switzerland.

For this 40th blog post on the topic of self-isolation, I’d like to speak about local adventures. I feel the need to do this because I see people posting about their trips to someone two to three hours from live and work during a pandemic and I strongly believe that getting into a car to have an adventure far from home at this time is short-sighted and selfish.

Between running, cycling and hiking I have got to know more and more of the local routes. I have found that there are a lot of nice places to walk off of agricultural roads where you can avoid everyone. Today I was walking in the woods by a motorway and I found what I call the “corkscrew tree”.

By May we may be able to go back to doing sports in groups as long as they are not “contact sports” in Switzerland. For me this means hiking, running cycling and other related sports. For me climbing is a contact sport because we touch the same hand holds as everyone else climbing the routes, we use the same ropes and we share quickdraws and belay devices.

This being said I also have no desire to do sports like climbing at the moment because they require us to stand around and socialise and I haven’t really socialised in at least 38 days. I need to ease back into the world of the extrovert. Hiking is a good way to do that.