Water

Yesterday I walked with a light rain coat because it rained a few times during the day. This morning it has been raining heavily for hours. I stepped outside to get 4 season tyres from the post box for the bike and my back was quite wet after a few minutes.

Such rain might feel limiting if it fell several times a week, but it doesn’t. It usually falls heavily for a few hours, and then it stops for a few days, before coming back. If I want to go outdoors, I will need to wait until this afternoon today. It’s meant to stop at 1500 or so. That’s when I can go for a run.

The Cascade Du Flumen are in the Jura, on the French side. They can be accessed either with a 1.6km walk from a large parking nearby that requires going over a few pot holes or down a steep path with loose scree. What makes the waterfalls so spectacular is that they are formed not by water flowing over a cliff and falling to the ground. They are formed by holes in the rock allowing water that has been through underground caves to seep through the rocks. The result is a cliff with several waterfalls bleeding out of the cliff facee.

Walking is an easy activity. You put your shoes on, and you go for a walk. Sometimes you walk from home. Other times you walk from a car park. Sometimes you walk along rivers that are full, and others you walk along streams that are almost dry.

A few years ago I did the same Via Ferrata by a waterfall two or three times within a few weeks because I liked it so much. The beauty of waterfalls is that sometimes they’re erupting with power. They’re roaring and sending a mist of water outwards. Other times they’re running dry and you can really get a good look at the underlying rock beneath.

Recently a CWT Vulcan system was installed on a pipe in the building where I live and the calcar that I had watched being deposited in a kettle stopped depositing, and even started to disintegrate. Within a week, or less the calcar almost vanished.

To over-simplify it, you wrap a coil around a pipe, with an electronic ciruit board and it uses electric currents, through electrophoresis to take calcium and magnesium from complex to simple structures. In the process calcar no longer builds up. It goes a step further and cleans the calcar, as was shown by the kettle example. You can read more about the process from this source. If that’s not technical enough you can read this paper.

Two days in a row I have poured water on my head. The reason for this is that yesterday we were in 35°c heat and today we were in 33°c heat. When you’re walking for two or three hours at the solar Maximum the best cooling strategy is to pour water on your head, as I did. It’s a quick way of cooling. It’s not that the water was cool. The water is warm, heated by direct sunlight for the last half hour, or even hour.

Yesterday I went for a walk with a Garmin Etrex 32 that was sometimes in my hands and at other times in my pocket. I could have been hands three with a GPS watch but it’s good to play with a variety of devices. I chose the Etrex because it was paired with the Tempe thermometer. The Thermometer was in my backpack, in the top pocket. I knew that the air temperature would be around 30°c but I wanted to see what the “felt” temperature would be. As I left home the thermometer indicated 28°c before climbing to a maximum of 45°c and an average of 38°c. [caption id=“attachment_10601” align=“alignnone” width=“169”] Average temp 38°cHottest: 45°cMin: 29°c[/caption] I felt fine during this walk. I set off with a 600ml water bottle and for the first half of the walk I didn’t drink because I wasn’t thirsty. By the time I did start drinking my water it was warm.

Today I learned that Switzerland has a map that shows which communes have the most swimming pools per capita. Nyon has 50 swimming pools. That’s 2,3 per thousand people. Blonay St Legier has 336. Collonge- Bellerive has 491, as you’d expect. 

Switzerland has, on average, one swimming pool per 155 people. They cover an area of around 2,500,000 square meters. 

The Water Impact

Switzerland has 56,000 private pools that contain 3.5 billion litres of water according to their estimate. That’s an enormous amount of water. This doesn’t include the indoor private pools. As droughts become more common the concept of having a private pool becomes more and more absurd. It becomes absurd because private pools require a huge amount of water, and are seldom used. 

We are not all in snowy landscapes. Some of us are by the Mediterranean Sea. some of us are not parents of children so we can skip the holiday. Maybe next year I will have a reason to value it, but not for now.

JSON

Today I spent some time expanding my knowledge of JSON because understanding how JSON works, and how it works, opens doors. Every social network allows you to download your file as a JSON file. If you learn how to use JSON you can then re-use your data on a site of your own design, according to your own moral code.

WordPress and Custom HTML

I was also playing with static pages from the older parts of my website and trying to bring them into wordpress and for now it half, rather than fully works. My goal is to be able to have The Romans section with one look, the Geography section with another and the Environmental Systems with a third, to give just two examples. I found something promising but I haven’t understood it fully yet. It is a work in progress.

A single coke will cost 4.50 in a bar. Water could even cost four francs per glass. When you go to the shops do you buy a few litres of Rivella or coke. Do you buy wine, vodka or other alcohols? If you do then you can easily spend thirty or more francs per week, on glasses that will leave you thirsty, drinks that will leave you hungover, and containers that will require you to consider a trip to the recycling centre.