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Slalom Swimming isn’t talked about enough. Slalom swimming is the type of swimming you do when you’re one of the stronger swimmers but not the strongest. You’re going fast enough to overtake certain swimmers but too slow to keep up with others. As you overtake some swimmers you’re forced to swim to the side to overtake them.

Linear swimmer

As well as having the slow swimmers to content with as you overtake them you also have the linear swimmers. These swimmers swim in a straight line without ever moving to accommodate other swimmers. You are the one forced to move out of their way over and over again. When you’re swimming one or two kilometres this means that you’re swimming more than the length of the pool on each lap. These are the people that impact my enjoyment of a swim.

Facebook and Instagram both have “Stories”. Stories are temporary vertical pictures and video that are only available for a limited amount of time before they are backed up and saved for retrieval once you request your data.

In theory, they are a fantastic way of sharing life as it happens without worrying about something embarrassing being available for an extended period of time. In practise, they are a way for Facebook and Instagram to force users to be active every day if they do not want to miss out on what their friends are sharing.

This morning I uninstalled Facebook and Twitter because most of the tweets I saw were people complaining about things or posts that would fit perfectly as blog posts on a website. We have moved towards the Social Media reflex, rather than towards an open sharing habit.

Before social media, we would have conversations on web forums and within comments on websites. As social media centralised all of those conversations so the engagement between people declined. With that decline of conversations so we shift towards two things. The first of these is complaining, rather than engaging. When you complain there is no expectation of a response so the personal investment is low. Add to this that algorithms are designed to promote posts that have a lot of engagement and you have a perfect storm of pessimism.

I have been studying languages with Duolingo for 134 days.

For 134 days I have been studying German as well as other languages every single day. In so doing my reading comprehension has gone up and I no longer become a “deer in the headlights” when someone asks me a question in Spanish. I was even able to understand the questions people asked, and able to answer.

As I have been focusing on German and Spanish I find it increasingly easy to understand words so I can go through exercises that translate from German to English easily enough. The challenge comes when I have to remember the words to write phrases from English to German or Spanish. With repetition, I will increase my fluency in the language. The goal is to get to at least a beginner level before I take courses.

If you’re looking for a reason to walk from one village to another the practise of using old phone boxes as free libraries are common in Switzerland. This means that if you’re shopping around for books in Switzerland you can either go to the shops and buy them with the car or you can go for a walk and see if any of the nearby villages have the books you’re looking for.

A few weeks ago I broke my arm while cycling. I was indicating that I was turning right while breaking with my left hand and the brake blocked and the next thing I knew the bike was on top of me. I extricated myself from beneath the bike and dragged it to the side of the road and reached into my bag to get a bottle of coke to help with the shock. I drank it and tried to recover before walking home. This accident happened just meters from my home. A driver helped and asked if I wanted a ride to hospital and I said “no” because I was so close to home. Within a few minutes I stood up and limped to put the bike in the garage and walk up to my apartment. I sat there for twenty or more minutes; thought about resting and seeing if the pain would decrease. I could feel that my left arm was limited in motion and my right wrist was in pain. It felt as if the injury was serious enough for a walk to the hospital three kilometres away. When I felt relatively certain that I wouldn’t faint along the way i started to walk. A friend who lives in the same apartment was driving a post van and asked if I needed a ride and I answered yes. Rather than being delivered to hospital by ambulance I was delivered in a postal van. First joke opportunity. I checked in to the hospital and was checked. I told them that my left arm hurt and that my right wrist hurt. I was asked if I had a helmet. I said “yes”. The medical person took my blood pressure, heart rate, checked my stomach for injuries and then told me to go to reception, take care of the bureaucracy and wait for the doctor to see me. The wait was a long one. When I finally did see the doctor she checked the mobility in my arm and thought I had probably not broken anything in my left arm but wanted it x-rayed anyway, along with my right hand. The X-ray was painful. When the doctor saw me after looking at the X-ray she said that I did have a small linear fracture in my humerus and that it had to be immobilised. My hand was not even mentioned. For the next two days I struggled with everything from opening the doors and windows to getting dressed and showering. For a short period of time I thought I would need to ask for help with daily tasks. I was sad about this injury because it meant that cycling and climbing were no longer possible for at least two weeks. I had just changed my yearly cycling goal to 3000km. For over a month I could not drive or put any weight on my left arm. I couldn’t cook much. I couldn’t drive and I struggled to shower. Due to this injury I had to walk everywhere. I walked to the shops and just to get out of the house. I was walking 15-20kms a day, during a heatwave. I enjoyed walking. As I walked everywhere I took plenty of pictures and completed my via alpine route one goal. I walked over a hundred kilometres a week. Aside from walking I also needed to rest and recover. I would turn on the television and watch the Tour de France on France 3 and France 2 every single stage. This was my best way of resting and recovering. When I could use my arm again and started physio I started to spend more and more time with the arm brace. This was a good time to get it to dry out. With the summer heat it got soaked. Eventually I did feel well enough to travel and left for Spain where I swam every morning in the sea and every afternoon in a pool. The sea was between 26-27 degrees and the pool was at a pleasant 30c. I swam half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon. Swimming was a good sport because it’s a soft sport. You can easily modulate the effort according to whether you feel pain or not. It also requires no lifting or extra strain as the bone recovers. I love swimming but the main issue with this sport is that water is cold and that air is also cold. I love to be warm so I enjoy swimming most when I know that I will stop shivering sooner rather than later. I almost always swam with a mask but often with a mask and snorkel. In so doing I could see how few fish were around in the sea but also to reduce the strain put on my arms. With a mask and snorkel you don’t need to pop your head above the surface for every breath. You can also make a gentler effort and avoid straining the bones that are mending. I tracked these swims with both the Suunto spartan wrist hr Baro and the Apple Watch series four. Neither had any issues. I used the Suunto in the sea and the Apple Watch in the pool. The problem with Suunto is that they do not accommodate pools shorter than 25 metres so the stats it gave were wrong.

Sometimes I stumble across documentaries that I feel excel in their genre. One such documentary is Earthrace: The Power Boat Race around the World. This is a one and a half hour documentary charting the fundraising, awareness building, race preparations and then the actual race, including logistics and more.

I like this documentary because the editing rhythm is in keeping with the story. The story is told in a logical and chronological order with no excessive editing, no breathless commentary, no excessive use of music. It is one and a half hours exploring the project from its start until its temporary conclusion.

Yesterday I set off for a bike ride planning to go from Nyon to Gland, and then up and around before heading back to Geneva and then from around Versoix riding back to Nyon.

Instead of this I rode from Nyon to Gland and decided to go further and once at Gland I rode a little further and I ended up in Rolle. In Rolle I continued going thinking I’ll turn off and head to the top of Aubonne and ride to Geneva. Instead I went up to the Signal de Bougy and from there enjoyed the ride back down towards the foot of the Jura. I continued this way and when I got twards Trelex I ran out of water.

When I cycle towards Geneva i often pass by a forest near Chavannes centre. Usually I only skirt the exterior of the forest but I have twice passed through it on a bike on my way back from Geneva. Yesterday I drove the scooter to Chavannes centre and parked it where scooters and bikes can be parked.

I walked from there towards the roads that are closed to traffic and at first i tried going downwards towards the motorway and found a path through the woods but it was blocked by a sign saying, forbidden entry, danger etc. I don’t know whether it was put there by children or whether it was serious so i turned around and went back up the road, towards the jura. I passed by a road but skipped that path. I then found a path cut through the forest overgrown with vegetation so I pushed through.

Rich Kleinbauer - Jun 6, 2019

Hi Richard, I fell upon your blog and I don’t know how that happened. I live in Nyon, I’m a musician, I do vtt and recently rode up the Barillette, gets harder every year. I did 50km and 1400m vertical on Thursday (to Crêt de la Neuve) to prepare for a race next weekend. I’d be interested to meet you to discuss a possible video project for some new music I’m making. Best wishes, Rich Kleinbauer