Today I refuelled the car after 380 kilometres for about 30 CHF. A few years ago, when I refuelled another car it cost me 70 CHF to refuel a car, to travel 400 kilometres. This means that the car I drive now costs half as much, in petrol, despite the price going up by 10-20 centimes per litre.
These days I like to refuel after seven hundred or more kilometres. When I checked the range when driving home today I saw that the projected range was 900 kilometres.
Recently someone said “I wonder why they would build the Abbey d’Oujon in the middle of nowhere and someone asked the same about Romainmôtier and the idea is an interesting one.
It’s interesting because until motorways and before an extra four to six billion peoples wewre born and survived infancy the world, as a whole was much quieter. Look at photos of villages that are now towns. Look at villages where they have old buildings, and how old villas are now turned into apartment blocks instead.
This weekend I could have gone to Bellevaux for the VF, Thones for the VF, Kandersteg for the VF, and gone to Charmey, Rocher de Naye and one other places for hikes and climbing. I chose to do none of these things. My reason for this is to save money on petrol, after driving quite a bit last week but also to recharge.
I’m Still an Introvert Last week I went for a hike and thought “I wish I had not gone”, until the end, when I was sad that the day was over.
I loved the idea of Substack as a replacement for a few minutes, or maybe a few hours. I loved the notion of a writing community for people to share ideas, and written words. I lost passion when I saw that it was an attention pyramid scheme.
What is the Attention Pyramid Scheme It’s an idea I came up with yesterday. It’s the notion that we create content on Substack, so that others notice us.
I have a 2016 Mac Book Pro that I still use daily despite it being old, and vintage by the time Autumn comes. The reasons for which I kept my mac for so long are that it’s about budget. I don’t want to spend 1600 CHF to get a mediocre computer that a cheaper computer can mirror.
Cheap Alternatives Like the Pi5 For web browsing a pi5 with 8gb of ram is sufficient to browse the web, write blog posts and more.
For several years I explored every route that was walkable from my village. In the process I found loops that took up to four hours to complete. When there was no traffic they were all pleasant, whether it was wet, dry, hot, cold or windy. As cars and driving re-emerged plenty of the plaths I enjoyed walking became unsafe so I stopped walking them.
Over the last two or three weeks I have been looking at Komoot and Alltrails to find new hiking ideas and I tried two and they were both a success, in my own opinion.
One winter I woke seven or eight days in a row at 2am to be at work and ready to work for 0400. It was very hard to do, and since then I prefer not to have to wake up too early. Yesterday I woke at 0600, naturally, but also because I wanted to set off by 07:30 to be at my destination by 08:30. Traffic was good so I arrived half an hour earlier than anticipated.
It’s good to browse Komoot because sometimes you find nice hikes to enjoy. Today I drove towards Vallorbe and specifically Juraparc. Juraparc is a park with bisons, wolves, alpacas, goats and bears. I saw the goats, the alpacas, the bison and deer. I didn’t look for the bears and wolves.
The hike itself is quite short but it starts with an “alpine” section that almost a scramble. It may feel dangerous to proceed beyond this point but in reality the more challenging part is quite short.
It’s easy to find a group, and to do the same thing, again, and again, and again. Each year you do the same things in the same order, at the same time. It becomes routine. You get used to that routine. You don’t deviate. That’s where Komoot and Meetup come in.
Online Exploration With Komoot you get suggestions of routes to try, whether on foot, by bike or other. You can explore a curated list of things to do at a specific time of year, or in a specific area, or even in a specific town or location.
In the mid to lake 90s and the early two thousands we could browse from news site to news site. I would visit the Guardian, the Independent, Le Temps, Tribune de Genève, New York Times and more. I would also look at the RTS, BBC News and other sites to check a number of sites for news. With time that freedom was lost.
We lost that freedom because websites became paywalled.