Mobility

For many years I went for an after lunch or after work walk. I would easily walk eight to ten kilometres per day. With road works in Nyon that have already lasted for many, many months, and that should last for another year, for several hundred meters of road my walking habit has been made toxic through traffic density and exposure to toxic driving behaviour.

I used to love heading out for an hour or two, to see the fields and crops change with the season. I used to love walking a multitude of routes. With aggressive cars and dogs I shifted to rural walks. This worked for a while, until road works redirected traffic along a critical section of my daily walk, so now I no longer walk at all. I run instead. Even cycling has suffered. I didn’t want to drive during Caribana, because it’s during this event that someone crashed into me driving the petrol scooter for stopping to allow a runner to cross the road and during Paleo in around two weeks because traffic will be much denser.

I often walk between towns and villages and in so doing I notice how overwhelming cars have become. If you walk from a village to a town, you have to contend with busy roads. These busy roads are often like deep rivers. Sometimes you need to wait for several minutes before you can cross. At other times you notice that cars see you at a crossing but they don’t slow down in anticipation of your wanting to cross.

Walking three kilometres one way, and then back is easy. It takes about half an hour for me. If I walk fast then it takes less time. For me, walking is easy. Using the foot scooter is more of an effort too because it requires the use of different muscle groups, than walking, cycling, and running.

I find that when I go a certain distance on the scooter my hip muscles get more tired. With one leg you’re pushing forward, so it feels normal. With the second leg, on the scooter, you can feel the strain. That’s why I like to swap from one leg to the other.

Yesterday I was uninspired by an AI talk but went anyway and I didn’t get as much out of it as last time. That’s why, when it came to the networking part and talking about oneself I vanished to pay for my hot chocolate to have a conversation with other people. In the process I discussed electric vehicles and electric foot scooters.

I had considered going to this event with the e-scooter but chose not to because I am afraid it could be stolen if I am not careful. In the process I learned that someone did have his stolen, in front of friends, without them understanding what was happening. Apparently the theft of e-scooters, like bikes, is normal.

In the US people are obsessed with the lure of self-driving cars and robotaxies but I think these are looking in the wrong direction. If you’re looking in the right direction you improve bus services. You improve their frequency and you improve their coverage. You also improve the bike sharing infrastructure.

If you live in a village that is a half hour walk from the local train station then it is key that you add more buses, at more times. It is key to provide bikes so that people can go from villages with one bus per hour to towns with a train every fifteen minute, or even more regularly.

Yesterday I had to drive from Nyon to Founex to do a favour for someone. Normally I would have used the car but it was in for a tire change. I was switching from winter to summer tires at last.

On the way to Founex I took farm roads as much as possible because they’re less likely to have cars, and I’m less likely to be in the way of those cars. The ride was easy. I used just one or two bars of power on the way out so I still had plenty of battery left. I then walked around, and then picked up a book about technical writing before riding home.

Yesterday I was planning to walk from Nyon to La Barillette but rather than take the usual route that takes me via a set of cabins where there is sometimes a dog I wanted to try an alternate route. In the end I used the Switzerland Mobility app and website because I can trust that the paths they suggest actually exist.

Garmin Explore

At first I was experimenting with the Garmin Explore App and although it does provide us with the opportunity to draw routes it creates a track but we don’t have information about whether it’s on a road, or other surfaces, and we’re not sure that the data is correct.

Tomorrow I should have a clearer idea on why the laptop decided to die on me but a phonecall yesterday points towards dust. I’m not sure what the dust may have destroyed but that’s what may have caused the fault.  Without the laptop it’s been an interesting week. It’s seen me playing witgh two versions of linux and portable devices such as the N95 and the touch. Both have their merits and it’s got me thinking about phasing out laptops from my use of the world wide web. What if i could get all podcasts, all e-mails and media content to both these devices without a computer? With Nokia podcasts I can get all the audio files, with interbine I can get all the videos. With S60 I get some browsing for flash content and with the ipod I get a nicer display for browsing content. Both are easy to carry.  Both charge quickly with the right charger.  At the same time neither of them has a good typing keyboard, being perfect for short form but a nightmare for writing a blog post for example. With time the experience should improve.    Â