We are in a heatwave and despite this I have cycled for four and a half hours and walked for three hours and fourty minutes. For the bike rides I woke at 6am to avoid rush hour traffic, and to do things before the temperatures rose. Yesterday the temperature in Geneva reached 39°c. Just a few decimal places away from 40°c heat.
Despite the weak I still went for my afternoon walks, but it’s also because of the heat that I walked with 1.
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 spent time in the sun in the morning, as a result of which I thought I would avoid going out in the heatwave. I changed my mind. Every Sunday a group of pétanque playing alcoholics play pétanque for several hours. They cheer, they laugh, they make noise, for hours in a row. I don’t want to hear that sound, especially since the pandemic is not over. People are still falling sick with Long COVID and they’re being disabled.
When you cycle you feel the difference between different landscapes between seconds. You go from farming landscapes to wooded areas near forests before finally getting to the cities. In the process you notice the difference in temperatures between these different land uses.
The Permanent Summer Heatwave This summer has been mild in Switzerland, so far, but it could get up to 37°c for several days at a time again. As heat becomes more common the way the Swiss are building new properties becomes absurd.
Cycling is one of the best sports to do during a heatwave because you have a 25 km/h breeze blowing over you, until you stop. If you flee the oven like cities, and head for the woods by a stream, you will feel the coolness provided by nature, rather than air conditioning.
Yesterday I cycled along the lake from Nyon to Geneva. Most people headed to the lake to go for a swim but I don’t.
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.