spain

If you’re wearing a mask, glasses, a hat, and have a fleece that covers your neck you look like the invisible man. I have been thinking about that recently, as I look at my reflection. Imagine if I was completely transparent. Pandemic times would be an excellent moment to hide that we’ve had an accident in a lab that made us invisible. Of course we are not invisible. We are just dressed for the weather, and the risk of being contaminated by Delta or Omicron, or the next variant of interest, whenever that may be.

A yellow flower We cannot always walk around in circles during a pandemic around where we live. I spent over a year walking around in circles near home in Switzerland but this Christmas I travelled. I didn’t travel because I wanted to. I travelled because sometimes we need to see family. I also travelled to escape all of the Christmas rubbish in Switzerland. We are in a pandemic. I haven’t socialised in over two years.

A few days ago I was driving from Switzerland to Spain via France when Google Maps told me to get off the motorway and drive on normal roads. When it made this mistake I switched to Apple maps, and was not led astray again. Google Maps leading me astray was a surprise. Google Maps and Waze are the same, and yet Google Maps behaved differently. I don’t understand why it led me astray.

People Fishing. Today I sat in the sun to charge my watch. I kept my left wrist facing the sun. My right wrist was employed in keeping a kindle in place, reading. My goal was to get the watch to go up by one day of charge and it worked. I wouldn’t sit in the sun to get a tan, but I would to charge a device. I didn’t time how long it took to charge but it wasn’t more than half an hour.

A solar powered watch in Spain If you were a solar powered watch would you prefer sunny Switzerland or sunny Spain? Luckily my watch has now tried both. The watch likes that you walk with your watch wrist facing the sun and the wrist without a watch to be on the shady side. I know this is not an ordinary thing to think about but it is key to having a watch charge as you wear it.

I drove twelve hours today. For the first part I had snow falling and salt machines, and for the second part I had strong winds. I am now tired. This reads more like a tweet than a blog post.

When I left for Spain Switzerland was just starting to turn Autumnal. Today, when I looked around I could see that Autumn has arrived properly in Switzerland. In Spain the sun is still warm enough for t-shirt wearing and swimming. The sun is still strong enough to change our chrominance. Yesterday I drove for around 11 and a half hours, with just one stop to refuel. I usually stop three or four times on that route but I felt like trying to do it in a single hop.

A rusty cow bell bell Tomorrow I will be driving for twelve hours and I hope that I find it as relaxing as the last drive but I doubt that I will be that lucky. We will see how traffic and other conditions are. I hope that I have a good two or three audiobooks to listen to, so that I may be entertained and focused. We will see.

For many people walking without masks during a pandemic is normal. This is confusing. We have known for months, or even seasons that the virus is airborne and that masks are a simple way to keep safe. Despite this people walk by the seaside without masks. It’s not just that they walk without wearing masks, but that they do not seem to be visible. I can’t imagine walking without a mask.