Car

When I think of going to the Roche Au Dade via ferrata I often think “but it’s far”. That’s when I am going by car. I think the same when I consider going to St George, Fort L’écluse and other places. The paradox is that when I think of going to these places, by bike, now, I don’t.

When you go somewhere by car, it costs money, and time. By bike it costs time, but that time is the experience. When you cycle from Nyon to the Col De La combe Blanche, before descending towards Mijoux, and then back up the other side, towards Morez, the ride is the experience. You can take quieter roads, in so far as possible. You can look at the landscape. You can hear the sounds, or the silences.

I rarely go to Geneva for two reasons. The first is that there is rarely a compelling reason to go into Geneva, except for work related things. The second reason is that Geneva is expensive to get into.

To get to Geneva and back, by train, will cost 9.40 CHF. According to a parking cost simulator the price comes to 9.50 for parking a petrol car, and five CHF to park an electric car. I think that this is as well as the cost of charging the EV.

If you live in towns it’s easy to do things. You walk half an hour to an hour and you’re ready to do something. In contrast, if you live in a village doing the same thing would require a lot of traveling.

Tomorrow, for example, I could travel into Geneva in the morning, to run with a group, and then go home, have lunch. Eventually I could drive back to the same town, but this time for the cinema. That’s two trips to Geneva and back. That’s two hours of driving. If I use an electric car then my carbon footprint is not as big.

I am fatigued by cars and their apps. When I was using the Citroën car twice a week it was working fine but then I let it sit for a month and then it stopped synching correctly. I have done several trips now, and the journeys are either not recorded properly or the date is a month out of sync with the journey.

I tried to pair a Fiat500e with a phone or two via two or three aps and here too I failed. I can only conclude that mobile phone car apps are crap, on android and iOS. I can’t understand that with the most expensive device any of us will pair with our phones, that their apps are so crap.

The more I play with the electric car and the more I feel that it affects how I spend my time. Today I would have written a blog post before going out, but I didn’t. I didn’t write before going out because I knew that the battery would be down to 30 percent by the time I got to my destination, and 30 percent of battery power on a car means 14 hours of charge time. I.e. the earlier I head to charge the car the sooner I can head home to have dinner at a reasonable time.

A black and white cat sitting in a dry patch under a car.

It makes sense to shelter on rainy days.