Daily Walk

A Walk In The Rain

Today it was meant to rain for the entire day but there was a brief window which it stopped raining so I went for a walk. I expected not to be rained on but within minutes I could feel a small spray of water falling on me. I walked anyway. It was nothing to worry about. I did the usual walk and although groups of people were walking they were easy to avoid. The rivers are nice and full today so rain is having an effect. Rain has melted the snow that had covered the landscape and filled the rivers. In some places there are traces that the water is slightly polluted.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

In Switzerland a three hour drive feels long, but in France or Spain it does not. I drove from Switzerland to Spain and from Spain to switzerland. The drive to Spain is easier because traffic gets lighter as you get further south. Most of the time this is true. This time, as I drove from Spain to Switzerland I came across the opposite. From the moment I started driving I encountered traffic.

This is the day 16+ and 5+ year olds could get boosters and Vaccinate in Switzerland. For 16+ year olds, at least in Vaud, we are now eligible for vaccination, as long as we’re in the country. I am not. I have to wait until I get back. This is a big step forward. Being able to get a booster is good. 5+ year old children should be able to get their first vaccine shortly, although the details are not clear yet.

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. If you want me to value Christmas give me a reason to celebrate it. Spending two years in pandemic solitude does nothing to enhance my indifference to Christmas.

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. In the middle of summer, in the right mode, I could easily see this watch charging a few percent a day in the right conditions. With the right combination you could get this watch to be autonomous.

At the moment I am walking with worn shoes, not because I do not have shoes that are not worn, but because I do not want to walk with shoes that have good tread at this time of year, due to the mud that gets stuck in them. When I walk with shoes with treads I collect mud during my walk, and I bring it up the stairs when I walk up, and I drop it off when I run back down. This leaves a mess, which, if I was a child, would be forgivable to some degree, but as an adult may be seen as immaturity.

I tracked the run and walk with the Garmin Instinct Solar. It is very easy to use while wearing gloves. You can stop the activity, change sport, start the activity, do the second sport, and then stop the tracking of the second sport, without taking off your gloves. Now that we’re in the cold part of Autumn this is useful. On the flipside anytime the clouds hide the sun this watch is unable to recharge itself. Despite this the battery life is still good. When fully charged it displays 27 days, but it loses around two or three days of charge per day with a tracked activity. This is still excellent. The Apple watch needs to be charged every single day. It is a watch that you can wear in the classic style of wearing a watch, i.e. keep it on for days or weeks at a time.

Over the last three or four days I have marked two books as finished despite not finishing for a simple reason. I have plenty of books on Kindle, Audible and Kobo that I need to read, but that to read all these books, would take time. I started to read one book and I stopped within pages, every time for the same reason.

In today’s context my disgust with one book is rational. For decades the web and social media have been treated as addictions, and because they have been stigmatised and seen as illnesses it becomes morally acceptable to abuse users. Look at Meta Facebook and Meta Instagram, and how they are being discussed in the news. The attitude, that social media is a drug enabled marketers, and social media owners to abuse of their addicted users, because they’re addicts, and it is their fault for becoming addicted.