I am still really tempted to take the train to Jaun Dorf rather than the car. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the route is easy by train. It’s two trains, and a bus. The second reason is that I don’t save any time on the way up, by taking the car. I do burn petrol, and have to pay for parking while not driving the car.
Yesterday while I was looking for a Via Ferrata I came across this hike and I am tempted to do it. I will be in the area to do this hike on Saturday and if I camped overnight then I could do the second hike as a solo hike.
The reason not to camp, at this time of year is that the temperature still goes down to 5°c tomorrow, 6°c on Saturday and 8°c on Sunday.
Today I drove to Geneva, with the intention of going to a coworking event. In the end I skipped it. Usually when I plan to participate in something like this I go at the start time, rather than at some point during the day. I broke with my routine so I was at the right place, at the right time, and I saw the group. I didn’t say hello.
Luckily this is something I rarely do.
Years ago I would drive people to and from glocals activities for free. A diving friend of mine had excellent service. I drove to his home to pick him up, and then drive to dive sites. One day I decided that I wanted to go for a hike with a group, rather than a walk, so I went to Geneva, and asked two or three times, “Is it okay if I do this instead of that” and he said yes.
As a follow up to yesterday’s blog post the last thing that I searched for was the travel times between Nyon and Le Pont, the train time between Le Pont and Vallorbe and the driving time between Le Pont and Moléson-Sur-Gruyère and the time for a little détour to pick someone up near Vevey.
If I was to have a full day tomorrow I would set off at 08:50 or so and drive for one hour to be at the Le Pont Train station by 09:58 and in Vallorbe by 10:18.
This weekend I could have gone to Bellevaux for the VF, Thones for the VF, Kandersteg for the VF, and gone to Charmey, Rocher de Naye and one other places for hikes and climbing. I chose to do none of these things. My reason for this is to save money on petrol, after driving quite a bit last week but also to recharge.
I’m Still an Introvert Last week I went for a hike and thought “I wish I had not gone”, until the end, when I was sad that the day was over.
Almost every time I get into the car I wish I was going on a road trip. I wish I was driving from point A to point B and that the drive would take hours, rather than minutes. As much as I hate “commuting” between point A and point B on a daily basis I love travelling from A to B as a journey. I love sitting for many hours in a car, thinking, looking at the landscape, remembering things, thinking of the future and more.
For a long time I thought that driving would give me freedom. I was impatient to be old enough to drive, and then I was impatient to pass my driving test. I failed the theory three times in Switzerland, zero in England, and the practical in England once, and once in Switzerland. Eventually I did pass my driving test in England, on Valentine’s day. I then drove to see the girlfriend of the time.
According to streetlight data walking in the US has declined over the past three or four years. The decline was by up to thirty six percent from 2019-2022. The clearest reason for this is that 2019 and 2020 were walking honeymoon periods. By this I mean that for the duration of lock down and “work from home” people had more time to walk since they spent less time commuting, but also because the natural habit of getting into a car to do something had declined.
This morning I decided to go for a benchmark run for a new Garmin training plan. After I ran the required 5 minutes and four minutes of walking I continued with my walk. I had a route that I wanted to walk but because I saw people, and dogs on the paths that I was thinking of walking down I took a bigger loop once, then again, and then a third time.