They forecast rain and I looked forward to going for a walk and having clean shoes as shoes are washed by the rain keeping shows slick. The rain didn’t come so my shoes got muddy and I stood by the tap trying to get the mud to drain away from between the tread, without much luck. Tomorrow if I run down the stairs as I always do I will leave thick clumps of mud from my apartment down to the garage
I walk or cycle almost every day across five or six villages per walk, and more on bikes. During these walks and bike rides I see that there is a chronic lack of safe walking and cycling routes, if you want to go for any distance. Almost every village has five, six or more roads in and out of it, but there are no safe walking or cycling routes
We hear about how people want to make cities more cycle friendly but there is a problem in the countryside. If you want to walk from most villages to most other villages you need to walk along roads where nothing is in place for walkers. You are forced to walk into muddy fields, long wet grass and more.
For a few weeks you see piles of sugar beet at one end, or another of fields. They stay that way for a while, until it rains for some reason. When it rains those piles of beet are loaded into hundreds of tractor trailer loads and transported to the train yard. The closest to Nyon is in Eysins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BbmPT3Ut9A&feature=youtu.be
A tractor lifting a trailer to unload sugar beet into a machine to load train wagons.
We are in a pandemic and I like to walk away from people. To do so I need to walk along muddy paths by the sides of roads, motorways and fields. In the process my shoes get covered in mud and I need to find ways of removing that mud.
The challenge isn’t with dry mud, because that’s easy. Run down some stairs and the mud that was on your shoes will be on the stairs, and the shoes will be clean. The drawback is that neighbours and cleaners hate this, apparently. Enough to complain about it but not enough to put something to clean shoes by the entrance to the building. We’re not in 1901, we’re in 2022. Who still walks in muddy fields today?
People who walk as much as me wear through shoes within a few months. The soles that were deep and ridged when new, become smooth as we walk, and wear away the soles. Usually I know that shoes are new, or that they need replacing the same way. They start to cause blisters, and I feel that stones are starting to be felt through the soles.
These shoes stand out from others because they are waterproof almost to the top of the shoe, so as long as lake waves are small you’re fine. I tried on the lake, but with a speed boat passing seconds before, I didn’t insist. I tested in the blue shower by the lake to see the result. They performed as expected.
During a walk a few weeks ago I came across L’Harmonica pour les nuls, Harmonica for Dummies, so I picked up the book and within a day or two I had ordered a harmonica to learn the instrument. The harmonica is a small versatile instrument. that can be used to play a range of music.
The greatest advantage with harmonicas is that it fits within a pocket. It takes very little space and can theoretically be taken anywhere. Despite what I thought about harmonicas the book is quite big. It’s over 300 pages.
Today I see that there is a nice storm warning. Storm warnings, during a heatwave are nice because it means that despite the heats we will have a short fun reprieve. I hope for thunder and lightning. There is every chance that the anticipated storm will not happen. We can sit and hope. This type of storm brings with it a risk of hail.
The number of cases by district.
For a while I liked playing with VS Code but I grew tired of it because it autocompletes everything, to the extent that you end up deleting rather than writing code. For a while I was playing with Atom but Github have decided to retire that application so I decided to look for an alternative and that’s when I came across VIM once more.
Through modern eyes VIM looks like a simple, featureless app but if you dig beneath the surface then you see that it is a fully featured IDE, just waiting to be woken up, part by part.
Plenty of yellow, some purple and other types of flowers in a field nearby
The pandemic continues. People continue suggesting to do things in the physical world but I find little to no desire to be in close proximity to others, The only moment I am, is when I am cycling.
Today I didn’t bother wearing a mask to recycle, not because I didn’t have it with me but because there were no people around. This proves that when the pandemic is over and that risks are minimal, I will resume normal life, without a mask at all times.
Today I went for my daily walk and I saw a shape. I thought, “That looks like a fox” and as I approached i had a doubt about it being a dog and I felt fear but I continued forward anyway. Eventually the fox noticed me, looked at me and then fled the other way. This is good news. This means that the fox was healthy, rather than rabied. It also means that I can keep being relaxed about seeing foxes.