Water

In February I walked or ran along the Asse river that runs from the Jura down towards Nyon and it was flooding. Walking paths had to be diverted and trees found themselves surrounded by water like individual islands. I walked by the same river during my daily walk yesterday and the opposite has now occurred.

The river that had flooded and turned into islands is now just a trickle. You can walk to the middle of the river without getting your socks wet. Having said this, having waterproof shoes does help keep socks dry. The point is that the layer of water is so shallow that you can walk to the middle of the river, take a picture, and walk back to the path, without getting wet.

For the first time in months it is raining properly. We don’t have torrential rain, and we don’t have drizzle. We have proper rain. Proper river filling rain. Proper lake filling rain. It’s the type of rain that falls and hydrates the soil, the planets, the lakes and more. It’s the type of rain that cleans roads of their greasy films.

It’s the type of rain, where if you walk in it for five minutes you will be drenched. It is the type of rain that cleans veluxes, and potentially cars. It’s the type of rain that makes a nice change from constant sunshine.

Waking early is great, to run when it is cooler but it does have a serious drawback. That drawback is that whilst the run might be more pleasant, due to the fresher air, especially evening and morning rain but it has the drawback that if you live in a minergie apartment you never get an opportunity to flush out warm air and replace it with cool air.

Today, as one of my suntan lotion bottles is empty of suntan lotion I decided to clean it with dish soap and water, before adding water to use the suntan lotion bottle as a mister, and so far it has been a partial success.

Yesterday I walked with a light rain coat because it rained a few times during the day. This morning it has been raining heavily for hours. I stepped outside to get 4 season tyres from the post box for the bike and my back was quite wet after a few minutes.

Such rain might feel limiting if it fell several times a week, but it doesn’t. It usually falls heavily for a few hours, and then it stops for a few days, before coming back. If I want to go outdoors, I will need to wait until this afternoon today. It’s meant to stop at 1500 or so. That’s when I can go for a run.

The Cascade Du Flumen are in the Jura, on the French side. They can be accessed either with a 1.6km walk from a large parking nearby that requires going over a few pot holes or down a steep path with loose scree. What makes the waterfalls so spectacular is that they are formed not by water flowing over a cliff and falling to the ground. They are formed by holes in the rock allowing water that has been through underground caves to seep through the rocks. The result is a cliff with several waterfalls bleeding out of the cliff facee.

Walking is an easy activity. You put your shoes on, and you go for a walk. Sometimes you walk from home. Other times you walk from a car park. Sometimes you walk along rivers that are full, and others you walk along streams that are almost dry.

A few years ago I did the same Via Ferrata by a waterfall two or three times within a few weeks because I liked it so much. The beauty of waterfalls is that sometimes they’re erupting with power. They’re roaring and sending a mist of water outwards. Other times they’re running dry and you can really get a good look at the underlying rock beneath.

Recently a CWT Vulcan system was installed on a pipe in the building where I live and the calcar that I had watched being deposited in a kettle stopped depositing, and even started to disintegrate. Within a week, or less the calcar almost vanished.

To over-simplify it, you wrap a coil around a pipe, with an electronic ciruit board and it uses electric currents, through electrophoresis to take calcium and magnesium from complex to simple structures. In the process calcar no longer builds up. It goes a step further and cleans the calcar, as was shown by the kettle example. You can read more about the process from this source. If that’s not technical enough you can read this paper.

Two days in a row I have poured water on my head. The reason for this is that yesterday we were in 35°c heat and today we were in 33°c heat. When you’re walking for two or three hours at the solar Maximum the best cooling strategy is to pour water on your head, as I did. It’s a quick way of cooling. It’s not that the water was cool. The water is warm, heated by direct sunlight for the last half hour, or even hour.

Yesterday I went for a walk with a Garmin Etrex 32 that was sometimes in my hands and at other times in my pocket. I could have been hands three with a GPS watch but it’s good to play with a variety of devices. I chose the Etrex because it was paired with the Tempe thermometer. The Thermometer was in my backpack, in the top pocket. I knew that the air temperature would be around 30°c but I wanted to see what the “felt” temperature would be. As I left home the thermometer indicated 28°c before climbing to a maximum of 45°c and an average of 38°c. [caption id=“attachment_10601” align=“alignnone” width=“169”] Average temp 38°cHottest: 45°cMin: 29°c[/caption] I felt fine during this walk. I set off with a 600ml water bottle and for the first half of the walk I didn’t drink because I wasn’t thirsty. By the time I did start drinking my water it was warm.

Today I learned that Switzerland has a map that shows which communes have the most swimming pools per capita. Nyon has 50 swimming pools. That’s 2,3 per thousand people. Blonay St Legier has 336. Collonge- Bellerive has 491, as you’d expect. 

Switzerland has, on average, one swimming pool per 155 people. They cover an area of around 2,500,000 square meters. 

The Water Impact

Switzerland has 56,000 private pools that contain 3.5 billion litres of water according to their estimate. That’s an enormous amount of water. This doesn’t include the indoor private pools. As droughts become more common the concept of having a private pool becomes more and more absurd. It becomes absurd because private pools require a huge amount of water, and are seldom used.