Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Travel day: Geneva-Dubai-Singapore-Melbourne (first time I've been through Singapore for a few years). Reasonably smooth though the flights were pretty full (not surprising at this time of year). I'd hoped to sleep most of the Dubai-Singapore leg and stay awake for Singapore-Melbourne but didn't quite succeed on either count. Scenic highlight was an excellent view of Java's line of volcanoes, all behaving themselves at the moment.

With a free morning before flying out, my original thoughts had been to hire a bike, but I woke up with a sore wrist for no obvious reason and thought it might not appreciate the bumping that comes from being on the handlebars, so took to the water instead. Probably a better session than the last one, perhaps because I know my way around that corner of the lake better than I did last time (and know where to avoid the underwater plants). Got the wash from a passing boat at one stage, but definitely no tsunami.

Now at the end of the first leg of the trip home. Not sure what it is about Geneva flights to Dubai, but for the second time in a row our plane was parked so far from the terminal that it could almost have been in Abu Dhabi.

Hips still no good - think I might wait until the physio has a chance to have a crack at them on Tuesday. The few minutes I got was at least long enough to learn of the existence of the Geneva Street Food Festival, which I took advantage of later in the day, before doing something I hadn't got round to doing in any of my Geneva trips over close to a decade - taking the cable car up to Le Saleve (it's open in the evenings on Fridays in summer). A bit too hazy for really good views (and seriously sweaty for the walking at the top; it's become very humid), but still worth doing. Not sure if walking steeply downhill within reasonably close proximity of dinner was such a good idea, though...

The Le Saleve trip also means I can lay claim to having been in France on their hottest ever day - it's over the border, although if you can tell where the border actually is you're doing better than I am (it seems to run through the middle of a car park).

Walking back this morning I saw a pest controller's van which advertised, among other things, "deratisation". That's a word which needs to be adopted into English.

Headed for the water, in the form of the Bains des Paquis - it's one of the wonders of Geneva that it's perfectly reasonable to go swimming in a lake in the middle of the city. Even at 7.30 there were plenty of people there, although not so many actually in the water (which has warmed up from 18 to 23 in the last week). Took a while to find my rhythm (and there was a bit of a current to get used to), but not too bad. Misjudged the distance/time a bit - now I know I need to do seven round-the-pontoons sets rather than six if there's a next time.

Tracking the heatwave again today, although not as much as those who are in Toulouse for the International Meeting on Statistical Climatology, who appeared (at least from tweets and Facebook posts) to be as interested in whether it would reach 40 in Toulouse (it did, a June record) as in the papers presented at the conference. Hopefully Toulouse has cooled down a bit by the time of the IPCC meeting at the end of August. There was certainly a June French record but I'm not quite sure what it is: the 43.5 was at what looks to be a dodgy site but there were others in the low 42s (the record was 41.5) which look reasonable.

And the pressure's on for one of my bits of writing, now that I know it might get an audience I hadn't previously suspected at some point in the future; a full reading of the most recent IPCC report (presumably not including the reference list) is being done as a performance at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The ticket website contains a warning "contains distressing themes".

Getting closer but not quite ready, as I found out on the first set of steps. Hopefully tomorrow (and if tomorrow isn't a running day it will be a swimming one; there should be plenty of space in the lake, if not necessarily on its shores).

Today's records list was June national records for Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic (all in the 38s) and an all-time record for Clermont-Ferrand, France (40.9). The Berlin sites were in the 37s. The hottest air hasn't mixed down to the surface in the Alps, so Geneva's got off relatively lightly (33.4 today).

At some point today my log had its 300,000th visitor. I wish I had something more interesting to tell you (other than reflecting that these days the 35.7 degrees in Berlin on JWOC 1991 relays day, the city's highest temperature on record at the time, now gets surpassed almost every second year, as it will be tomorrow). Hip tightness is the issue at present.

C • 1991 Jwoc 7

For those who've always wondered why the SA-NSW and SA-Victoria borders don't quite line up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australia%E2%8...

Swim after work in the Varembe pool; more or less as crowded as usual, but it seemed to flow reasonably well today. For the first time that I've been here, the outdoor pool was open, but it isn't marked (or suitable) for lap swimming. I expect I'll take to the lake later in the week (along, given the forecast, with several thousand of my newest friends).

The square outside the UN had a particularly fertile crop of demonstrators this evening, with one group campaigning against arbitrary executions in Saudi Arabia, another against persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka and a third against persecution of religious minorities in India. It's probably as well that I wasn't in the actual negotiations part of last week's meeting; with the Saudis being obstructive as usual at climate negotiations (albeit not as obstructive as the same meeting last year, where they held everything up for two days by vetoing the approval of the agenda), I might have struggled to be sufficiently diplomatic to restrain myself from making any reference to the alleged activities of their Istanbul consulate.

I'm staying close to the station but on the other side of the tracks to where I usually do, which has meant a new neighbourhood to explore. It seems to be well endowed with cafes, which I consider to be a Good Thing.

C • UN protests 4