Blog #12 Fullinsdorf to Buochs (Swiss)

Fullinsdorf to Buochs

Hard climb a few kilometres out of Fullinsdorf but a lot of downhill and flat for the rest of the day. Storm rain threatened but other than a scattering of showers the weather was cool and dry.

Question: What do you call big fat rain drops if you were a medieval peasant?

Answer: Thunderplumbs

Read about that in one of today's newspaper amongst the many minutes, maybe hours when I have nothing to do. Correction, there is never nothing to do. I am in a highly charged state of hyper vigilance. One manoeuvre error and I'm dead or injured as we slide down the descriptive scale; bump on the head, never the same again, shadow of his former self until we skid to the bottom where 'he's there but nobody's in' until the line flattens on the Holter Monitor.

Polite but with a disinclination to engage with someone passing though their city or community is how I would describe an obvious aspect of the Swiss. They do not need to communicate with strangers as they respect discretion and privacy, and are not usually expected to talk to each other with any familiarity and I barely get a smile. The closest I get to a conversation on the road is with the voice in my GPS instructing me where to turn. It jams up my thoughts as the puerility of so many navigations make it impossible to think. Switch her off and life is rich again but I get lost.

Cyclists are especially expressionless, there is not the camaraderie that exists in motorbiking circles. You meet a biker they want to chat, you meet a cyclist they want to race you up the hill. Yet I look for a friendly face but am instead overwhelmed by the lack of flatness, suddenly. More so the project has come alive in my head. I feel the enormity of my task, the size of my goal. But ...

“When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha (Swiss author)

And so my goal orientated, mileage obsessed, living-in-the-moment mania is growing stronger. The wide view will become linear, the heartbeat once strong will settle to a sound you can hardly hear. To quote Hess once more:

"I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons."

Todays map

Wayward Map of the Day

Fullinsdorf to Buochs Map

And finally

Interesting People On the Road

I met these two lovely people at a summer event at Touratech's HQ in Germany. They are bloggers and influencers and trying really hard to make a name for themselves, and doing a cracking job. I nicked a bit from their website as follows but now you can find them. I stayed overnight and we are firm friends.

"We are Sean and Emily. Husband & wife, photographers and adventurers, content creators that live in Switzerland. Over the last 6 years we have travelled to over 50 countries. Our whirlwind love story involves long distance, motorbikes and lots of love letters."