I just finished Wool, a sci-fi book that is the basis of the Apple TV series Silo. It was an enjoyable read! I won't spoil anything here, but let's just say it made the thought of the US (and Western world) potentially succumbing to violence even more dystopian. The book, amongst other societal parallels, makes you value peace and its fragility. A /books page is in the works for this website.

Speaking of the US, our yearly company meeting is happening later this month in DC. It might be the last, at least in DC, which is bittersweet. For the past few years, I've left this week of in-person collaboration (I work fully remotely) energized and inspired, no matter how negative the state of the world feels. However, I'm looking forward to entirely regional holidays this year after this trip after this trip and our last big one.

Returning to work has been good. In January, we launched the first product that I (mostly) coded — [EO Predictor](https://www.developmentseed.org/eo-predictor). You can read more about it [here](/eo-predictor). It was fun to "launch" something that I was confident in the purpose of, but not in the code (I'm still a beginner).

Just like everyone else in the web development sector, I've been using more LLM "agents". I've hopped between Claude, OpenAI (Codex), OpenCode, and Github Copilot, mostly just to try to stay up-to-speed on developments in this space. Codex in OpenCode was great, but after learning that the President of OpenAI is one of the largest single donors to the Trump campaign, I've unsubscribed.

With my goals still being to learn to code better, I'm balancing between using these agents as teachers and let's build out all of the ideas that I finally can. Doing the latter (much closer to vibe coding) always makes me feel tense/regretful when arguing with the LLMs and not really understanding the codebase. It's been much more enjoyable to think through a problem, suggest architecture, have it scaffold, and check the outputs (or write my own code) every step of the way.

German took a big hit while I was out. I'll start classes again twice per week, and plan on enrolling in an intensive (or semi-intensive) course over the summer. My best language learning success, Chinese, was because I could study it every day and focus entirely on it. With work and life, that's more difficult, but worth reproducing in some limited form.

This post could be a novel, but in summary, we saw so many things, ate so much good food, and generally had a rejuvenating time away from work and our daily routines.

We spent about half of the trip in China, visiting megacities, remote villages and everything in between, zipping around primarily by train. While aiming to include down time, much of this part of the trip was focused on experiences — visiting rice terraces, climbing the Great Wall, etc.

Before continuing to Nepal, we visited Tibet, where we took an overland tour from Lhasa to Kathmandu. We then spent almost two weeks hiking around the majestic Manaslu peak on the Manaslu Circuit, bringing us from massive gorges up over a 5,100m pass. We spent the rest of the time off relaxing in Thailand, visiting three islands in the south and fully enjoying the tropical weather.

Some takeaways:

1. Taking extended time off is just wonderful. If you're able to take some time off, you should.

2. Leaving daily routines of home, helps put many things into perspective. Traveling helps build sympathy by comparing (similarities or differences) our ways of life, values, goals, opportunities and customs with others.

3. Three months, for us, was an optimal amount of time away. Both of us felt ready (in a positive way) to return to our daily routines and are excited about work and seeing friends, after fully disconnecting from routines and stress.

4. Fitness was difficult to maintain. I primarily run outside, which wasn't always so enticing in Asian megacities. I want to get back into a cardio, and ideally strength-training, routine.

5. I want to continue learning how to code, and am toying with a self-imposed coding challenge. (hopefully) more details to come.

6. China is a very interesting place. I lived there from 2016-2019, and (surprisingly) still spoke Chinese well-enough on this trip to converse with people and navigate their system. The country changed a lot since I lived there. It felt less chaotic, quieter (EVs everywhere!), and frankly easier to travel. I'd like to post more in-depth about this.

7. I took over 1 million steps on the trip!

8. I only read two books while on the trip, which I'll take to mean that I was more fully in-the-moment.

I returned to Italy in May for a conference. It was nice to be back in Italy, but quite different to be there on a work trip instead of vacation. The last day was the most memorable, but not because of the conference. I snuck out early to visit a World Press Photo exhibition. What a powerful series of photos, and a powerful organization. In this era of AI-generated images on top of the previous era of 24h news coverage, the yearly recap of peoples' stories of resilience and suffering (often not publicized in western media) were told through photos and accompanying text. Upon returning home, I ordered yearbooks of 2025 and 2023, and plan on ordering new releases yearly.

In July, I went to Lisbon for a work team meeting. While I was unfortunately a bit sick the whole time, it was great to meet up with colleagues IRL. The week concluded with a visit to one colleague's farm in the countryside, which was a nice break from the hustle of modern life.

Other travel included a weekend bachelor party for a friend in France, and a wedding trip to Italy for the same groom.

Outdoor pursuits were good this summer, but nothing crazy. I ran two trail races:

1. A half-marathon trail run in Interlaken.

2. A 17k trail run in Laax (Graubünden).

I also got some other runs and hikes in. The Swiss Alps are definitely my happy place.

Also, I bought a new bike, which will be much better suited for bike tours and general rides than my Frankenstein road-bike-turned-touring-bike. While I had some incredible experiences on the old bike, it usually caused me neck pain due to the size being, in hindsight, much too small.

Several concerts over the summer (Tinariwen and Judith Hill) were fantastic.

Now, for the upcoming stuff: Starting later in September, my wife and I will take some extended time off of work (~3 months) and travel around in Asia! We have a pretty epic itinerary lined up that I'll share in a future recently. We've been planning and dreaming of this for about a year now, so we're in the nice omg it's actually happening! phase, paired with a good sprinkling of omg, it's actually happening... there's so much to prep for. More on that after the trip!

Many people have a stake in the S&P 500. You might invest in it directly through an ETF, or as part of an investment portfolio. If you have a pension fund from work, whether private or public, such as some US State or Canadian pension funds, you're likely impacted by the price of the S&P 500. It's an easy, safe way to invest in the growth of the US.

We treat the S&P 500 as an indicator of value creation. Its constituents create things, whether they're primarily physical (Apple, Nvidia, Walmart, Amazon, Coca-Cola, GE) or primarily digital (Google, Meta, Netflix, Visa). Whether or not the things they create are good (social media algorithms, fossil fuels, tobacco, diabetes), they do create products and services.

Last month, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase joined the list. They make money by charging fees on cryptocurrency trades, so the value of the company directly depends on people trading cryptocurrencies

The value of the S&P 500, and maybe the value of your pension fund, is now directly influenced by the (perceived) value of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, as well as "memecoins" (which are explicitly marketed as a joke) like Trump's and Melania's have, in effect, made it into the retirement accounts of millions of people.

Cryptocurrency's value proposition, especially long-term, is far from certain. Marketplaces in general can lose value when people buy or sell less, or if access is reduce (i.e., through regulation).

Virtually everyone who bought Trump's memecoin lost money. They're probably less likely to trade cryptocurrency in the future. Reduced trading means a reduced value of Coinbase, which means pension funds get a bit less valuable.

Mark Twain famously said: “During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business”. What happens when the gold is gone and no one is buying shovels?

They also come with costs, whether that's data ownership and privacy concerns, or limitation on the amount or access of the data. The data is also (unless synced and cached locally) not accessible if you're offline, or if the website is unreachable.

I have a collection of RAW photos from my dSLR camera that is approaching 1TB, that I have on a shared family OneDrive plan. Photography is something I care about, as are holding on to those (raw...) memories. I also have a normal Gmail that over the years has maxed out the 15GB free tier.

Late last year, these services started complaining in unison that I was approaching their free limits, and that I should pay monthly to have more available storage space. You've probably received these messages as well — something along the lines of:

You're running out of space (which this email we're sending you to inform you of in fact contributes very slightly to your space issue). Pay us monthly, or you'll lose access to your data and our other services.

Despite being a rather frugal person (which is something I'm working on...), I have no issue paying for a service that brings value. For many, cloud storage is a great purchase. For the record, I did fork up a cheap monthly payment for the base paid tier of Google One, because I do get value out of Gmail and Drive, and will do so until I find a way to reduce my storage needs there.

OneDrive is more difficult. From what I can tell, they don't offer storage tiers above 1TB. Google does, but it costs CHF 120 / year. I bought a 4TB hard drive for less, but that comes at the risk of failure, or needing to plug it in every time I want to view photos.

Instead, I went down the rabbit hole of building my own cloud.

Requirements

1. I want to store my photos without monthly subscriptions.

That's it, if we're being honest, but there's a much longer list of things that would be great.

1. View photos without having to plug in a hard drive.
2. Be able to edit those photos (which requires a fast-enough connection and storage medium to browse through large photo files).
3. Back up photos from my phone, because I honestly take way more photos with my phone than my dSLR.
4. Be able to add more capacity if my storage needs increase, which they will if I keep taking photos.
5. Not use too much electricity.
6. Not be noisy.
7. Learn more about computers and servers.
8. Not cost more than just paying the tech companies.
9. Have a good backup strategy for when I inevitably make a mistake or when hardware fails.

Options

An external hard drive would meet my actual requirement, but none of the other nice-to-haves. A network attached storage device, or NAS, is a small computer with storage and it accessible any time over the local network. That would fit the requirements, but pre-built ones aren't necessarily cheap.

In looking into NAS devices, I came across the wonderful world (and rabbit hole) that is the homelab and the community around it. The basic is to have a computer running 24/7 that can run one or more service. One of those "services" is storing and serving files. The sky is then the limit (or, better said, the rabbit hole has no bottom) for which services you want to run.

Suddenly my requirement list turned into a long wish list.

1. Block advertisement on the whole network (with a real benefit of decreasing loading times for web pages).
2. Have a shared network-accessible storage option for files besides photos.
3. Be able to run services separately (in virtual machines or Docker containers) for better isolation and backups.
4. Access files and services securely while not at home.
5. Start monitoring electricity use of devices.
6. Run a virtual Windows machine for cross-device testing of projects at work.
7. Run monthly processing of large OSM dataset files (for my watermap project) without relying on me remembering to do so.
8. Make a custom endpoint of public transportation departures near my apartment to create a "leave by" notice and send to an LED Matrix device, or serve it as a simple web page.
9. Host a file conversion service like ConvertX.
10. ...

OK, before we fall too deep into this rabbit hole, I wanted to test the basics. Luckily, I had everything I already needed.

Round 1 (January 2025)

Hardware

• A laptop from 2015 that has a broken keyboard.
• A 4TB external hard drive.
• A USB to ethernet adapter.

Software

• Proxmox VE, a "hypervisor" that you can run virtual machines and containers in.
• OpenMediaVault (OMV), installed in the 1st VM, lets you make network shares via a GUI (instead of via the terminal).
• Ubuntu Server, installed in the 2nd VM.
• Docker, running in the 2nd VM, to manage containers for additional services.
  • Immich, an amazing open-source Google Photos alternative to back up and display photos.
  • Homepage, a way to more easily see (and remember) what's running where.
  • Filebrowser, a web-based file browser to see the 2nd VMs filesystem. This ended up being a mistake because I messed up where Immich was storing photos.

Cost

Hardware

Technically free because I had everything already, if I needed to buy the parts:

• CHF 75 (estimate) for an old laptop with a broken keyboard.
• CHF 114 for this 4TB external hard drive.
• CHF 10 for a USB to ethernet adapter.

Software

Free (thanks, open source)!

Electricity

Roughly 10W per hour x 24h x 365 = 87.6 kWh per year.

Summary

This was a great, low-stakes entry into the world of building a homelab. I could manage all of the VMs and services by going to my "homepage" and then clicking on the service to open it.

It was super easy to "mount" the network storage to my Mac, and be able to interact with photos from my dSLR. I could also store some large files on the same share to free up laptop storage space (however, I kept backups of all data elsewhere during this phase). Immich makes viewing and backing up photos from your phone trivially easy and snappy.

What wasn't snappy was trying to skim through RAW photos, or try to edit them in any way. If I loaded all of the photos into Photomator, the editor I've been trying out recently over Lightroom, it would never load. If I selectively added individual folders to Photomator, it'd load after ~30s, but each photo would take upwards of 5s to load.

Even more critically, this iteration felt fragile, being a laptop with a single external hard drive.

The next version would need to be snappier and have a solid backup plan.

Round 2 (March 2025)

Most NAS devices use spinning HDDs for storage. While they excel in low cost per TB of storage (sometimes as little as $15/TB), they're somewhat energy intensive, slow (especially and fetching lots of files, like what I'd be doing with the RAW photos), and sometimes noisy.

Solid-state storage (SSDs) were the clear answer. They're silent, durable (no moving parts), and much faster (in read/write speeds, and the number of operations they can do per second), but do cost more per TB.

I wasn't quite ready to build the PC from scratch, so I stumbled upon a company called CWWK that builds what looks like the perfect pre-built product — the Pocket NAS. It's absolutely tiny, fairly quiet, and has four m.2 SSD slots (the same type of SSD that's probably in your laptop), and fast 2.5Gbit ethernet ports, all at an affordable price. I could get started by just plugging in my storage, without having to build the thing from scratch.

While the product was built quite well, my unit unfortunately didn't deliver on its core promise of being a pocket NAS. Only one of the four m.2 SSD slots was being registered by the computer. Software and hardware checks weren't yielding results. Support instructions weren't so clear, so I think I flashed the wrong version of the updated BIOS on the device, rendering it unusable. Luckily, I was able to get a refund.

Cost

Hardware

• CHF 311 (US$375) for the Pocket NAS (with an upgraded CPU, 16GB RAM, and a 256GB m.2 SSD boot drive)
• CHF 200 for two 2TB m.2 SDDs

Software

Free (thanks, open source)!

Electricity

If it were running 24/7, it was about 10W, which would put it at a similar usage as the laptop in round 1: 87.6 kWh per year.

Summary

While the potential was there, issues with the product led to a frustrating experience. I went back to the drawing board (Reddit forums). Building my own PC still felt like too deep of a rabbit hole, but the new pre-built solution didn't work out. I knew that I wanted to have some closure and get something to work.

The next option was to look at the used PC market. Small business PCs from HP, Lenovo or Dell were promising.

1. They're well specked.
2. They use relatively little electricity depending on the model
3. They're quite affordable due to large businesses dumping them when they reach the end of their lifecycle.
4. They sometimes come with support and have readily-available parts.

After some research, I settled on the HP EliteDesk 800 G3, specifically the Small Form Factor (SFF) version. They're relatively small, very quiet, low powered, and have plenty of external and internal ports for upgradeability.

Round 2.5

This round was short. I ordered the SFF version, but the mini (much smaller) was delivered. The mini variant didn't have the internal ports (PCIe) that I needed (details below), so I returned it.

Round 3

Hardware

• HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF.
• Two 2TB M.2 NVMe SSDs (purchased for round two).
• Two PCIe to m.2 NVMe SSD adapters (so I could plug the m.2 SSDs into the computer).
• (Later) 2x16GB RAM.

Software

• Proxmox
• TrueNAS Scale in the 1st VM to manage the two 2TB SSDs, using something fancy called ZFS (which lets you take and restore snapshots for part of a backup strategy). The data is "mirrored" across the two SSDs, so if one dies, the data survives.
• NextCloud in the 2nd VM to manage storing and serving data.
  • It's overkill, but I thought it'd be be nicer than just a network storage device to accessing photos.
  • It has a client app that lets you sync files by keeping files on the server, but letting you access them (online or offline) on your computer.
• PiHole, to block ads, in a small virtual container.
• Tailscale running in each VM, so I can access them in a safe way while away from home.
• Home Assistant to monitor energy usage, using three smart plugs, which I'm in the very early stages of setting up.

Price

Hardware

• CHF 117 for the HP computer (CHF 99 for the computer and CHF 18 for shipping) (refurbished).
• CHF 200 for two 2TB M.2 NVMe SSDs (new).
• CHF 36 for the 2x16GB RAM (used).

Energy

Roughly 15W x 24h x 365d = 131.4kWh per year.

Summary

Costs

Using a rough average of CHF 0.4 per kWh, we get the following cost breakdown of hardware and operational costs for one year.

Round 3's operational costs are less than half of a one year 1TB subscription to Google One at CHF 120 (billed monthly), and way less than their 2TB plan (with AI features) at CHF 204.

Conclusion

This was, and continues to be, a worthwhile project. Round one was exciting because everything was new, but the results weren't optimal. Rounds 2 and 2.5 were frustrating, because hardware that should have worked ended up being the limiting factor. Round 3 was satisfying once I had the computer running with Proxmox, and had the storage and upgraded RAM installed.

This met my goal of hosting photos without paying for monthly subscriptions, with the caveat that I will likely keep the family OneDrive plan since others on the plan get value out of it. I still think it met the goal because I no longer need to subscribe to access photos that aren't directly stored where I try to see them. If my family members' needs change, then I would transfer my data (above the maximum free tier) out of that service.

Next Steps

I still need to set up a backup service that feels more long term. ZFS snapshots help if I mess something up, but they're not a backup solution. I think I'll set up the old laptop (round 1) to be a Proxmox Backup Server and send a copy of the full ZFS pool there weekly. Until then, I'll keep all data backed up on OneDrive and other external HDDs, and will continue to back up critical data to the cloud even after setting up PBS.

At a slower pace, I'll continue to set up VMs to run services and processes that seem useful and interesting, and will continue to learn throughout the process (and hopefully document my process and decisions so I can remember how everything is set up in the future).

The site visits were for a project about coral reef restoration in the Florida Keys and the Dominican Republic. In addition to figuratively deep diving into a conservation-focused project, we also got to literally dive into the ocean and see coral reefs. It was an incredible, moving experience, both professionally and personally.

Coral reefs support such a beautiful, rich, diverse ecosystem, yet are so fragile. Coral reef restoration is much more about adaptation — helping reefs survive as long as possible — versus "mitigation" (reducing our CO₂ emissions). In summary, scientists take a bit of coral from the wild, cut it up into small pieces, and help it grow in a controlled environment (usually a series of indoor or outdoor tanks). Once the coral fragments are healthy and large enough, they're re-planted out on coral reefs. The process is both incredibly heartwarming (we can save the reefs and their vast diversity!) and depressing (one longer heat spell can kill a whole reef, and we can't stop burning fossil fuels).

On the topic of burning fossil fuels, I then continued to visit some friends and family in the western part of the continent, and then a company on-site at our office in Washington, D.C. I've been thinking quite a bit about flight shaming and personal responsibility when it comes to CO₂ emissions, and the dichotomy of personal action not meaning anything in the times of drill baby drill, while also meaning everything for collective action, morality and having a sense of control over our impact on the planet. I'd like to write a post about it sometime.

It was also strange visiting the US, and especially D.C. during the start of the Doge era. Maybe it was only strange because I've been living away from my homeland for so long now (almost 10 years now). During a time of so much change and uncertainty, it was nice to see that some things in my friend's and family's lives were still recognizable, or even the same as they were before.

March was relatively quiet, with a few trips and an conference within Switzerland. April started off well with a holiday to Italy. We took the night train to Calabria and spent a few days there, then had a few days in Rome. It's so nice to eat gelato whenever you want.

I took a break from reading, but just started Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka. With all the talk of government inefficiency and the left's (sometimes perceived) inability to turn policy accomplishments into impact, the idea of government's service offering seems important and timely. As the book came out in 2023, I'm looking forward to reading this without the author's written context of what's currently happening.

We watched recent Netflix series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was fun. I've also started watching a few documentaries / shows in German. If they speak slowly, simply and clearly, I'm able to somewhat follow along, which is nice.

The final weeks of 2024 contained a flood to emails from my cloud storage providers telling me that I have no more storage space left. Instead of succumbing to their wishes, I spent the first week or two of the new year in the rabbit hole that is building a homelab. Basically, have another computer that's on 24/7 run a service or services that you can connect to, primarily over your local network. The options are limitless.

It started with an an external 4TB HDD. Instead of having to plug it in every time I want to access files, it's instead plugged into an old laptop, which shares the HDD to any computer on our local network as a network drive. That then led to virtual machines, Docker containers, more refined network drive access, and a self-hosted Google Photos alternative called Immich to back up and host my photos.

The home lab / NAS community seems very particular with setup requirements and suggestions, but my janky setup works as the primary goal of having more storage space accessible to my main laptop. I still have all of my data in other locations, and will continue to get storage warning emails from cloud providers until I build a robust backup strategy and migrate data to the homelab.

I might get tempted and actually build a "proper" setup, like using a dedicated mini computer with faster SSD storage so that I can edit photos over the network. Or maybe this rabbit hole will pass and I'll fork over some money to the big tech giants — time will tell. Time will also tell if write a proper post about my journey into this world.

Speaking of journeys, I finished reading the last book in the Three Body Problem series, Death's End by Liu Cixin. I really enjoyed the trilogy, especially the second and third books. Without spoiling anything, Liu Cixin builds an extremely expansive and creative literary universe with rather convincing future technology, and explores many of the political aspects of a, let's say, life-changing discovery that affects humanity as a whole. It veered a bit off the rails for me about a third of the way into the third book, which had me pause reading it for several months, but picking it up over the winter break was a nice way to re-enter the literary universe.

Another journey: for roughly a month, I'll be in the US due to two work trips. Between them, instead of doubling the my CO2 emissions with a second transatlantic flight, I'll stick around and visit some friends and family. It's an exciting work project involving ecosystem restoration, and a great professional opportunity to co-develop an app with end users. A month is a long time, which will be nice to spend with friends and family, but also hard to spend away from family and friends in my adopted home of Switzerland.

I hope I'm able to keep some momentum up on learning German, which is a goal of mine for 2025, but I'll be relieved to speak to people in my native language.

We've been living in Luzern, Switzerland for one year. It's a beautiful town and has great access to nature, which we've been trying to take advantage of as much as possible. It's been extremely foggy for most of the past two months, making it all-the-more tempting to get above the clouds.

It has been difficult to meet people, but I have a good network of friends around the country to rely on. This has been nice for planned visits, but spontaneous meet-ups or encounters have definitely been lacking.

To help with this, and for other reasons, I've been taking German classes twice per week with Lingoda, an online language course platform. Progress is slow, but I've recently been able to understand simple questions and can sometimes slowly reply. Twice per week should have me progressing at one CEFR level per year. I previously tried in-person classes, and might return to them in the future, but I currently like the flexibility of online classes.

Coding has been very fun and enjoyable recently. Hacking away in a Jupyter Notebook or building a simple web map has become easier, which has allowed me to (slowly) turn the infinite list of project ideas I have into reality. For example, here's a map of all water fountains and toilets (on OSM) in Europe GitHub repo. I do still rely on ChatGPT to make these, especially to start projects. However, I can now iterate with ChatGPT much more effectively because I know what to ask for, and can usually tell if its response is the most appropriate or not.

I was lucky enough to go to India recently for a work trip. We stuck around for an additional week to take advantage of the opportunity. It was an eye-opening experience. I was particularly impacted by the stark, visible divide between the rich and poor. Unimaginable wealth would be right next to unimaginable poverty. Life was on full display in all regards (good and bad).

Of course, the food was phenomenal. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the food scene in the regions we visited, whether it was local, national, or international cuisine.

Travel and weather have taken a toll on my exercise routine. I've been running much less often these days. I hope to do more indoor workouts and do more yoga.

Looking forward, I'm excited for the holidays, snow(sports), projects at work, and coding opportunities, and enjoy the routine I have for learning German.

Writing a novel seems like a daunting task. 90,000 words is a lot.

However, working in the knowledge economy, I do write a lot. Chances are that you do as well. Slack messages, Github tickets, emails (luckily, not very often) and of course, notes. This got me thinking – how much do I write?

I decided to start with counting the number of words in my notes, as it's the content that I have the most control over. Since August 2023, I've been using Logseq exclusively to write down (mostly) work notes, including a daily log of what I am doing, to-do lists, meeting notes, and other things that need to be jotted down. Logseq is great for many reasons, including the fact that notes are stored as Markdown files. Because that effectively means they're just text files, my notes will be accessible and compatible forever.

It also means that I can use Python to calculate the number of words I've written.

Calculating my word count

Logseq is structured around a daily journal, and most files are stored as yyyy_mm_dd.md inside of a journals folder. Knowing this, I wrote a Python script to calculate the number of words written in each of these files. The number of words can be aggregate based on the month or year that I'd like.

We first define a pattern:

pattern = "journals/" + str(year) + "_" + str(month) + "*"

Replacing year or month with the * wildcard identifies filenames with any year or any month, respectively.

We then loop through all files in the journals folder that meet the pattern definition. Each file's contents are then split into a list, on spaces. The length of the string is then calculated and added to a number_of_words variable.

for f in glob.iglob(pattern):

    # Opening our daily journal file in read only mode using the open() function
    with open(f,'r') as file:

        # Read the content of the file using the read() function and store them in a new variable
        data = file.read()

        # Split the string into a list using the split() function
        lines = data.split()

        # Calculate and adding the length of the lines in our number_of_words variable
        number_of_words += len(lines)

In roughly 5 months in 2023 (from August 11th), I wrote 33,881 words. That's roughly 6,700 words per month, or roughly 80,000 words per year – almost the length of an average book!

Caveats

80,000 words per year only accounts for most of my notes. This method doesn't account for all of the Slack messages, emails, Google/Word docs, WhatsApp/Signal messages, or any other keystrokes or screen taps, so it's most certainly an undercount. I'm only indexing "daily" notes, and not dedicated pages of notes that Logseq stores in a different folder, further under counting the total.

Regardless, it's nice to know that I'm writing a lot more than I thought.

Next Steps

I added my word count as a tally for the current year in the footer of post and project pages on this site. The words.py script outputs a .json file, that is then read when this website is built (read: update). Unfortunately, it's a manual process – I need to run words.py and then push my site to Github to have it rebuild. A better approach would be to run words.py daily and have this website build daily as well.

Still, it's a nice reminder of the many words I write.

The 2022-2023 winter in Europe was historically bad for nature and snow sport enthusiasts. Aching for some ski-based adventures, a few friends and I went to Rifugio Benevolo in early February.

I was still recovering from a back injury, so I was both restless to get on skis, but also cautious of relapses. Something about going somewhere that's difficult to get to seemed therapeutic (but definitely not logical).

Loading up our gear into a perfectly-sized Fiat Punto, we traversed the Swiss Alps to get to Italian Alps.

Rifugio Benevolo is located at 2,285m. Only a small shelter is open during the winter instead of the full hut.

The way up was beautiful but more difficult than we imagined, mostly because we took a less-frequented path. We arrived with headlamps blazing well past sunset.

We had the whole hut to ourselves for the whole weekend. Perhaps it wasn't surprising as the hut was not heated. The valley recorded temperatures of around -25°C the week before, and was forecast to be the same just after we would leave, but luckily we had a balmy 0°C (both inside and out).

While the snow quality wasn't the stuff of dreams, the landscape was. Multiple 3km peaks, pristine skies, and endless terrain to explore.

Our only visitor over the whole weekend was a fox!

It was magical to get out into nature again, especially with great friends. Ski touring is a great way to get your mind off of other worries as well (and to get into flow state).

As great as this escape was, we needed to get back to civilization and indoor heating.

Just across the Swiss border, and less than three hours by train from Geneva, sits the beautiful Lago Maggiore region of Northern Italy. Split between Piedmont and Lombardy, the region boasts mountains, lakes, villas, bustling ancient towns, and quite remote villages. I had visited a few times previously for the Lago Maggiore Marathon, but I had wanted to visit by bike for some time.

We vaguely planned five days in the region, with two campgrounds in mind to base ourselves out of for daily adventures.

We took an early train to Domodossola, arriving around 10:30am. We then rode on a dedicated, leasurly bike pack south through the valley. There were great, paved sections, as well as some areas where my road bike felt out of place.

After two flats due to a tiny piece of scrap metal, and great pizza and gelato, we made it to out campground for the evening, on the shores of Lago d'Orta.

The next morning, we woke to serenity.

We then peddled on around the south end of Lago Maggiore and back up the East side to a campground on the shores of Lago di Monate.

One of the best things about cycling in Italy are the breakfasts.

We explored two towns nearby – Ispra and Angera.

During our second day, we saw a town on a mountain top far away, which became the goal of our fourth day – the Santuario di Santa Maria del Monte.

A lovely lakeside path guided us part of the way there, complete with a "bar" (read: cafe). We fully appreciated the gorgeous spring weather.

A few hours and some sweat drops later, we were fully appreciating the view from the top.

Our final day had us retrace our tracks around the south of the lake, then up the West bank through Arona to Stresa.

After more food and relaxing, we caught a train back to Domodossola, then back to Geneva. What a privilege to be so close and so well connected to the beautiful Lago Maggiore region!

Writing in Markdown is great. Zettlr is a great Markdown editor, which pairs well with Zotero to manage citations. Publishing with Jupyter Book allows for good design and makes academic writing more accessible.

You can read my thesis here.

Background

I attended Tsinghua University 清华大学 between 2018 and 2021 and received a Master in Public Administration for the Sustainable Development Goals. Since the SDGs are (by definition) broad and all encompassing, so too was the program. While both a blessing and a curse, it did allow students to pursue courses, research and careers in the areas they were most passionate about.

Issues related to water have interested me since work I did with Engineers without Borders, where my classmates and I implemented several Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects at primary schools in western Kenya. Having experienced China's environmental degradation first-hand for the two years, tying these two together seemed logical.

Topic

After some time and discussion, I landed on the topic of comparing how people perceived water quality, and to a larger extent environmental degradation, with actual water quality. China suffers from quite bad levels of water pollution, but some areas are much worse off than others. Understanding if perceptions aligned with reality has many implications, including life satisfaction and political stability.

Data

Two datasets seemed to best cover the issue. One is a dataset of water quality scores at the sub-province level (similar to counties in the US or communes in Switzerland). The other is a large time series social survey, which includes questions related to environmental degradation and water quality.

At the time, and in addition to the thesis, I had wanted to learn Python. Luckily for me, the social survey data set was massive, and I didn't have SPSS on my computer. Trying to open the data set in Excel quickly crashed it, so Python was the best option!

The data analysis aspects of the thesis are documented in this Github repository, and hopefully soon in the Jupyter Book Thesis.

Writing

The literature review and writing portion mostly took place in Zettlr and Zotero. Once Zotero and Zettlr were linked, referencing was a breeze – just typing the @ symbol, followed by either the title or author. The setup process took a bit of time, but I found it to be worth it. There is extensive documentation and guidance on Zettlr's website.

Tsinghua University was very strict about the Word document template that the thesis needed to be submitted as. I think it would have been possible to find a LaTeX template and export from Zettlr, but I couldn't figure it out, so I unfortunately had to copy and paste into the Word doc.

Sharing

After defending the thesis and moving on to other projects, I thought less and less frequently of it. Months later, I found it a bit sad that so many pieces of academic writing, if not published in journals, accumulate digital dust in methaphorical filing cabinates. I wanted a way to show my work, but not through a static PDF.

Jupyter Book attempts to solve this problem. In their words:

Jupyter Book is an open source project for building beautiful, publication-quality books and documents from computational material.

Markdown, computational material (i.e., code and its output), and good aethetics all sounded like a perfect fit for my goal.

After some time re-copying my updated text from Word back into Markdown (oh, the irony of Markdown's aim to make text more interoperable and accessible), and formatting some of the tables and citations (since Zettlr and Jupyter Book don't follow the same Markdown standard), the "book" was ready! Hosting it on GitHub was straightforward.

As of now, only the output graphs are in Jupyter Book, not the actual code to create them. My code is in a few Jupyter notebooks, and since I didn't write the text of the thesis in there (which would have been possible), it would have taken some time to merge the two together. The next step would be to merge these two to then disply the code and the generated figures in the Jupyter Book thesis.

Summary

For all thesis, I would recommend writing in Markdown, and specifically in Zettlr and Zotero. Markdown forces you to focus on the text, not the markup, and it helped me to write more clearly and quickly. Zettlr with Zotero made citations enjoyable. Making tables was definitely the most tedious part, which is a limitation of Markdown, but Zettlr helps.

Mostly, the process kept me aware of how text, data and images are stored, and made me think more about the content than the formatting.

The climate crisis is so difficult to grasp, yet alone solve, be cause it is everything and everywhere. Yet, it doesn't clearly present itself. We know that heatwaves, floods, droughts, and 928872398 terrible things are made worse by the climate crisis, but it's difficult to say that one event is caused by it.

It's also difficult to get everyone to agree on anything, yet alone everything. Last I checked, we haven't come to an agreement on which god(s) to pray to, or none at all.

The Two Percent More campaign, recently discussed on the wonderful Outrage and Optimism podcast, states the solution clearly:

If humanity invests just an extra 2% of Global GDP in developing eco-friendly technologies and infrastructure every year, this would be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change, while also creating lots of new jobs and economic opportunities.

This is wonderful news (which economists and climate scientists have known for quite some time) because it has a clear, achievable target.

Two percent (US$1.7t) can solve iconic sustainability issues. As the Two Percent More campaign states, we can achieve:

• A carbon neutral economy by 2050 with annual 2% funding.
• Protect the Amazon with a one time 1% cost.
• Help make developing countries more resilient to flooding, drought, etc. with 2% over 10 years.

The Cruel Irony

Instead of actively solving the problem, we are making it much worse – we spend just a bit over 2% of global GDP (US$1.8b) on subsidies that harm the environment. This is almost definitely an understatement, as some of the costs of harm that these subsidies cause to people are not included.

Take for example fossil fuel subsidies. While the report notes that US640b is spent on direct fossil fuel subsidies each year, the true cost of this industry is as high as US$5.9t (nearly 7% of global GDP) when accounting for their full environmental, health and (missing) tax costs, according to the IMF. That's US$11m per minute.

Instead of creating a cleaner, greener planet, we're subsidizing the destruction of our planet and the killing at least 8m people annually (The number of people who died in 2018 from air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels).

The Solution

The solution is clear – stop subsidizing the harmful things and use that money to subsidize helpful things. Let's keep it simple and demand that polititians stop these harmful subsidies and instead invest 2% in the planet.

I have used the term "we" because it is our (tax) money, and our planet.

With Autumn (and alpine inacessability) quickly approaching, a rugged hike at altitue was needed. Somehow after more than two years in Switzerland, I hadn't stayed in a Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) hut, so we looked for a weekend excursion which could combine these two. The SAC was founded in 1863, and operates a network of over 150 cabins, huts and refuges across Switzerland. More information can be found here.

Day 1: Van d'en Haut – Cabane de Susanfe

We decided to do the majority of the distance and all of the ascent on the first day by starting from Van d'en Haut. Getting there from Geneva was relatively easy, taking the train from Geneva to Martigny, then getting on the scenic (and touristic) Mont Blanc Express to Les Marécottes, followed by the bus to Van-d'en-Haut, camping. In total, it takes 2:37. While the first two trains run frequently, the bus does not.

The hike starts with a low to medium gradient gravel road and path. We had strong autumn vibes due to low clouds and the onset of autumn foliage.

After 60-90 minutes, the expansive lac de salanfe appears behind the dam. While we had low-lying clouds which reminded me of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the Dents du Midi and other 3000m peaks are visible.

The trail is fairly flat for the next hour with panoramic views.

From here, the path gets narrower and steeper, but stays accessible. There are impressive glaciers on the left, and the Dents du Midi towering on the right. This continues for almost an hour.

For the final 10-15 minutes before the summit, the terrain changes to dramatic black shale rock. It was my first time to see such desolate, almost extraterrestrial landscapes in Switzerland. The low clouds probably added to this feeling, but I imagine it would be the same even on a sunny day.

A pleasant sign stated that it was only another 30 minutes to the Cabane de Susanfe. The slow decent into this very remote valley was peaceful and beautiful. Recently fixating some of my frustration on noise pollution from engines in Geneva, we relished in the calm that only a valley with no roads can provide.

However, calm doesn't mean quite, as the sheep soon made us realize.

After enjoying the remoteness and the changing weather, we descended onto the cabin. I was especially excited since it was the first time I had stayed in an SAC cabin. The experience was great – a vast improvement in comfort over the wild camping that I am used to. Coming from North America, where publicly-accessible mountain cabins are exceedingly rare and barebones, this was a treat, and is something that should be maintained.

Day 2: Cabane de Susanfe – Champéry

The autumn vibes parted for gorgeous clear skies. With schedules running early in these mountain huts, we were able to enjoy the prolongued sunrise before and after breakfast, as well as during the first part of our hike.

We took the descent slow as the stunning landscapes made me stop for a photo ever few minutes. Towards the exit of the haning Susanfe valley, I was truly awestruck by the grand beauty of this place. It really has it all – towering peaks, glaciers, waterfalls, idilic lone trees, and grassy patches. I could have spent all day here.

Finally prying ourselves from the high valley, we were pleased with the descent. The path follows a river-turned-waterfall, but wasn't too difficult to traverse. Chains were mounted near especially steep sections.

The descent was longer than we anticipated – roughly 5 hours with all of our stops, but only about 3 hours of moving time. The trail stayed beautiful all the way into Champéry, where we easily caught a train back to Geneva via Aigle (these connections run at least hourly, so it's more flexible than departing from Van d'en Haut.

Summary

Overall, this is a fulfilling, diverse, wild, yet accessible hike. While we met some people who did the whole hike in one day, it seems more enjoyable to take your time to take in all that this area has to offer.

Preface

Any story written in 2020 must be prefaced with COVID-19. Our story is no exception.

Francesco and I had met through our shared masters program in Geneva in the autumn of 2019, and instantly began thinking of outdoor excursions to do in our vicinity. While we both enjoy hiking and skiing, Francesco's main outdoor calling is cycling. I've always been comfortable on a bike, and had completed an ill-prepared but thoroughly enjoyable month-long trip across the North Island of New Zealand in 2014, but had never considered myself a cyclist. Heck, the closest thing I had ever owned to a road bike was a single speed / fixie Schwinn with drop handlebars during my undergraduate studies.

Francesco, on the other hand, was more at home on the saddle. Having grown up in Genova, he had gone on several trips with his cycling uncle during his formative years, and had some time riding on carbon fiber under his belt. Being in Switzerland after all, famously home to not only beautiful mountain passes and lush landscapes, but also perfectly paved roads, cycling was definitely on his list of things to do there.

In March, after COVID-19 restrictions came into effect essentially freeing the roads of cars, plus a few fun but excruciating rides on my piece of crap city bike, I upgraded to a house-brand aluminum bike, and our training began. Or so we realized in hindsight, since really we just started riding frequently around the Grand Genève region. Our weekly rides of several dozen kilometers quickly turned into longer and thrice-weekly rides which ventured into neighboring canton Vaud. Little did I know that Francesco was going almost daily.

Later that Spring, we starting dreaming of bigger, further, and more adventurous rides. We did an overnight 'bike to hike' camping trip, and then a full circuit of lake Geneva, tour du lac 219km . At this point we planned a 2 day (really, 2.5 day) Rhône Route 310km trip (trip report in the future) with another willing accomplice, Johan, and then our first truly daring adventure, a trip home for him to Genova.

At 524km and 8007m of elevation gain, this trip headed SSE from Switzerland through France and into Italy before ending on the Mediterranean. This trip passed through 12 cols (mountain passes), including the famous Col Du Galibier in France and Col d'Agnel on the French/Italian border. We took a break in a tiny village in which Francesco's family has accommodation to meet his family and our friends before continuing to his home town.

Let the trip begin!

Geneva to Genova

Day 1: Geneva - Col de Tamiè

Excitement was in the air when we set off in the early afternoon. It was Francesco's last day in Geneva, so on top of the normally complex logistics of packing for a bike trip was the fact that he had to move out at the same time. With the house cleaned and adventure calling, we set off.

We almost immediately crossed into France. With our sights set on Annecy for dinner and our bikes being in good shape (so far), we pushed through with barely any stops. The landscape was nice, but the constant traffic and mediocre bike lane detracted from the experience. Spirits were high, however, since we knew cycling nirvana was ahead.

Beautiful Annecy at sunset further improved our mood. Beautiful cheese and beers did so even more.

We felt far too accomplished for only cycling for a few hours, and thus spent too much time in the city. Once the beers and food wore off (which took a while), we enjoyed the wonderful landscape and separated cycling path along lac d'Annecy during dusk.

The calm, speedy route continued into mellow climbs with minimal traffic. Dusk turned to twilight, which turned into the black of night. We only arrived to the unknown col de tamiè at around 23:00.

We pitched our tent in a grass field and promptly went to bed, dreaming on the days to come.

Day 2: Col de Tamiè - Col du Télégraphie

The wonderful thing about sleeping at the top of a col is that a chill descent is always the first part of your ride the next day. We enjoyed one though a forest with chirping birds, followed by a café au lait in a sketchy bar.

The following morning ride was lovely but not memorable - not because of a lack of scenery, but because Francesco and I had some important decisions to make for our master's program. COVID-19 was making our planned move to Beijing in September uncertain, so we had some decisions to make. Our cyclist-friendly solution: utilize the remote working skills from the spring to call into a zoom meeting while cycling.

Afterwards, and with thoughts of future life plans in the front of our heads, we climbed through forested roads and took breaks at opportunistic viewpoints. We continued into the quaint town of La Chambre and ate more good food and drank more good beer.

Johan, our crazy athletic friend, kept our pace despite having a slower bike and fewer bike trips under his belt (albeit only one less than me). However, he decided shortly before leaving Geneva that he would only join us for the first two days. He, along with several of our friends, had planned a long-distance hike in the Dolomites just a few days after our planned arrival, so he didn't want to risk time or injury by competing the full bike trip with us. Thus, we dropped him off at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne where he rode the train back to Geneva.

Sad but determined, Francesco and I pushed on into the heart of this part of the alps, and the heart of our adventure. Before our first big col of the trip, Col du Télégraphie 1566m, we filled up on sweets from a wonderful bakery and owner (see the notes below).

The climb was steep and tough, being our first main one. The thought of unknown landscapes drove us up this col, and many others - we reached the top around 21:00. Since we couldn't find a descent place to wild camp, we splurged on a campground with a shower at the bottom of our final descent of the day, and the start of the most famous climb of our trip.

Day 3: Col du Télégraphie - Col Du Galibier - Col d'Izoard

We took our time getting up, showering and packing. This was a huge mistake. The beautiful sunny morning turned into a scorching mid-morning. By then, we pushed onwards up the famed Col Du Galibier 2642m, an unbelievably beautiful but brutal climb, made worse by our slow-moving decision.

Our start at roughly 12:00 lead to us dripping with sweat, and filling our brains with doubt, almost instantly. The main problem is that there is essentially zero shade on the entire climb. We took short breaks on the shady side of immovable objects, but this too was limited due to the angle of the sun directly above us.

The scenery, once again, propelled us upwards.

We stopped quickly roughly two thirds of the way up to refill our bottles and our inspiration from the scenery which surrounded us.

The closer we got to the top, the more it pulled us uphill. With perfect conditions, several cameramen, and friendly competition, we reached the col.

This was the first point in the trip where we felt truly accomplished. We stayed for a while to just take it all in. Then, satisfied, we got what we had earned - an amazing descent.

Most people would stop after such a col and such an achievement. However, we did not. While I'm very proud of my previous adventures, Francesco deserves all of the credit for planning such crazy, but achievable ones. Thus, we marched on for our second major climb of the day - Col d'Izoard 2360m, almost as high as where we were when we realized we'd have to summit twice on the same day.

After an incredible and long descent on smooth asphalt, we rested in a park in Briançon and had a late lunch there, gear, clothes and food spread out on the grass. The feeling was fantastic, just laying there with good French ingredients on a warm summer afternoon. But as with life, and especially with bike adventures, no emotion lasts forever. Around 19:00, we set off for our second climb of the day.

This trip, in all its splendidness, was also painful at times. I sometimes have neck pain, from what I assume was an injury playing American Football in high school. The long, locked posture of clutching handlebars and supporting body weight with shoulders proved to be a disaster for my neck, which was really painful on the descents and later into the day. The climb was excruciating at first, but some stretches and breaks proved a respite from the pain, at least long enough to make some progress upwards.

The pain slowly morphed into pleasure as the sun began to set behind the mountains. While Galibier was epic, it was also busy. The climb up to Izoard was almost deserted. The pine trees, painted sky and perfect asphalt made it an unexpected gem of our trip, and reminded me of the Rockies in North America, where I did my undergraduate studies.

I'm sure we had some fatigue climbing up, and probably stressed about something at the time, but all of these negative emotions fade with time. What matters is the climb was beautiful, and that we were on an adventure of a lifetime. Oh, and that we made it to the top and camped nearby.

Day 4: Col d'Izoard - Col d'Agnel

The gorgeously calm morning gave us no sense of the excruciating climb in store for us later. We were up early, and left early, since our campground was exactly in the middle of a touristic viewpoint. The early sun, followed by the nearly 1000m of frigid descent into Parc naturel régional du Queyras, woke us up.

At the bottom of this descent was a metaphor in real life - a T intersection, where we had to choose to turn left or right. We decided to pause for a few minutes to check our maps. Like in life, sometimes the most influential decisions barely register on in our consciousness. We casually contemplated either turning right, as originally planned, and climbing two sizable cols before crossing into Italy. As we were seeing where turning left would take us, an older man came from the right and towards the left. He told us about the beauty and terror that was to our left and is Col d'Agnel 2744m, a full 1400m the fork. We pretended to discuss our options, but we both already knew that we'd be turning left.

After lunch in a quaint village at the base of the climb, we spent the next 3 hours grinding our chains and pedals to get to what felt like the top of the world. This was an absolute beast of a col, but one of rugged, almost otherworldly beauty. Two 700m climbs of 7-13% gradient were split almost equally with a reprieve of a few kilometers at a 0-2% incline. Quaint villages and grasslands below gave way to rugged peaks and narrow roads up above. What stayed constant was the unrelenting sun turning us into lobsters, as any sunscreen quickly sweat away.

The final push to the top was a true test of mental grit and determination. Several times, I thought that the unending road was insurmountable. There's a reason this section of the report is short - my brain didn't think about anything more verbose than getting to the top.

Somehow, we made it.

The emotions we felt, combined with the views, were simply indescribable. Such jagged mountains and vibrant vegetation shouldn't be possible to coexist!

We savored the moment, the look back across our traversed terrain in France, and peered into our upcoming adventures in Italy. I have seen quite a few beautiful landscapes and vistas, but this was one special.

The final 15km descent of the day was beautiful and wonderful, but also intense since the road was filled with potholes and the descent angle was well over 10%. That, and the long straight descents made racing so tantalizing but so risky.

We stopped early in Pontechianale to enjoy the perfect weather, emotions and gelato.

Day 5: Col d'Agnel - Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena

If the word motivation described our ride yesterday, the word of the day today was grit.

An early start and incredibly long descent (50km!) was already not easy due to the heat, the condition of my neck, and the terrible road conditions. We only afforded ourselves a 10 minute coffee break next to a petrol station before turning our minds off and our leg muscles on, as for the next several hours, we averaged 30 km/h through hot, flat, unforgiving terrain.

Our fuel stop for lunch in Mondovi lead to several baby cols. The amount we were sweating seemed like we climbed col d'Agnel all over again, as the 32°C heat, humidity and sunshine felt like we were in an oven.

Later it got worse, as we climbed several 15-20% roads and passed through località Fornaci - the furnace.

Today was short on photos and memories, as we had only one thing on our mind - meeting our friends, and Francesco's family, in Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena. Since a mutual friend had claimed it was home to the best bar in the world, we were determined to get there and celebrate, and rest.

One final ice cream break in Bagnasco in a dive bar, and then one final col on our own before we would be guided to victory by Francesco's uncle Michele (another cycling enthusiast).

I really don't remember that climb, but I remember when we made it to the top and saw Michele waiting for us. We were so drained, but so close that our spirits then rose after seeing him. We had one more "false flat" to push through. It's crazy how much control the mind has over the body. We flew through the final col of the trip, and saw our majestic descent into Castelvecchio.

With family and friends waiting, and 470km behind us, we knew we made it to the main destination (even if it wasn't the final one).

Break in Castelvecchio

Friends, family, food, adventure, hikes, chilling, my birthday, and everything else that's good in life.

Our 3 day break turned into 7. It could have easily turned into a lifetime.

I celebrated my birthday in the only way we knew how to - a birthday ride.

Day 6: Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena - Celle

All things in life must end. Thankfully, and hopefully, the bad things. But unfortunately, also the good things. Our friend was right, it was the best bar in the world.

The end of a good thing can be the start of another. In this case, Francesco's grandma lives just down the hill (ok, almost 70km away) on the coast. Our descent and flat was filled with more beauty.

And food. And coffee.

Who knew the sea could be so blue?

Day 7: Celle - Genova

The last day was our shortest day as well, as only 36km separated us from the end of an amazing adventure. There is no triumphant defy all odds and succeed end story here. We knew we would make it, but just weren't sure if we would make it in time for lunch.

While the first part of the ride was nice, along the coast on nice bike paths, the second half was urban cycling, hence the lack of photos. But never did city biking feel like such an accomplishment.

Conclusion

This was truly a ride of a lifetime, as we could explore three countries in less than a week (if you don't count our week-long break). The trip had it all - mountains, sea, forests, gelato, wild exposed camping, beaches, gelato, good food, and more gelato. Every other aspect of cycling in Italy made up for the sub-optimal roads, while France was a different kind of cycling perfection.

We were exhausted at the end... but not done. The trip was so good that we decided to do another one, just a few days after, through central Italy. More on that next time.

Note: This trip took place in July 2020 and was written in the fall and winter of 2020/2021.

Day 0: Genova to Lago Trasimeno

We got lucky – a family friend of Francesco was driving from Genova to Rome, and was able to take us, along with two bikes and bike bags, in his sedan. We stopped for dinner in Firenze (Florence) and slept soundly at a campground north of Perugia.

Day 1: Lago Trasimeno to Spoleto

Having fully recovered, we were eager to get cycling again. In continuation with our trip from Geneva to Genova, the weather was just perfect, as was starting nearly every morning with great coffee and croissants.

A mix of good pavement, compact gravel, and good views kept us going until the sight of our next destination lured us in – the magnificent town of Assisi.

We spent most of the afternoon exploring this amazing town.

We cycled along a bike path until we could pitch our tent under the cover of darkenss.

Day 2: Spoleto – Piano Grande di Norcia

What was I saying about the Italian breakfasts being one of the best things about biking here?

We spent most of the morning exploring Spoleto. Its architecture, churches, and food were worth taking time to appreciate.

We may have gone a bit overboard with our lunch, including a truffle-infused egg scramble, smokey parmigiana, seafood pasta and prosecco.

Only around 3pm did we depart, and after making a wrong turn and getting caught in a storm, we were finally really cycling after 4pm.

The path followed an old railway for roughly 10km, including a 2km long pitch black tunnel, and terrain that was barely rideable on a road bike. Little did we know some of the terrain we'd encounter later on the trip...

We had a nice, smooth and fast ride to Norcia, where we had a nice dinner with monk-brewed local beer.

Departing after 9pm, we started on what we thought was a minor uphill to a plateau. Unfortunately, or trusty app guided us up a 25% gradient road, followed by equally steep hiking trails. Well after 10pm we were dragging and pushing our bikes for over an hour.

With our energy and moral drained, we nearly camped on the hiking path, but we decided to press on, eventually finding the main road. Nearly 1000m of elevation gain later, we arrived in the plateau after midnight. We pitched our tent under the painting that was the Milky Way and passed out.

Day 3: Piano Grande – Lago di Campotosto

Little did we comprehend the beauty and uniqueness of this place until we awoke the next morning. Despite cloudy skies, the area was vast, desolate, and hauntingly beautiful.

We could have been mistaken if we had somehow transported to Mongolia overnight.

We climbed a little further above the floor of the plateau, reaching Castelluccio, where we had breakfast and met a bike tourer.

We left around 12pm, right as the sun was peeking through the clouds. From our perch, we finally realized that we were surrounded by lentil fields as as far as the eye could see, and luckily they were in bloom.

Our landscape of pristine natural beauty suddenly changed into a reminder of the carnage and power of nature as we passed through a region devastated by an earthquake in 2016. Amatrice, one of the hardest hit areas, still had a large miliary presence.

Nature once again turned beautiful on our way out of Amatrice towards Lago di Campotosto. The area felt pristine.

After a magical 15km along the lakeside, we reached our destination for the night – Agricampeggio Cardito. The concept of agricampeggios is wonderful – mix the basics of camping with the luxury of decadent local cuisine. We were welcomed with an aperol spritz and and the serenity of nature.

Dinner was at a fixed time and with a fixed, undisclosed menu. Even by Italian standards, it was sublime, and never ending. The owners took sympathy on us (as we were the only ones who didn't drive there) and gave us seconds on each of the many courses.

Day 4: Lago di Camptosto – Campo Imperatore

We headed off further into beautiful desolation. The landscape constantly changed from lush to shrub to desert to high alpine.

After a fantastically long descent, we pushed nearly 1000m upwards towards Campo Imperatore at just over 2000m. The landscape was truly breathtaking – especially when the monumental Corno Grande came into view. We stopped for quite some time to try to comprehend its scale.

On my way up, and after 3000km of bragging at how durable my bike was, I finally got my first flat tire. If only it were the last of the trip...

After reaching the top, we celebrated with ice cream and beers in the large touristic complex that most visitors simply drove or rode in a cable car up to.

To go even higher, we hiked up to Rifugio Duca degli Abruzzi for dinner, which we luckily had all to ourselves, and an incredible sunset made even better with good food and digestivi.

We hiked down in the dark and cycled a few kilometers back down to find a place to camp.

Day 5: Campo Imperatore – Pescara

We awoke to a gorgeously frigid view across landscapes seemingly devoid of humans – something quite rare in Western Europe. Today, we were on a mission – to make the train in Pescara by noon, on the coast and over 80km away. Luckily, we had 2000m of descending to do, and we were up early. That's where our luck fully stopped.

I filmed Francesco race by for the start of a glorious descent, then took my time to get going to fully appreciate the place (mentally and physically) we were at. Roughly 30 seconds or so after starting, by back tube blew out. Luckily (ok, this was the last bit of luck), I was able to stop without crashing.

Unluckily, a popped tube was the least of my worries, as I quickly noticed the massive tear in the tire itself. While this isn't usually the biggest of problems in cycling, for us it was catestrophic. With a hole in the tire, there is no way to protect the delicate tube that would, in ideal circumstances, keep me rolling over 60km to the nearest outpost of humanity. We had a few more tubes, and plenty of patch kits, but no extra tires.

We did, however, have tape. Well, Francesco did, so with no cell phone coverage, I had to wait for him to realize something was wrong and hope that he wouldn't have to reverse too much of the 2000m descent.

20 minutes later, we rigged up a solution. My Mechanical Engineering degree lead to us just wrapping the tire and wheel, where the hole was, in lots of tape – enough to act as a shield from the unforgiving Italian roads, but not too much to hit the brake pads or frame of the bike.

The following few hours were probably some of most tense and stressful times someone has had in such beautiful landscapes.

Luckily in a unlucky situation, the tube lasted for hours of biking of eggshell moments. Despite the glorious descent, I didn't dare go faster than 20km/h.

We made it remarkably far, until the tape gave way to a pebble, which ended the slow descent. Pulling over just on the precipice of civilization, we were out of supplies to continue rehabilitating the bike. With a train to catch, we tried our luck at hitchiking, but as mentioned, this luck had ran out.

We found one last scrap of luck when a passing cyclist saw us hitchiking and, after hearing about our situation, told us that there was a nearby bike store with tires.

10 minutes later, Francesco was back, and less than a minute after that, we were on our way with the final challenge – getting to the train station, almost 40km away, in exactly one hour.

Evidently, I didn't take photos of this last section of insanity, as we had to maintain speeds bending the rules of physics. Racing between cars, around turns, and on flat stretches, we did the equivelant of an all out sprint non-stop for almost an hour. My brain melted, only being held in a solid state by the rhythm of swapping lead and drafting positions every two minutes.

About 40 minutes in, we paused to check the route, and realized that we would miss the train. Sadness turned into content, which turned into joy as we calmly pedaled into Pescara, reveling the amazing summer of cycling adventures we had had in three countries, and to our Italian sendoff.

Getting There

Switzerland has great public transportation, but being the cheap and crazy master's students that we are, we decided to get there by less-conventional methods - a mixture of biking, driving (for the friends, public transportation for me), and of course, hiking.

With far too much coffee and caffeine coursing through our veins, we set off from Geneva by bike to Lausanne, roughly 60 km away.

We met our friends in Lausanne. A nice, hearty portion rice salad in the garden fueled the five of us for the next leg of the trip - sitting on the train and bus (for me), and driving (for them) to the trailhead in Miex, Le Flon, where our hike would begin.

The Hike

Day 1: Le Flon - Taney Lake - Le Grammont

Le Flon to Taney Lake

A quick 35 minutes of moving time and 350m up through a nice wooded trail brought us to the beautiful alpine Taney Lake. This is a very accessible (and very popular) day hike, and for good reason. The short hike up leads hikers to a clear, deep blue lake surrounded by towering peaks and alpine vegetation, with cute and rustic Swiss lodges offering food, drink and a few beds to spend the night. We didn't let these comforts distract us, so we kept on climbing.

Taney Lake to Le Grammont

The hike up to Le Grammont is relatively straightforward, involving 700m of gradual to moderately-steep elevation gain, which took us about 1 hour and 20 minutes to complete. While relatively straightforward, this segment is incredibly beautiful. It might be the closest place to Geneva where at times, you really feel like your in the center of the alps. The valleys were grand, and we saw several ibex along the way. There were also several fountains in which we could fill up our water bottles.

Once we reached the ridge, it was just 10 more minutes or so before we saw one of the top five views of my life - an indescribably vast and beautiful panoramic view of lac Léman (Lake Geneva). We were truly at a loss of words.

Not imagining the view could get any better, we then pushed on to the summit, Le Grammont. While quite exposed and cold, we decided to spend the night - the view was just too nice to retreat back into the valley. We set up camp, cooked some pasta, and enjoyed one of the best sunset views of my life.

Day 2: Le Grammont - Taney Lake - Le Flon

We woke up just seconds before the sun peaked out from behind the mountains, so we groggily dashed out of our tents to capture it. Once again, the views from the top of Le Grammont didn't disappoint.

A nice, freezing morning of reflection, coffee and running around chasing birds was followed by our departure from the best campsite back down towards civilization.

Our path down was slightly different than the way up. This way had less of a developed trail, and at times had us walking across a grassy field.

We were quickly back at Taney Lake, where we spent half an hour relaxing by the water's edge. While we had all been tempted to swim, clouds rolled in lowering the air temperature, so we decided to pass. The area around the lake was extremely busy - I guess people have discovered this secret spot long ago.

Another quick segment later and we were back at the car. A quick shuttle down the hill and a longer commute back to Lausanne brought us to a lovely homemade lunch and a nice afternoon by the beach. However relaxing it was, we still had a long bike ride back.

We chose to go the slightly longer but more scenic route. It didn't disappoint!

Conclusion

Le Grammont, at 2172m, is one of the highest points overlooking Lake Geneva, and definitely one of the most beautiful. It was a great overnight trip, and can be extended into a longer trip by incorporating it into stage 34 of the Alpine Passes Trail (National Route 6), or beyond.

Written on 12-13 June 2020

I've always loved maps. The differet ways we represent the physical world on a small screenor piece of paper is fascinating. I could spend hours looking at subway maps, old world maps,or beautiful topo maps. They're such a powerful mix of technical prowess and art (maybe that's why I love photography).

Maps, and other visualizations, are a great way to turn complicated or abstract information intosomething understandable. Early on my journey to learn how to visualize data, I've been inspired by recent works of data journalism, especially from the New York Times.

Inspiration

The headline for the 2018 piece A Map Of Every Building In America definitely caught my eye. After reading through, mesmerized by the tiny black dots, I found Microsoft's Github pepository of 125,192,184 "computer generated building footprints in all 50 US states." What a fascinating way to see our built environment in clarity, without the clutter which comes fromsatelite images or standard online maps.

Process

I'm from Bainbridge Island (near Seattle), so I thought I'd start there. I found Washington.zip file (98 MB zipped, 691 MB unzipped) conveniently listed, downloaded it, and loaded it into QGIS. I turned on a background map (OSM) to help navigate.

There are quite a few features to be rendered (2,993,361 to be exact).

Very new to QGIS (I'm sure there's a better way of doing this), I zoomed into Puget Sound and used the Select Features by Freehand tool to select just the polygons (buildings) on Bainbridge Island. Being an island surrounded by water, as all islands tend to be, it was easy to define what was a building on Bainbridge and what wasn't. You can also turn on a background map to help you navigate. Sadly the buildings aren't labeled, unlike how they are in OpenStreetMap.

I then copied these polygons into a new virtual layer and went to artistic "work" simply changing the background color, fill color and border color. I used the same emerald green #50C878 for both the building fill and border, but put the fill at 75% opacity. Then, in the print layout area, I set the background to transparent and exported it as a .png.

Et voilà, it turned out pretty well!

It's interesting to see where the island has been developed, versus where it hasn't. The downtown area is just north of Eagle Harbor, while the void in the middle is Gazzam Lake Nature Preserve.

The Back Story

More about traveling Sri Lanka by tuktuk here.

A friend and I had traveled in Vietnam in 2017 by motorbike and loved the exposure and flexibility it provided. We joked that our next trip should be via a vehicle with one more wheel than a motorbike. That left us with several options:

1. Tricycle
2. Bicycle with one training wheel
3. Motorbike with a side car
4. Tuktuk

After reading a bit about traveling by tuktuk in Sri Lanka, we knew it was the way to go.

We spent several days in the area, hoping to find the now-elusive authentic stilt fishermen. After the world saw Steve McCurry's iconic shots of the wonderful traditional practice, and several other reasons, locals posing as fisherman who charge tourists to capture their smiles make much more than the ones who still practice the craft.

We kept hearing rumors that a group was working their way down the coast. On our last night in the area, about two hours before sunset, we finally saw them. As enthusiastic photographers, and culturally-insensitive tourists, we snapped away until it got dark.

Some seemed to be experts, while others were just getting started.

Written on April 27th, 2020

Once we arrived, a friend and I did what any sensible travelers would do – give a man we met on the internet several hundred dollars in return for renting his three-wheeled tuk-tuk and drive away, having only learned how to operate the motorized vehicle half an hour prior. In reality, it turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made while traveling; the incredible scenes that Sri Lanka has to offer flowed into our doorless tuk-tuk, and the inquisitive locals, upon seeing two foreigners driving their preferred mode of transportation, instantly opened up to us.

Sri Lanka had long been on my list of countries to visit, yet we purposefully kept our research to a minimum, with the hopes of being pleasantly surprised at every new destination. We had known that Sri Lanka’s landscapes were diverse, but I couldn’t, and still can’t for that matter, wrap my head around how a small island in the Indian Ocean can offer so much. Beautiful, pristine beaches, rugged mountains, dense jungles, and even wildlife refuges reminiscent of Kenya’s Masai Mara. These sights, and more, were all within a few hours of each other by car, or within a day or two by tuk-tuk.

Upon returning home, most travelers don’t start their stories with the mode of transport that they used, but tuk-tuks are another story. Our tuk-tuk was bright, racing red. The name Big Red was quickly bestowed on her. She was an absolute tank, gliding over the most decrepit roads with ease, which made us realize why the locals held tuk-tuks in such high regard. In addition, they are very gas efficient, reliable, and are relatively easy to drive.

The experiences – unexplored tea fields, an unsolicited and unforgettable conversation with a Buddhist monk in a mountaintop temple, night fishing in dangerous waters, secluded beaches, pre-dawn hikes, and traditional stilt fishing (just to name a few) – were all thanks to Big Red. Unique travel logistics lead to unique travel experiences.

Written on July 6th, 2018 for Clamp Magazine from a trip in early 2018. Published here on December 8th, 2020.

“Autumn isn’t bad, but you should be here in the summer. The water is bluer, the vegetation is greener, and the air is cleaner,” said the taxi driver after our boat had arrived on a cold winter’s afternoon.

The taxi drivers of Goǔqǐ Island 枸杞岛 hadn’t seen much trade of late but, after our surprisingly long journey, our personal chauffeur of the island was more than happy to sing the praises of his faraway home. Coming from the persistent grey haze of the Shanghai ‘Big Smoke’, we immediately saw the benefits of the pure island air.

Goǔqǐ island, together with neighboring Shèngshān Island 嵊山岛, are best known for Houtouwan, an abandoned fishing village on the northern coast of Shèngshān Island. During it’s prime in the 1980’s, over 3,000 residents called this place their home. However, the attractiveness of a faster life on the other side of the island, and nearby Shanghai, pulled most of the residence away, leaving fewer and fewer as time passed by. Today, only rumor of an old lady and one lonely fisherman remain.

As we descended into the village, we caught a glimpse of an orange coated figure with a fishing rod in his hand and a bucket by his feet. Curiosity lead us to dash over to the man. While his catch wasn’t impressive, he proudly told us to follow him to his house and see his previous luck.

His house looked the same on the outside as all the others – abandoned, decrepit, diminishing, yet full of life. Usually this village is overrun with vibrant green moss and vines, however, winter gave this place a different appearance, and a feeling of warmth from the interaction between the few amongst us – our group of five, one other party of four nurses, and the fisherman and his friend.

His face lit up as he proudly held his trophy catch from the early morning.

This time of the year is much more relaxed. Much of the island’s income comes from the busy summer months of tourism – once the tourists return to the mainland, the locals who aren’t fishing are free to relax and enjoy their views in peace.

We met a large group of elderly residents doing just this shortly after we arrived. As our lives appeared so different, conversation naturally ensued. One man was especially proud of his island. “This is the easternmost point in mainland China. We’re first to see the sunrise,” he proclaimed. While technically wrong (North-eastern China holds that title), his enthusiasm was more than enough to have us nodding in agreement.

Originally written with Hibshy Samsadin on January 14th, 2018 for Clamp Magazine from a trip in late 2017. Published here on December 8th, 2020.