Perfect Weather

Webmentions

• Jeremy Cherfas 3 October 2023

  Deciding to host a blog carnival was the easy part. Actually doing the work took me right back to those wonderful merry-go-round rides of yesteryear, complete with steam driven organ, as opposed to all the shiny themed rides of the modern amusement park. But enough reminiscence. To work!

  In my prompt, I said that I was most interested in “the kind of weather you take most pleasure in” and everyone did just that.

  First up was Sara Jakša, which is only fitting as it was she who started the Indieweb Carnival rolling. Sara confesses that she simply doesn’t feel the cold, or maybe feels it a bit more now than she did when she was in school. She doesn’t much care for heat though. And the bit I could really relate to, getting soaked by rain and having to change. Putting wet socks on dry feet is absolute torture.

  David Mead moved to Ohio from somewhere along the Thames in Essex, and what he likes best is right here, right now: autumn, or fall. Not too cold during the day, but cold enough at night to let you appreciate the warmth of a fire and a hot drink.

  Alex mirrors my own preference: Just keep it dry. They don’t say anything about being dry under shelter while it is tipping down outside, but who doesn’t like that? I would butt in, though, to say, “Use the sunscreen!” Your skin, and your dermatologist, will thank you down the road. And like Sara, Alex seems to be able to tolerate cold extremely well, as long as it is dry.

  I’m doubly grateful to Yousef Amar, for his submission and for introducing me to the notion of freewriting.1 The unpredictability of English weather is hard for Yousef to get used to, unlike, say, the more predicatble climates of Germany and Egypt, but of course it is that very unpredictability that makes it such a suitable topic of conversation. Yousef’s piece is long, fascinating and rambles about from here to there, and in the end he does come down to a favourite kind of weather. I’ll leave you to discover what that is for yourself.

  Pablo claimed to like winter best. “Who doesn’t like wearing cute winter outfits?” Er, me? But then, they moved to northern California to escape the cold, and yet that is where, in my understanding, summers are colder than winters. Or maybe that’s just San Francisco.

  James, unsurprisingly perhaps given the topic of the blog carnival he hosted, found moments of joy in all sorts of weather. Early spring, warm summer days, unexpected showers, autumn changes, bright winter mornings: all in their different ways trigger moments of joy for James. I need to try a bit more of that myself.

  Johanna riffed off a few of the earlier posts on the subject, suprised at Sara’s cold tolerance and Pablo’s appreciation of moody weather. She decides that ”Boring” is the best kind of weather, which leads to a general preference for spring. Nevertheless, she points out that things have changed even in a short span. The snow of Christmas 2010 is now a sunny day at 19°C.

  Anthony Ciccarello came up with a really interesting observation. His preferred weather is after the rain. “The air feels so fresh; like the smell of growth,” he says, and I have to agree. Anthony likes how in California winter rain settles the dust, softens the ground and regreens (reverts?) the vegetation. Being in a Mediterranean climate myself, I can certainly relate to that.

  It was especially gratifying to pick up a submission from the fediverse, after I shamelessly plugged the carnival there. It is hard to be absolutely sure, but I’ve a feeling that foreverliketh.is wrote My Kind of Weather in the aftermath of the inundation of New York City. Will the impact be remembered, will it actually change people’s day-to-day behaviour? I have my doubts, but I agree it is salutary to see the good that natural disasters may bring.

  Oh, as promised, I also enlarged a little on my view of perfect weather

  Thanks for all the submissions and for stopping by.

  Pablo is hosting the October IndieWeb Carnival, on self-care and routine. Write about yours, spread the word, and don’t forget to send Pablo a webmention.

  Also submitted to IndieNews

  1. Like Molière’s Bourgois Gentilhomme, who was thrilled to discover he had been “speaking prose while knowing nothing of it” for more than forty years, for decades I have been freewriting while knowing nothing of it. ↩

• Jeremy Cherfas 26 September 2023

  Like I said, Monday offered perfect weather to extend my customary long bike ride. A lot. Instead of stopping at the Raccordo, I had resolved to continue to the sea and come back by train from Ostia. I made it, and I enjoyed it despite some faily hairy passages.

  The way I went

  The first part of the ride is very familiar (and might be to you too if you have been following along) although I did start slightly further upriver than normal, where a new pedestrian bridge crosses the river just downstream of the old gasometer.

  Looking down from the pedestrian bridge

  The ride out to the Raccordo was completely uneventful and pretty nice. The hybrid is every bit as much fun to ride as the Raleigh, and the slight ease of gear shifting makes up for the slightly livelier Raleigh. I reached my normal resting place, rested, and then looked forward to terra incognita.

  Here we go: onward!

  You have to push the bike up a steep, rough path to get to the cycle path that runs alongside the bridge, which isn’t the GRA proper, but a slip road. The path is wide enough to be easy to ride and is separated from the motor traffic, which is nice. From there, you descend under the bridge and the GRA, climb a little, and are faced with an unmarked fork. Both paths lead up, and it really isn’t clear which way to go because you can’t see very far in either direction. I went left and satisfied my inner Chingachgook by noting that there were indeed plenty of bicycle tire tracks going that way. So off I went, cycling below, and then climbing to the crest of, a dyke that I guess was about 4 m above the surrounding fields.

  Truth be told, although there were nice views over the fields and away to the riverbank on my left, it just wasn’t very picturesque, hence the lack of pictures. It was also absolutely deserted. In the entire stretch of about 25 km, before I reached the next bit of proper paved path, I passed one gent walking and crossed with two cyclists coming the other way.

  I did, coming in to Ponte Galeria, see some kind of raptor hovering over the stubble fields, swooping occasionally, but there was no way a photo would have been anything but a dark speck, and as I came forward it moved away. Even so, despite the ostensible lack of interest, I was enjoying myself immensely. No screen, no abstract thinking, just peddling, constantly alert to the surface and now and again changing up or down a gear. Doing something utterly different is the best part.

  There are few things to note along the way. It is obvious that the land has been drained, and there are ditches as deep as the dyke is tall crossing the path here and there. Most still have remnants of hydraulic equipment, although it is hard to tell how often they might be needed.

  Industrial archaeology. Or is it still in use?

  I also passed by what might have been a deconsecrated church on the outskirts of Ponte Galeria, but although there was a sign there, it didn’t say anything about the building, and online maps don’t know what it is either.

  Deconsecrated church, or just an empty house?

  After that, the bike path goes down to the foot of the dyke on the river side and gets rougher and rougher. It narrows, becomes much more uneven and rutted, and the vegetation closes in. For long stretches, I found myself battling thickets of wild fennel. Then there would be a tunnel through overarching miscanthus grass. Trying not to get slapped in the face while also avoiding ruts and holes was pretty exhausting, and it wasn’t until I finished the ride that I noticed quite a few shallow cuts on my legs, where the miscantus had whacked me.

  During all this, I became very conscious that I was getting closer and closer to Fiumicino airport. A plane went over roughly every five minutes, I reckon, but, as with the raptor, it didn’t seem worth stopping just to get a better than average photograph.

  Wizz, I think, coming in to land.

  By this time, after about two hours in total, I was pretty hot and bothered. The path went as close to the river as it had been all journey, so I hoppped off for a little rest and rehydration.

  Time for some r&r

  I didn’t realise it at the time, but this was the end of the very difficult section. The path climbed up a little way and tured into a beautiful, paved, two lane pedestrian and bicycle way. A little further on the bulk of the Parrochia di Santi Ippolito e Lucia rose up. That could be worth a visit one day, but there is no access from the cycleway.

  Ippolito and Lucia’s place

  The lovely cycleway passes over the moat of the complex on wooden boards and then ends up in the town of Fiumicino.

  At this point, I thought I was done. Just get to Ostia, a few km south, and catch a train home. But although I had looked at maps, I clearly had not paid enough attention to the presence of the river. The only way to get across the two branches of the Tiber was to take my chances on a large highway full of cars. So I did, and though it was occasionally hairy, in the end it wasn’t too bad. I reached the station, then found a place to sit and eat my lunch, only to discover that the bumps on the path had more or less annihilated my PB&J sandwich by mangling it together with the grapes I had thoughtfully packed with it. At least they were seedless. After that, a very nice train home, and a little ride of just over 4 km up the hills to home, knackered but extremely satisfied.

  Next time: It occurred to me that it might be more sensible to take the train to Ostia and tackle the really bad part of the path while fresh. Also, at home and looking in more detail at the map, rather than squinting at my phone in the sunlight, there is a better way to get from Fiumicino to Ostia, which involves a much shorter stretch on the highway and which may even have a walkway next to the highway. All that is hindsight. I was perfectly happy with the way it all worked out in the end.

  Filed under | General | Bicycle | Photos |