Regulations, absurdities

"Hang on a minute! I've only got as far as Paragraph 5 Point 2! Stop hooting at me! I must acquaint myself with the Park + Ride Regulations before driving in! WAIT why don't you? "Wyłącza się odpowiedzialność Miasta Stolicy Warszawy z tytułu szkód komunikacyjnych i parkingowych dotyczących pojazdów i osób korzystających z Parkingu" ... Is that good or bad... Better call my lawyer. Where's his number... STOP BEEPING AT ME! ...Need to get to grips with Paragraph 10 Point 1. The one that says it costs 100 zlotys a go to park here - bit steep, eh? It's only 30 zlotys to park right outside my office... But WAIT! Keep your hair on man! Paragraph 10 Point 2 states that if I have a valid ZTM ticket I don't have to fork out a stoover for parking here... What do you mean by 'valid' - Paragraph 10 Point 2 Section 1 says 'został zkasowany...' But not a single-journey or a 20-minute ticket? No, one that's good for at least 24 hours that's been valididated ... well that's clear now STOP GETTING IMPATIENT WITH ME MISTER, ALRIGHT?! I've still got three paragraphs to read before I move any further! OK SO THERE'S NOW NINE CARS QUEUING BEHIND YOU SO WHAT? Paragraph 12 subsection G clearly forbids me from vacuum-cleaning the upholstery of my car while in the car park and LOOK! Paragraph 14 prohibits drivers queuing up to enter the car park from punching in the nose or indeed anywhere else someone who's stopped to read the regulations. And don't even think of leaving your ice-cream van or mobile chip-shop here. Clearly stated in Paragraph 4, Point 1, Section 5) Item d). And don't park overnight, because the P+R is open from 04:00am to 02:30am.

This time last year:
Optimal means of commuting?

This time two years ago:
Sunshine and rain

Get on your bike and RIDE!

No more excuses. It's healthy, cheaper than driving or public transport, the day is long, and although the heavens are prone to open on July evenings, its warm enough. Today I spent my two commuting hours of the day hugely enjoying my bicycle. BICYCLE BICYCLE I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE - and the difference between a cheapo supermarket bike and something decent, is that the something decent wants to be ridden. When you mount it, that bike just urges you on, makes you want to spin those pedals and accelerate. Having that thing parked outside the office creates a huge temptation to abandon work and pedal off into to wild green yonder.

My current mountain bike, a 2007 Cannondale Caffeine F1, replaced my 1997 Klein Matra (which Moni had appropriated for herself). The Caffeine is much lighter, being front-suspension only, while the Mantra was lavishly appointed with front and rear suspension. Riding the Klein at speed over the pot-holed and largely untarmacked roads of Pyry in the late '90s was like driving a Citroen DS23 over a ploughed field - comfortable, yet... not a performance ride.

The Caffeine is stiffer, much lighter, but a bit skittier. It comes into its own on the forest trails through the Las Kabacki, which wonderful as it is to ride through, forms only 2.2km of my 18km journey to work. Much of the rest is along cycle paths.

Right: The Las Kabacki, shortly after 8am. Turning off ul. Jagielska, snarled up with a queue of traffic waiting to turn right onto ul. Puławska, I escape from the noise and pollution into a world of sunlight, bird song, peace and near-solitude (there are other cyclists in the forest, and joggers and Nordic walkers). I wonder whether there is any city around the world that has wedges of forest protruding into the very centre, so suburbanites can cycle or walk right into the heart of the city without having asphalt and concrete all around.

But if that's impossible, let there at least be civilised cycle paths, like the one that runs down Al. KEN (below), Ursynów's backbone. Notice how a fenced lawn separates the pavement from the cyclepath, and how shrubberies separate it from the kerb and roadway. This, dear reader, is decent urban planning.

While the sun shone on the way out, the homeward leg was threatened by that daily July meteorological phenomenon, the July storm. All day long, clouds build up, small white ones at first, then getting increasingly large, conjoining, darkening, brooding... As I left the office I could see the horizon threatening. Would I make it home dry?

Well, this evening I was lucky. Apart from a few drops which caught me just before I entered the Las Kabacki, I would get home unsoaked. Rain on a warm summer's evening is not a great deterrent to cycle commuting, unless it's a complete downpour. Consumer electronics (camera, phone) do not like drenchings.

UPDATE: 10 July 2009 - my ride to work this morning took only 53 minutes - beating my 2007 best time of 55 mins.

Classic vehicles around Warsaw's Powiśle

Three classic vehicles caught my eye around the office these past few days. Below: An UAZ-69, a 'Russian Jeep', produced at the Ulyanovsk Avto Zavod between 1955 and 1972, the standard four-wheel drive light truck used across the communist world. Mechanically unreliable, uneconomical on the fuel and prone to leak oil like the Exxon Valdez, nevertheless the UAZ-69 was simple to repair and capable off-road.

Below: A Nysa 522M minibus. This is the smaller of the two Polish designed and built light vans (the other being the more commonly seen Żuk). The example below is local and in recent weeks the owner's replaced the panelling around the radiator grille. I hope this presages more investment into this shapely old timer.

Meanwhile, across the Iron Curtain, even a moderately well-off West German could afford an Opel Kadett fastback coupe(below). In production from 1967 to '73, it was rolling off the production lines at the same time as the Nysa and the UAZ-69.

Oil train passing Jeziorki, dusk

This time of year is great for evening walks, around sunset. It pays to go with your tripod. I caught this oil train, double headed by a an M62 Gagar and TEM-2 Tamara shortly after it passed W-wa Jeziorki station. The cisterns belong to Petrolot, the state monopoly selling aviation fuel to airlines; the train is en route to Okęcie airport.

This time last year:
Bike ride to Święty Krzyż

This time two years ago:
Two years... Lublin and the Road

Summer dusk, Jeziorki

I could see that photographically, this was going to be an interesting evening in Jeziorki. There was strong light from a setting sun in the north-west, while from the north, a heavy bank of thundercloud moved in a south-easterly direction, crossing Warsaw and giving everything from Bemowo across to Otwock a good soaking, accompanied by much lightning and thunder.

Yet Jeziorki, and indeed I'd guess the whole of Ursynów, was spared a drenching. Above: Fields between ul. Kórnicka and ul. Baletowa. The stormclouds are massing from the left. Below: the railway line from the fields of Dawidy Bankowe. The clouds are now over Praga, the scene illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun.

This time last year:
Classic cars in Warsaw and London
Summer twilight moods, Jeziorki

Another trip to Czachówek

Friday evening and a trip to the shops to buy a paper and a bag of crisps. The railway station is temptingly near... hell, here comes a southbound train. Leap on, buy ticket to Czachówek Południowy (above), return. Eleven zlotys, just over two quid there and back. And when I get there, two hours to stroll around some lovely Polish summer countryside.

And what could be more quintessentially rural Poland than the scene above? A narrow path, a wooden fence - that Polish lovely word 'opłotki' - a lane running between fences or hedges - a white painted cottage, a cherry tree full of ripe fruit, clear blue skies, yet lots of vivid greens for the time of year.

Trains terminating at Czachówek Południowy use this canopied platform (above) to the north of the through-train platforms.

I've mentioned in previous posts the junction layout at Czachówek, where two lines cross. There are four spurs running off the main lines to connect them. The two northern spurs running north-east and north-west are in daily use; the south-western one rarely, but the south-eastern spur is evidently not used at all. Despite that, PKP is still using electricity to light signals on this spur line (something I've also observed on the unused line at Tymbark). Above: A Warsaw-bound Koleje Mazowieckie train between Czachówek Południowy and Czachówek Górny on the main line. The photo was taken from the spur - as you can see, it's totally overgrown.

Above: The concrete sleepers on the south-east spur have been smashed, apparently by accident. Trains cannot use a line in this state. Signalling is still operational, though, at both ends of the spur. A case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing.

And back to Czachówek Płd. for the train home. Strong sunlight from a midsummer sun just before dusk nicely illuminates the facade of the ticket office and waiting room (above).

This time last year:
Piccadilly Circus - mapa mundi

Ghost in the machine

The older I get, the more seriously I take the notion that inanimate objects, well, maybe don't actually "have a minds of their own," but at least have souls.

When things break down irredeemably, the causes can be traced, the breakdowns diagnosed. A radiator hose splits, causing coolant to escape, causing the engine to overheat, the cylinder block to seize up. A malicious virus rips into your hard disk and starts devastating data and starts spreading out across the net.

It's the undiagnosable ones that interest me; it's the maddening 'intermittent faults', the ones that mysteriously cure themselves whenever you take your car/camera/laptop to have it fixed. "Sorry sir, can't find anything wrong with it..." "But it was not working properly only this morning!"

Maddening intermittent faults such as the leakage of light or lens flare (can't even say which!) onto the film frame of my Leica M6 camera. I've discussed this on the Rangefinder Forum, a handful of other members have had similar (though not identical!) flare issues - and no one has been able to diagnose the problem. I snap two frames side by side, one had it, the very next one doesn't. The crankset on my bike. One minute creaking - next minute silent. Can't replicate it.

Or the recent battery memory problem I had with my Nikon D80. Snap a pic, and the battery dies. Cycle on/off and it's working. Happens one in every six shots. Then one in three. One in 20. One in one. I buy another battery. Same story. Then, all of a sudden - gone! Cleared up! By itself!

My theory is that if you care for your stuff, it will repay you with years of good service. I don't mean 'care' as in 'not abuse', I mean care as in 'being emotionally attached to'. My dear, immaculate showroom condition, one owner from new, 16 year-old Nissan Micra is a good example. I feel it knows I care about it and doesn't want to let me down. Despite the fact that I drive it down ul. Poloneza several times a week. And I'm sure Dyspozytor feels that well-maintained Px48 or Ty-2 steam locomotives have souls too.

Does that sound silly?

Everything's made of atoms - you, me, my Nissan Micra, the EN-EL3 battery that powers my Nikon D80, the Magic Flute CD that's kept on being played frequently over 20 years. It was Jonathan Wood who coined the expression 'the atomic will'. What is it, I ask, that keeps ALL the universe's hydrogen atoms' electrons whizzing around their nucleii for the best part of 13 billion years?

It's WILL, I tell you! Tap into that sub-molecular, elemental force and be in harmony with your things!

And, as if by magick, I stumble upon this article linked to a comment to a New Scientist article about consciousness within single-cell organisms. I can't pretend to have read the whole thing, but there are chunks that are philosophically mind-blowing. The history of consciousness bit is fascinating. When - and how - did consciousness first appear on our planet? And when the world of quantum physics starts to intrude upon mankind's understanding of consciousness, then things get really interesting.

To put the centuries-long debate about the nature of consciousness into perspective, it's worth reading the Wikipedia article on the Philosophy of Mind. In a nutshell, there are two schools of thought - dualism, which holds that consciousness and body are two separate entities, and monism, that consciousness is simply a product of the body. I hold the first view.

Readers familiar with the English language will be aware that the German term zeitgeist has come into common usage, meaning 'spirit of the age'. On this blog I've been regularly writing about 'spirit of place' - by inference, platzgeist. Now this, dear reader, is spirit of thing. Dinggeist?

This time last year:
"Be seeing you," land of Big Brother...

The end of a commuting era

The cars! No! Not the cars!

Is this Pyongyang on Kim Il Sung Day? Are we in Chernobyl? No, it's Thursday lunchtime on ul. Przemysłowa, Powiśle, one mile as the crow flies from the very centre of Warsaw. Normally, you cannot squeeze a paperback between the bumpers of cars parked along this street. OK, we're into the second week of the school holidays - but, like, where have all the cars gone?

I arrived back at the office today knowing that something's changed for ever. Gone are the free-and-easy days of driving to work, when finding a space was the commuter's only worry. As of yesterday, Warsaw's parking meter zone was extended out towards Powiśle (where our offices are). Residents can still park for free, but an eight-hour stay will cost commuters nearly 30 zł, around six quid. A significant chunk of most people's daily earnings around here.

My strategy for getting around this is not perfect, as Warsaw's wonderful Metro runs three bus stops short of my office and starts a long way from home. So I drive (20 mins) to Metro Stokłosy (lit. "Hundred Sheaves") station, which has a Park + Ride facility - free parking for those using public transport to get into the centre. To park for free, you need a network ticket valid for at least 24 hours. As this costs 9 złotys (less than two quid), for which I get parking plus two Metro and two bus rides, it makes good sense. In terms of petrol, currently 4zł 70gr/90p a litre or thereabouts, taking Metro and bus to work from Stokłosy is saving me around a litre's worth a day. So overall I'm less well off and having to make that awkward change from Metro to bus at Politechnika station; time-wise I'm losing out too, and I miss not listening to TokFM (quick plug for EKG with Tadeusz Mosz, an excellent economics talk-show).

So for all my talk about the benefits of cycling to work (which I'll do tomorrow) and public transport, I actually feel a sense of loss at being deprived of the liberty of driving to work and parking outside the office for free. Still, public policy needs to be a mixture of stick and carrot.

I wait for a decent carrot in the form of improved public transport to and from Jeziorki. Above: Stokłosy P+R at 7:15am; plenty of space available.

This time last year:
Towers of London

This time two years ago:
Maybugs in July
High summer in Jeziorki
Wild deer near Las Kabacki forest