Energy, focus and state of mind

I can see a seasonal trend in my life; summertime and the living gets easy - I'm less demanding of myself, I do less exercise, less writing; if the sun shines for long enough, the motorbikes beckon, otherwise walks, time on the działka, pootling, pottering - not really getting anything accomplished. I feel guilt if I'm not accomplishing. Am I fulfilling my human potential? Or am I recharging batteries ahead of a season of hard work and poor weather? Looking back at Lent earlier this year, I managed one blog post per day and ten sets of exercises a day every day for all 46 days. Over the lazy days of summer, I'm only averaging around three sets of exercises a day and a similar number of blog posts per week. And feeling guilty about it.

Summer seems to have come to an abrupt end, with several dull, rainy days in a row. Rather than cherishing the return to a time of higher productivity, I am sensing the dread at the approaching Hammer of Darkness, even though it's still two months off. That time of year after the clocks go back, when seasonal affective disorder starts kicking in. Time to withdraw; time to open the doors to the rich, inner world of the Imagination. But this year there's the American presidential elections, which could once again go so horribly wrong. And Belarus. And Brexit. And Covid. Known unknowns, things that could spiral into tragedy all too easily.

Below: smoke from the blazing local-authority waste-dump on ulica Mirkowska in Konstancin, 9km away, merges into low ceiling cloud, yesterday evening. Grim, dismal, depressing.

Light. We need the light, literally and metaphorically. Even on moonless nights, a cloudless sky gives views of a starry firmament, pinpoints of light, reminders of the prospect of worlds alive with sentient life and an ordered, unfolding universe. But clouds cover. They create ambiguity, uncertainty, a lack of definition. Cloudless days in mid-winter, short though they be, bring vastly more joy than overcast days in late summer.

This time last year:

50 years on - Gunnersbury Grammar school reunion

This time three years ago:
All things visible and invisible

This time five years ago:
Work starts on Warsaw-Radom rail modernisation

This time six years ago:
Won't be long 'til summertime is through

This time eight years ago:
It was a good year for the apples

This time ten years ago:
Early-September moan about the commuting

"Sod the locals"

 Apologies for banging on about the same subject as in the last post, but the execrable quality of project management on the Chynów station modernisation gets me going. Not only is there no information as to which platforms are operational, or where trains are heading, but the old temporary footpath across the tracks have been ripped up; the ramp up to the northern end of the platform has been closed off. A new temporary footpath leading to the platforms has been built at the other (southern) end of the station. The result is a detour of over 700m (a seven-minute walk).

This is the result. These two women were trying to catch the southbound train, thinking they had ample time to catch it. They didn't know (and neither did I or anyone else) that earlier today, access to the platforms from the north had been ripped up and closed off by the builders. Unable to scramble up the navel-high platform edge, they had to make a massive detour around the whole station to get to the platform via the new temporary footpath. They missed their train. An hour until the next one.

I got to the station in good time and managed to haul myself up onto the platform, make my way to the end to get this snap as the train changed tracks (and therefore platforms) to the consternation of those waiting in the wrong place.

Below: the detour shown in red is not just the official, safe, route - it is the only route a pedestrian can take without having to subject themselves to the indignity of clambering up the platform edge.

Yes, one day it will be finished. Yes, one day people living in Jakubowizna will have easier and safer access to the station. But on the eve of the second anniversary of the modernisation of the line between Czachówek Południowy to Warka, the work seems interminable. Lack of community consultations, lack of consideration for passengers. It took 20 months to build the entire line from Warsaw to Radom back in the 1930s; these days the modernisation of the same line is likely to take eight years.

For the inhabitants of the village of ulica Spacerowa in Widok or inhabitants of the southern part of Jakubowizna, the choice is either this home-made route to the platform, steps carved into the embankment, a pallet thrown over the ditch and 285m of clambering over ballast next to the passing-loop track - or a one-kilometre detour via the level crossing.

Better access is on its way, but for now, it's a long walk for most pedestrian users of Chynów station, wherever they're from.

This time last year:
If you're really concerned about global warming...

This time two years ago:
The balance between the spiritual and the material

This time three years ago:
End of August, end of summer?

This time four years ago:
Pavement for Karczunkowska... a bit at least

This time five years ago:
Gold Train update (the hope! the expectations!)

This time seven years ago:
Poland post the Rubbish Revolution

This time eight years ago:
Poland's most beautiful street

This time nine years ago:
Getting to grips with phrasal verbs

This time 11 years ago:
What Putin wrote about Molotov-Ribbentrop

This time 12 years ago:
Summer Sunday in the city

This time 13 years ago:
Last bike-ride to work of the summer

Infrastructure delays everywhere

"I'll never get to see the opening of CrossRail," joked my father three years ago. Sadly, he was right. Like Berlin's Brandenburg airport, London's CrossRail project is a monumental failure in terms of its delivery. Eleven years have passed since work began on it. Five years ago, I wrote about the underground station next to the office where I used to work in London. I posited that CrossRail would be functioning in "three to four years". How wrong I was. It now looks like 2023. So I was out by five years.

Today was meant to see the opening of the second modernised line between Czachówek Południowy and Warka stations, with the new 'down' platforms becoming operational and an end to single-line working on this stretch of the Warsaw-Radom line.

Just after nine am this morning I was standing on the brand new platform at Chynów station, with a ticket in my hand for Warka. Looking north towards Sułkowice, I could see the lights of the southbound train on the new line. Great! At the same time, a northbound train departed from Chynów heading for Warsaw. The two trains passed each other halfway between Sułkowice and Chynów - something that hadn't happened for nearly two years.

But just before my train reached Chynów, it changed track and arrived at the other platform.

- No announcement from the station loudspeaker.

- No signs telling passengers that the new platform was still not operational.

- No tapes or barriers stopping passengers from walking onto a platform that wasn't served by trains.

No time for me to run around to the other platform, with the underground platform still under construction. The train to Warka leaves without me. Home, then, for a second breakfast.

I went back in the evening to see what's going on. Same thing. Below: southbound train approaching Chynów turns off the new 'down' line onto the 'up' line modernised last year. Single-line working continues.

Below: looking at Chynów station from the makeshift pedestrian crossing north of the platforms. The southbound train has stopped on the 'up' platform, which by now should have been reserved for northbound trains. As of today, it should have stopped at the 'down' platform to the right. In the distance, the lights of a northbound train, which will be rerouted as in the past year into the passing-loop platform to the left. 

It seems everywhere - UK, Germany, Poland - the public sector has immense problems getting infrastructure projects delivered on time.

This time last year:
Let's stop spitting at the other tribe

[today, I'm more inclined to say "fuck 'em".]

This time two years ago:
Progress on the Działka

This time six years ago:
Changes to Poland's traffic regulations

This time nine years ago:
Teasers in the Polish-English linguistic space

This time ten years ago:
Summer slipping away

This time 11 years ago:
To the airport by bike

This time 12 years ago:
My translation of Tuwim's Lokomotywa

Muscle memory

One of the joys of greeting a new day is a cup of freshly made coffee from my espresso machine. One medium black coffee, then off to work (in the old days of course!). At the station, I'd wonder - did I switch the espresso machine off...? If not, the thing spends all day using electricity heating itself, and if the water level is low... I dread to think. Fortunately, I have long since learned how to avoid this anxiety - by switching it off with the mains switch at the back, rather than with the chromed knob on the front which merely cuts off the flow of coffee into the cup. As the cup nears full, my right hand darts round to the back of the machine and flicks the switch. Muscle memory. It's the only way I ever switch off the machine, and one of several hacks I have instigated to ensure I've not overlooked something.

Another is the gas cooker. When a pan is taken off the stove, the gas is turned off, and then a plate or bowl is placed on the still-hot ring. This has two functions. One is to warm the bowl and keep my food warm for longer - the other is to ensure I don't place a plate or bowl onto a gas flame. This muscle-memory habit ensures I'm never worried about "did I leave the gas on when I left home".

Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. I'm using it now in touch-typing, something I learned on my postgraduate journalism course at the City University in London 40 years ago. 

It is something that I'm developing but have not yet perfected while riding my motorbikes. Each is slightly different, but the principles are the same - namely changing gear and remembering to cancel the indicators! I started to ride motorbikes six years ago, and since then I have limited my riding to warm, sunny days. I also avoid as far as possible riding in or through big cities, and it his here that one acquires the muscle memory needed for motorcycling the fastest. All those stop/starts at traffic lights, all those cars to contend with.

In total, in those six years, I've covered a mere 18,400km on motorbike, slightly more than the average car-driver would do in one year, the vast majority of it on quiet, country roads on sunny days between late-April and mid-October.

Decades' worth of muscle memory on show here.

In the same way that riding a bicycle or driving a car (with manual gears) is about muscle memory, learning to ride a motorbike is moving from the stage of unconscious incompetence (you don't even know what you don't know), to conscious incompetence (you are very much aware of the skills you don't have) to conscious competence (you are doing it right, but having to think about it), to unconscious competence (when you're just doing it automatically, right every time).

I've yet to get to that stage. Many's still the time when I give a friendly left-handed salute to a fellow motorcyclist coming the other way to be greeting by a more frantic hand-waving - which I then realise to have meant that my indicators have been flashing right for the past two kilometres. Or when I look down at my instruments and see that green light blinking, meaning the same thing.

Worse is when I change down gears as I approach a junction, and as I see all's clear, I rev the throttle to zoom into a gap in the traffic - only to discover I'm in neutral. There is no substitute for getting kilometres under the belt, getting good habits ingrained as muscle memory, so after a winter's break from riding, they come back naturally the next spring as unconscious competence.

The hardest part of learning to ride a motorbike - as with driving a manual-gearbox car - is clutch control - feeling the biting point, coordinating right hand (clutch release), right foot (gear selection) and left hand (throttle). There's nothing more embarrassing on a motorbike than letting the clutch lever go too early and jerking forward suddenly (often on rear wheel, though this is impossible on a cruiser). You can also embarrass yourself all too easily at traffic lights by attempting to start in second gear having failed to put it in neutral as you stopped.

One major muscle-memory trick I have acquired from my nine years of cycling in Central London has been the habit of looking into side-roads for traffic. Approaching a junction, my head involuntarily swivels left or right; something that can be a real life-saver.

As one grows older, so forgetfulness can creep up. It is therefore worth working on those mind-hacks that prevent accidents - caused by leaving appliances switched on, and muscle memory can make up for shortcomings in the mind. We are always tiptoeing on the edge of chaos - getting older, one becomes naturally more careful, more risk-averse - but on the other hand, the rim is getting narrower, the precipice steeper.

This time three years ago:
The journey there, and the journey back again

This time four years ago:
Sandomierz - another outstanding Polish town to see

This time six years ago:
Food hygiene and lies as Russian foreign policy tools

This time seven years ago:
Asphalt for ul. Poloneza (to Krasnowolska at least)

This time eight years ago:
A welcome splash of colour to a drab car park 

This time nine years ago:
To Hel and back in 36 hours

This time 11 years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time 12 years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

First inklings of the end of summer in Jeziorki

Summer blends into autumn imperceptibly, but day-on-day intimations of the change can be observed and felt. The feeling of that first moment when one senses autumn's approach is called mono no aware by the Japanese, the beauty of transience, passed over me today. The sun set today at 19:36, the same time as it set on 16 April. Change is in the air.

Below: a white poplar stands behind a fallow field on which Jeziorki's dominant wildflowers, goldenrod (nawłoć) and tansy (wrotycz) grow in abundance. The little yellow button-shaped flowers of the tansy have just started turning brown. Before long, the flowers of both die leaving long dry stalks that snap in the hand.

Despite a few heavy showers this week, Jeziorki's ponds get dryer and dryer. If this drought continues, it will be possible to walk with dry shoe from one side to the other - it already looks that way (below), with the southernmost pond reduced to two puddles. However, the pond bed remains muddy. Oysters live here, and the gulls have fished many out, leaving shells on the dry margins.

The drainage ditches that funnel water from surrounding fields into the ponds are also dry. Below the ditch the runs under ulica Dumki.

This looks ominous - the old scrapyard on the site of the former aggregate yard by W-wa Jeziorki station has been levelled to the ground; gone are the bunkers, the electricity generating plant and the large depot. I worry that work on the Mieszkania+ housing estate for 8,000 people will begin soon. Below: clearing the ground.

Better news - seeing surveyors (geodeci) on ul. Karczunkowska raises my hopes for a pavement. Below: after heavy rains, the verge of the road is one huge puddle. Pedestrians are forced to choose - wade through the mud, or walk along the asphalt and risk being run over by speeding traffic.

Below: by the viaduct, the infrastructure of pedestrians and cyclists is more than adequate - and then suddenly it stops. There's 200m of pavement missing between here and the next houses.

Further north, work on the S7 continues at a great tempo. The temporary bypass routing traffic from ul. Baletowa is in place, allowing the contractor to start work on the viaduct that will carry the S7 over Baletowa. Ready by the summer of 2023? Maybe sooner...

Bonus shot: domesticated geese roam the streets of Jeziorki! There were three, now there are five!

This time two years ago:

Nikon's new mirrorless cameras - too big and heavy for me

This time six years ago:
Short, sharp diet proves I'm allergy-free

This time seven years ago:
More photos from Radom Air Show

This time eight years ago:
Twilight on ul. Karczunkowska 

This time 11 years ago:
First hints of autumn in the air

This time 12 years ago:
Slovakia - we were not impressed

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki - late August cultivation

Getting there

"I've got everything I need," sings the eponymous Urban Spaceman of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's most successful hit single - who then carries on to tell us in the last line - "I don't exist". Ian Dury expands this thought in This is What we Find: "O vanitas vanitatum/Which of us is happy in this life?/Which of us has our desire,/Or having it, is gratified?" 

Well, yesterday's bike ride was a huge philosophical study in fulfillment. This is it! I've found it! Yes, the bike could have a bigger, more powerful engine - but then: 1) there'd be more guilt about pollution, burning irreplaceable fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions; 2) the temptation to ride faster than my mind can focus, and with that - risk and danger; 3) this beauty costs pennies to run and insure.

So - pootling around the backroads of South Mazovia at a steady 60km/h (40mph) on a bike I designed to fulfil my aesthetic longings is ideal. A perfect, cloud-free, rain-free time is needed - in the past I've been chased by thunderstorms and sat out downpours in bus shelters - no fun.

Yesterday was perfect. Being based in Jakubowizna, I no longer have to spend the first half-hour of my ride getting out of the metropolis - it's out of bed and straight onto country roads. Down to Warka, cross the Pilica river, first left onto the DW736 [droga wojewódzka = province road, as opposed to DK = droga krajowa = national road]. This is an interesting road, as it's cut in half by the Vistula (below). One of several DWs that start on one side of the river and end on the other with a significant missing link (bridges that were never built, ferry services that have been curtailed). This means less traffic, because the cars and trucks don't end up going where they were meant to go.

Riding the DW736 from its source (the DW730 just south of the Pilica) to the banks of the Vistula was the purest joy - 19km with barely any traffic around. Through the small town of Magnuszew for a kilometre the DW736 merges with the main DK79 Warsaw-Sandomierz-Kraków road before the left turn for the Vistula. Otherwise - it's just me and the Road. Below: the DW736 between Łatków and Przewóz Tarnowski. Those chromed orbs sparkling, the asphalt, the crystalline sky...

Images like this burn into the retina of the soul and will resurface as 'memory hiccups' for the rest of my days - and beyond. They feel immediately familiar, too, like I've been doing this before - except I haven't (I started motorcycling a mere six years ago).

Below: a few hours of blissful backroad riding later, I hit the village (formerly town) of Jedlińsk. It used to straddle the old DK7 (Warsaw-Radom-Kielce-Kraków) road, but then they built a bypass. The place has become quieter, safer - but much of the business, the passing trade, has died. I felt I was in New Mexico on a sleepy afternoon in 1952.

I passed Bartodzieje to see what was going on by the station there (see yesterday's post) and then headed home to Jakubowizna, aware that the weather would turn and that a storm was brewing. As in previous posts, I'm amazed to see how much new asphalt has been laid on Poland's roads this year. Lovely to ride over. Smooth - not bucking backward and forward over potholes, ruts and cracks.

On the way back, I dropped into the Orlen gas station in Warka to top up the bike and grab a bite and a coffee. The vibe - it's right. Straight out of the opening scenes of The Loveless.

"You don't look like the type to stay in one place for too long..."

"Yeah? I never had the urge."

Back at four, at five the heavens open, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The day had been seized. For such days, one lives.

This time last year:

Best and worst rail journeys in one day

This time two years ago:
What's new around Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
Hydrology - droughts, floods and sandbanks

This time seven years ago:
Radom air show - Part 1

This time eight years ago:
Restricting passenger movement and safety

This time nine years ago:
Seasonal fruit - eat it in bulk, while you can!

This time 11 years ago:
Russia-Polish 'unification', 1939-style

Between Warka and Radom - Bartodzieje

I hope that by the end of this month, two-track working will return to the Warsaw-Radom line between Czachówek Południowy and Warka, just under two years since modernisation of this stretch began. The new timetable comes into force tomorrow week - should see 'up' and 'down' platforms in use at Sułkowice, Chynów, Krężel, Michalczew, Gośniewice and Warka. Still a lot of work needed to finish Chynów and Warka stations (underground passages), as well as trackside infrastructure (drainage, level crossings).

But beyond Warka, the situation is not good. There are stretches between Warka and Radom where currently, there are no rails at all on the ground. Work is way behind schedule. I went to see Bartodzieje station (below) to see how things are going. The old tracks here haven't been lifted; several hundred metres of concrete sleepers lie waiting to be put to use, ballast spills out over the platform's edge. And nothing going on here.

The station building, which dates back to 1934, is in the same architectural style as the others on the line, and is more than half a kilometre from the main road. Which is where we'll find this signal box (below). The single line goes into five at Bartodzieje, a station of similar importance to Chynów with goods sidings and a passing loop) which also serves to operate the level crossing.

Looking south from the road to Jedlińsk from Głowaczów, one can see the scale of the works. An entire new embankment is being built here. Saturday lunchtime, and the construction crew is knocking off, bringing the machinery back to base and getting ready to drive home.

Let's zoom in. Below: looking towards Lesiów, the last station before Radom. This is early stages. There's so much to be done - it will be a miracle if the line between Warka and Radom reopens by December 2022. A pair of bridges need to go over the Radomka river and the canal to the north of it.

And moving north of Bartodzieje (lit. 'The Acts of Bart') station, I can see vast amounts of work that still needs doing - like this bridge three-quarters of a kilometres away. Below: photo from Google Maps Street View, dated 2013. This bridge was not fit for purpose - too narrow, unsafe for pedestrians. It had to go.

Below: it's gone - but a new one will be a long time coming. Just a canyon, impassible even on foot. Down at the bottom, no sign of tracks, no new trackbed, no ballast laid - much to do. 

Looking at the dismal state of works, I feel desperately sorry for the people of Radom and its hinterlands who have to travel into Warsaw to work. The replacement bus service is woefully inadequate. Journey time between Warsaw East and Radom right now is around three hours.

Once the work is complete, it will be cut (says PKP PLK) to one hour and 15 minutes - will believe it when I see it.

This time two years ago:
Purpose

This time three years ago:
Dreamscapy

This time five years ago:
Sad farewell to Lila the cat

This time six years ago:
Your papers are in order, Panie Dembinski!

This time seven years ago:
Topiary garden by the Vistula

This time nine years ago:
Raymond's Treasure - a short story

Reflections on late-August

There's no sign of autumn in the air; no chilly dawns, no mists rising off the fields, no scents of an impending Fall. A beautiful day today, crystal blue skies from morning to dusk - not just warm, but hot with a maximum of 32C, even some evening gardening on the działka has brought me out in a sweat. The sun is now setting at a quarter to eight, so we've lost an hour and a quarter of daylight since summer solstice two months ago. In another month's time, we will have lost another hour and a half - the change in day-length accelerates towards the equinoxes and slows towards the solstices.

Below: the scene outside my działka, looking across at the other side of Jakubowizna, around half past six.

We will also have lost the warmth of summer evenings, the hot noonday sun, the comfort of strolling out in one layer as the sun sets. Indeed; the sun has set ten minutes ago, as I write, and the temperature outside is 28C. 

Make the most of it. Today, I walked over 17,500 paces.

I predict a massive surge in Covid-19 cases in early November, just after the clocks go back across the Northern Hemisphere. We'll lose an hour's evening daylight instantly; the hammer of darkness will hit all those with Seasonal Affective Disorder, which in turn hits the immune system. Samopoczucie* goes downhill, and susceptibility to bugs increases. This is the time of year both my parents died; it's like they couldn't face yet another season of darkness and cold again.

Lockdown befell us just as spring arrived. The days were getting longer - and two weeks later, the clocks went forward giving us that extra hour of daylight. The pandemic might have been in full force, but there was sunshine, there was warmth, there were trees in bloom, there was summer on the horizon. 

But an autumnal upsurge in the pandemic will have no upside other than the distant prospect, half a year away, of another spring. Until then, drizzle, rain, mud, chill turning cold and darkness, trees reduced to bare skeletons, no leaves, no fruit, no flowers. Chill in the bones and sinews; coughs, sneezes, sore throats - Covid-19?

Every hour of summer therefore, is precious; waste it not. A local walk or the garden, a lie-down in the sun even, a bike ride. Fresh summer fruit and vegetables. A glass of wine at an outdoor restaurant table.

In summertime, when the living is indeed easy, there is a strong temptation to take it easy. To lounge around, to idle. Looking at my exercise log, I can see I'm at my hardest-working in the early spring, around Lent time. Summer days when I complete all ten sets of exercise are few and far between, this year and in previous years. Blog posts are less frequent. I get lazy. But seeing that summer won't last forever begins to motivate me. Ride the motorbike! Soon, the wet, cold, dark days will preclude that joy. Make the most of a dwindling resource - time. 

For soon, we shall go from living the Sublime to merely dreaming of it.

Late summer/early autumn - a metaphor for my Time of Life.

*Samopoczucie - a great Polish word without a direct English equivalent. Literally, 'self-feeling', how you feeling physically and mentally. What condition your condition is in.

This time two years ago:
Conscious of a waning summer

This time six years ago:
Plans for modernising the Warsaw-Radom railway line