Off-Topic Reminiscing
Personal reflections brought on by yesterday's run
Yesterday morning, I woke to a new blanket of snow here in Boston. It was “new” and not “fresh” since the prior snow and ice had long disappeared. Naturally, I went out for a run, an activity I returned to a few months ago. After my Ironman triathlons in 2019,1 I dropped swimming and running to spend more time on my gravel and road bikes in the Swiss mountains. (I even sold my tri bike! I have to go back to 1998 for a time when I didn’t own a triathlon bike.) I had dropped swimming, my background, at the start of 2020 due to COVID and didn’t return. When in 2021 we learned our European adventure would end in 2023, the gravel and road riding intensified. However, since moving back to the US in July 2023, I don’t have the safe option of riding anytime in any condition as I did before, like rolling out the door at 5a on forest trails on the gravel bike, possibly in -15C / 5F and snow, or any time on the road bike. Before I got my gravel bike in November 2018, I’d be running in the forest at any opportunity, as long as it wasn’t high winds (I like to avoid falling branches and trees) or slick ice. But in 2020, I reduced my running in favor of the gravel bike.
Several months ago, I started running again, partly because I miss it and partly because I can no longer ride whenever I want. To say I was out of shape would be an understatement. I was happy to run one, maybe two, miles at a slow – very slow – pace. Anything faster or longer was potentially damaging. After tearing a calf muscle not once but twice, my former out-of-reach distance of 3 miles is now my short-barely-have time distance. That’s nice. Yesterday morning’s run was less than 3.5 miles, but it was easy, fun, faster, and farther than I could safely do a few months ago. A “late” start – I like getting out early – meant starting the watch at 6a.2 There are a lot of runners (and walkers, including commuters by foot and pedal) here in Boston around the Charles River. On this morning, however, there were remarkably few runners (or anyone else) out and about.3
Yesterday’s conditions got me thinking about a run three years to the day in the Swiss forest behind our apartment. Then we also had fresh snow on previously dry ground. It was a bit more snow (about 18” overnight) than we had here in Boston and I had not yet completely fallen off the running wagon and still had some semblance of run fitness. That morning’s run also started late, at 7:45a. Like today, relatively few people beat us – my dog Paisley and I – out, but some did, but not on every path we took.
We, or perhaps I, really enjoyed our five-mile run. I’m not sure Paisley shared my perspective. Compared to my Boston run yesterday, our pace then was slower with deeper snow, taking more pictures, and it was less flat (510’ of ascent over the 5mi versus yesterday’s 66 feet of ascent over 3.4mi). It was also cooler at about 19F, compared to 24F today, but that was a non-issue. I’ll gladly take the forest time over today’s run, as nice as today’s run was.4
The comparison between these runs is a clumsy and personal way to get to the point of this post. After a decade of living in Europe, with the last seven years in Switzerland, I am often asked what I miss or what feels different about being back. Below is a short and not comprehensive list of things that confuse, bother, or frustrate me in the US. It is a list borne out of living abroad in another advanced economy and hints at some of what I miss from living abroad. Our situation in the US is a choice, perhaps not overt or direct, but they are by design and thus fixable.
One, I miss living with a modern financial system. The US has a good system for the 20th Century, but why are we still so focused on paper checks? The cost, waste, friction, and delays involved with paper checks. I do not have paper checks now, and haven’t for nearly a decade. We received a checkbook in the UK, and wrote two checks, both to our son’s school for a field trip or something, and that was it. I never got a checkbook in Switzerland, and any Swiss I mentioned the need for checks in the US just looked at me incredulously, followed by a conversation that verged on “I’m sorry the US is so backward.” Venmo, Zelle, and the like are bolt-ons that give the false impression we have moved into the modern era, but their use in commerce seems limited to person-to-person or farmer’s markets. Why is the alternative credit cards, which are expensive to service and product providers? Moreover, why must I sign a piece of paper – sometimes… why only sometimes? – for contactless payments? Don’t get me started on needing to hand over a physical credit card at restaurants. Sure, some restaurants and shops take contactless without ink signatures, but I’m talking about broad spectrum use that doesn’t require either a credit card (and thus not imposing fees on the provider) or a paper check. For example, I never needed a credit card to pay my bike mechanic, plumber, utilities, airfare, train tickets, insurance premiums, doctors’ fees, rent, race entry, hotel room, rent a paddleboard or car, or buy groceries, clothes, a car, etc. Nor did I ever need, let alone have, a paper check to do any of those things. Transactions were immediate, far more secure than a paper check, and without the fees of a credit card middleman. ACH is sort of a step in this direction, but the implementation is archaic, limited, and lacking the security checks found in European banking.
Two, the lies that are US price tags. The price on the label (or menu or whatever) isn’t what you’ll pay. I got used to the label being the cost of the item, whereas here it’s not. Something labeled as 15 francs is, well, fifteen francs; it’s not 18.24.
Three, I am still getting reacclimated to expiration dates on US foods. Take milk. How does organic milk, for example, not expire for 3-4 weeks? In Switzerland, milk was good for maybe ten days.5 The same goes for fruit, veg, and bread: how do these things last so long here. My wife, who moved to the US two years ago, bought bread one day and placed it on the counter. Four days later, I was marveling at how it was still fresh. Another four days later and I was now worried why it was still fresh. In Switzerland, “Son, you need to eat this baguette today; I bought it yesterday.” (I don’t have a baseline for meats. Entering my local butcher in Switzerland felt like Norm entering Sam’s bar in Boston. That was because I was there nearly every week buying ribs to BBQ, which was my son’s favorite meal. Talk to me about the Green Egg, which allowed me to BBQ in subzero conditions, including snow, to feed my hungry son, and sometimes my wife and daughter.)
Fourth, taking care of infrastructure. I am amazed and appalled at the rust, crumbling concrete, and potholes on bridges, walkways, roads, etc. here and elsewhere in the US.6 This is an old story that plays out across our nation, of course. Don’t tell me the crumbling infrastructure is because Boston is an old city. Yes, it’s old, but I’ve lived in areas centuries older than and with similar weather to Boston. It’s not the really old infrastructure that’s the problem, it’s decisions made and not made over decades and decades.
Fifth, car-centric transportation. Boston is good compared to elsewhere, but more should be done to invest in efficient alternatives to expensive, inefficient, and space-consuming car-centric transportation, as other modern economies have. It was nice getting around easily and quickly by train, whether within the area, around the country, or into other countries. It was far faster to take the train to Zürich airport than to drive, not to mention far more convenient. Milan was a two-hour train ride away, while Zermatt and the nearby Matterhorn were about 4.5 hours by train, and it was easy to take my bike for those visits when I wasn’t running the Zermatt Ultramarathon. London, Valencia, Paris, and Berlin were short hops by plane. Sometimes the car was a better option, like driving to Italy to cycle Stelvio Pass or around the Dolomites. Good times were had.
That’s enough of a list. I could go on, like with healthcare and health insurance (which was seamlessly integrated with providers with quick and easy payments and reimbursements… again, electronic without paper checks or credit cards), but I won’t.
I’ll return with the regularly scheduled programming here shortly.
Two Ironmans in 2019, plus Long Course Weekend (an Iron-distance tri over three days), a couple of ultramarathons, and other events were a downshift from 2018. Though 2018 had only one Ironman (plus one LCW), there were more ultramarathons, with my first that year 3 months after breaking 2-4 ribs in a crash on my road bike during a descent (“here to zero” when my wheels slid out on an ice patch hiding in the shade of a tree on a very tight turn) in January (in Spain on otherwise seemingly dry roads).
I’ll say it here: I do not stop my watch at a light or other pauses, forced or otherwise. Those who do should be shamed. The pause is rest and part of your run, regardless of whether it is forced or intended. Events don’t let you pause your watch. Come on, people. <end of rant>
I enjoy running in rain, wind, falling snow, and similar adverse conditions. The world may be noisy from the falling water (or ice) and the wind, but affords a certain kind of quiet and peace since there are fewer people out. I’d prefer to not think of this as some kind of anti-social behavior.
My only complaint about that forest run was that my shins were really cold.
The milk I bought the last 2-3 years in Switzerland was, incidentally, described as “Milk from Cows with Horns.” Apparently cows with horns have an enzyme cows without horns have? It tasted good and the son drank 5-7 liters a week.
When I bought a car in Boston in June, they offered me special protection for rim and tire damage due to road conditions. What?!
In the middle of a month in France and can echo so much of what you said. The ability to transfer money instantly to another's bank account is seamless here and that's the big difference. I read this past year, there is a proposal to do away with the (up to) five day wait for transfers in the U.S. which is the major impediment to using them right now. Transferring between U.S. banks (in my experience) is faster using a paper check for amounts less than $5000. One of my banks now does instantly credit me for any deposit via paper check or via an ACH withdrawal from another bank (USAA) but this seems to be an exception but perhaps an indicator of improvements to come.
Interesting to read of a different way of conducting financial transactions. Please spend a few moments describing the details. You tell us what isn't used, but not what is used. We are just poor ignorant Americans, with no exposure to advanced alternatives. I cannot conjure such a system. How is it done? Fingerprint scanning? Voice recognition? Seriously, what are they using on the other side of the pond?