2019

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2019, another average year.

Travel

I still haven’t managed to go a year without flying around. This time I’ve been to La Poma bike park, next to Barcelona, with my Zurich BMX buddies. We might do it again in 2020 and I’m considering traveling by train this time. The rest of my 5 weeks of paid holidays were spent in Lausanne, northern Europe and south of France. In Lausanne, I tried to (re)discover the city by visiting the Olympic Museum for the first time, the new Musée Historique and walking up to the Tour de Sauvabelin. It’s actually astonishing how little I knew of Lausanne despite having lived 4 years on its outskirts during my studies. In July, I took a solo train trip to Legoland Billund, Stockholm and Copenhagen. In August, I went for a week to Uzès in the south of France with two thirds of my sisters and nieces and one fifth of my bikes.

holidays with sisters, nieces and bikes
holidays with sisters, nieces and bikes

BMX

The year started nicely with the aforementioned trip to Barcelona in April. Also, after last year’s trail destruction, we managed to get the authorities’ approval to build a small set of jumps on a private property bordering a forest. Sadly, after we brought some truckloads of dirt to the place, the village’s forest ranger got pissed and filed a complaint. Now we’re in a legal procedure with the state to sort things out. It really is a fucking shitstorm. I miss Zurich for its BMX infrastructures: trail, pumptracks, bowl, street plaza, indoor skatepark…

the lads on this year’s bmx trip
the lads on this year’s bmx trip

Mountain biking

You would think that lacking places to ride my BMX would make me use my mountain bikes more. Somehow, that didn’t happen either. I only went downhill riding once, in La Berra. I also terminated my gym subscription because I really hated the vibes of that place. I joined a new gym after about 8 months of laziness. I used my other mountain bike for 56 rides, totalling a bit over 96h, 1537km, 25353m of elevation gain. I got bitten by a tick during one of those, and had to take antibiotics for a week or so. Other than that, I got no health issues or injuries in 2019. That’s definitely a win over 2018.

heatmap of 2 years of biking around Lausanne
heatmap of 2 years of biking around Lausanne

Consumerism

For once, I think I did good at buying less shit. With the exception of getting a Pocket Operator because of the hype of the Playdate that I ended up never using, and buying yet another LEGO model for adults. Other new stuff includes:

I started giving away some of my LEGO. The only other thing I’m clinging on to until now are my video games. I’m still wondering if I should start selling them. More and more, I feel like keeping things out of nostalgia really is a dumb reason. I could for example get rid of all the games that can be emulated.

Media

At the beginning of the year I closed my Facebook and Instagram accounts. While quitting Facebook was fairly easy, I missed Instagram for a while. I still have the feeling I miss out on some things, but I think it’s better for my sanity. I also changed the hosting of this website and started using another email hosting than Google’s GMail. I therefore had to change my email in all my online accounts, which was a huge pain in the ass to say the least. Soon I will be mostly free of Google, Amazon and Facebook.

I donated to Wikipedia and Radiotopia, and am still a patron of kottke.org.

I’m a bit lazy, so here’s my media consumption, in list form:

Books

Podcasts

Series

Last year I wrote that I should watch fewer shows. Well, guess what? It got worse.

Video games

Concerts

2019 was bonkers! Never have I seen so many shows, and all my favorite bands played:

yes, my music taste has not evolved in 25 years
yes, my music taste has not evolved in 25 years

Relationships

Ah… my favorite topic. Nothing has changed, no surprise. To be honest, I did not put much into it in 2019. At the beginning of the year, I flirted a bit with my neighbor Manon. Then Damien tried to hook me up with an acquaintance of his, Nina, who happens to be a lady bike rider. We met for a drink in Fribourg, but she looked fairly bored, so I did not insist. The only Tinder date I had was with Luka. There really was potential, but I chose to focus on Natalie whom I met at the same time via Bumble. The few friends/family I discuss my dry spell with usually come to the conclusion that I’m too picky. There probably is something to it, but the thing is, I still think that you need to get some good vibe the first time you meet someone. And I’m not talking butterflies, or love at first sight, or whatever. Just a good feeling. It happened on a few occasions in the past, but none of the girls wanted to meet a second time (and there never was any sex on a first encounter, so it was not because I possibly suck in bed). Anyway. With Natalie, I had that feeling… and we met an astonishing two more times. Sadly though, it failed again. It’s a weird story for another time.

Epilogue

It looks like everyone is doing decade reviews. I’m not sure yet if I want to invest time into that. It sure is interesting that, when looking back at each year individually, things don’t seem like they’ve changed a lot, but when considering the whole decade, boy, a lot has happened.