Find the balance of Virtual and Reality

I bought a “smart” bike trainer in winter 2019 and enjoy riding on it with Zwift, but it felt so much more fun riding with others in a bike club, several of whom I have ridden with in-person on gravel rides last summer. This week I took part in my first group ride on Zwift, a Time Trial set up where we all started at the same time and with Zwift showing everyone’s progress as well as gaps between riders. I managed to stay with someone for most of the two laps before dropping off to a solid last place. Something to work on! Anyway, I loved that Zwift ride as it felt like a collective experience, yet it was augmented by knowing several of the riders, having ridden (and had food and drink at the pub afterwards) with in person, in the “real world”.

This has me musing on “Virtual and Reality” and which works for us in different ways, at different times and for different purposes.

One other recent example was that my son’s school in Cayman moved their Parent-Teacher-Student conference session at the end of the last term to an online format. They’ve had an online booking system in place for years, but the old system was that everyone went to the school hall and waited to rotate around teachers for each five-minute spot. Not only did you have to work out which teacher was at which desk so you could plot your path around up to 10+ teachers in an hour or so…